I just had to save these tweets on my blog. I’m awake at midnight with an aching chest because I felt like I could do more with A Desert of Bleeding Sand 3 than I currently have. A lot of epic things have happened throughout the book! And yet, as I (very slowly) proceed with the final act, I feel like the current final act is too straightforward. Like all the jaw-dropping events have happened and the ending is now rolling along. And while that was initially the plan, to let myself rest after all the major reveals and painful events, now that I’ve taken a bit of a break from drafting the manuscript, I’m in my ‘I need to make it EPIC’ stage. Haha.
This is a recurrent stage I seem to always find myself in after my ‘eh, let’s just go along with the flow’ stage.
I want this final act to leave a major bang. I mean this is the epic finale. And the only idea that really brings this desire to life is to broaden out the world further. Bring out new things that will then (epically) tie with the current plotline in this final act. I’ve been toying with the idea for some time now, not too sure if it’ll work or how I’d bring this in. It was almost subconscious even, because part of me felt fine with the current plot outline.
But then the idea ambushed me this midnight, on the 4th of September. And in the very last part of this world I ever thought I would want to explore… a door cracked open there. It is emotionally gruesome. Full of longing and pain—which is very unlike me or the type of stories I gravitate toward writing! In fact, I suspect I’ll either lock down emotionally or sob throughout as I flesh it out in writing, because just outlining it almost shattered me. And this new idea goes on to tie in with a new character whose backstory I’d kinda just thrown in so they’d have an arc. Now, the backstory is the foundation for this entire new plotline I’ll be adding to the story.
I’m sorry I know this probably isn’t making much sense since I’m being vague and you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about haha. But this is also for future me. Moments of breakthrough like these while writing, are so so precious and I want to be able to remember. That nooo, the ending scene didn’t come that way fully formed. It came differently at first, but then you added a whole other plotline and pov from book 2 that shifted the entire trajectory of the series and created this new ending!
I won’t hop right into adding these new ideas because they’re a major addition. I will still brainstorm a bit more to flesh out the outline. And when/if I’m surer of how the outline looks and that it will work in the story, I’ll delve in!
Side note: For me, this has repeatedly proven to be a boon of writing out a series in advance. Many writers talk about how they’ll only complete their series if they get a book deal. Apart from me needing to complete my characters’ stories for myself (book deal or not), I’ve found that you won’t have the best chance to exploit your story’s full potential if you don’t have a snapshot of how it ends. If I was writing and publishing the series book by book, I couldn’t have come up with a plot point by book 3 that I’d need to go back and work into from book 2. And this entire, awesome idea would’ve never been born/initiated. I know not everyone can handle writing out a series without the encouragement of a book deal, but I think the cost is making peace with writing a series that isn’t the best you can make it. Very often, I see interviews where authors admit they wish they could’ve done things differently in their book, or they wish they’d spotted the potential in a character/plot point when they’d had the chance. I think this is the result of not having enough time to sit with what you’ve written and truly explore your story because you’re rushing under tight publishing deadlines. The fantasy author I admire most always has most of her series written out a few years before her publisher buys them. And I believe this is one more reason she is called the queen of plot twists and foreshadowing. Now, I’m trying to imitate that process!
Anyway! I’m currently at a point where I am itching to write, to create stories. Unfortunately, I have basically finished writing Book 3 with only a couple of pages left in my outline. So I don’t really have a creative outlet (unless I start another book, which I won’t). And I think me constantly going back to think of tweaks to make and twists to add to the ADOBS 3 manuscript, is just a way of using up this creative energy gushing through me! I love how massive this new idea is because it’ll engage me for a while. (Hopefully, a while will actually be more than a week, because then I’d start twitching for something else to write!)
Here’s me praying once more for a book deal to come and for it to come soon, so that I can start sending these stories out into the world and start having room to create more. 🩷
Lucia's Fiction 
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