duology – Welcome to Bridgetown

Soon after I wrote last Friday’s post on Thursday evening, I thought I’d give the duology idea a try.

As soon as I found a perfect cut-off point a few chapters previous, I cut everything after that, typed out ‘to be continued’, and pasted those into a new Word document and saved as Theadia II. The change was palpable: I no longer felt that sense of constriction, like I needed to bring this story to a conclusion now. Just like I’d expected: it gave me breathing room, and also gave me more space to come up with what comes after answering the defining question of this project: if you could…would you do the right thing? I’d always felt that while I could conceivably wrap up the novel with our heroes winning the day yet still dealing with the fallout that comes after, I was always constantly worried that I wouldn’t give it enough time and space to happen. Like I’d said previously: I wouldn’t be happy with the ending.

So where am I at now? Well, considering that one of the main plot threads was the growing dread of Nima Federation forcibly reannexing the world and station of FairIsle and taking away their hard-earned freedom, I now have the ability to examine that a bit further. Perhaps they reannex, perhaps they don’t, but that threat has lingered in one form or another since FairIsle gained their independence. And now the threat is about to enter local space. This opens up a lot of interesting ideas, and not just one regarding near-space battles. This project has always been about the civilians and not the military, so it suggests all sorts of things: levels of patriotism, grief and loss, fear and uncertainty, compassion and bigotry. And those are extremely important reasons for Theadia (the collective) to exist. It’s what has driven them all this time, and continues to drive them into this second book.

I’m still not sure if turning this into a duology will work, but I will say that I listened to my instincts, and I’m glad I did.

I’m still floating in a stasis on this project, mainly because I’m having an issue with these final scenes of the book. Rereading the novel-so-far is feeling more like a distraction than a help. I’m almost thinking that perhaps I should start in on another project in the meantime, just to take my mind off it for a bit, and come back to it when I feel more refreshed and ready to approach it.

However, the other day I was also revisiting those perhaps this is actually a duology thoughts I’d had off and on throughout this project. While this could conceivably be a standalone, at the rate I’m going it feels like I’m rushing the ending, or alternately I’m tying up all the plot threads a little too cleanly. And it occurred to me: if I stop where I am now in this book and follow through with said thoughts about a duology, that would give me the space and the breathing room to work on the rest of the project. And it’s a perfect cliffhanger at that.

To be honest, this is close to how I’d decided to finish A Division of Souls back in the day. That book is different in that I’d already decided it would be a series and not a standalone, but all the same, by the time I got to that final scene, I actually had a much better sense of where I actually was in the entire trilogy’s layout. Souls was all about Denni coming to terms with being the One of All Sacred, and her final ritual in that book was her acceptance. That meant that the next two books had to be about what she had to do next and how she had to bring it all to completion.

So, back to Theadia: I’ve said before that this book is indeed about taking responsibility when it’s needed, even when it goes against the rules. But it’s also about a bigger story as well: what happens when one’s way of life is threatened for the most dangerous (and frustrating) of reasons. And in the context of this story, I don’t think it’s one that I can successfully tell within the confines of one book. There’s a much bigger story being told in the background, and that is the story that needs more room to breathe.

Perhaps it’s time to make this duology idea happen.

Tag: duology

Theadia: So what happens now?

Theadia update…?