I always like to capture my thoughts and feelings when I first finish a book. Most of it goes into my journal for my eyes only, but sometimes I like to share certain parts too. Especially generic writing process journey elements, in case it may help someone else.
Guys, I’ve written almost 100 stories in my career so far, and I’m still learning. Queen’s Purge had several firsts for me and set some personal records…
It’s the second longest book I’ve ever written at over 120k. (The first draft of The Rose of Shanhasson was over 150k but I cut it down significantly before it was published.)
It contains the longest sex scene I’ve ever written at over 18k with 16 characters interacting in different ways. Yes there were transition scenes as groups moved through the queen’s chamber but it was A LOT. If you’ve been here awhile, you know that I don’t write “basic” tab A/slot B sex. It has to MEAN something. Plot happens. Character reveals happen. She’s raising power through sex and blood and things are always meaningful. I want each one to be different and special and transformative in some way. So these scenes are very difficult to write. And no, this wasn’t the only sex scene in the book, either.
Firsts
- Wrote out of order. I usually find this a waste of time, but it really worked for this draft. When I worked on Sunfires3, I wrote the overlap scenes for Shara at the same time as long as I could. So when I “started” working on Purge, I already had 15k. Most of that was interaction with Karmen, even though it didn’t happen until much later in the book.
- I started what I call “zero draft” notes and brainstorming. I started this idea back with Darkness3 because I kept kicking myself about my deplorable lack of notes. I knew I had planned something specific for Svar, and I had ideas for Helayna’s legacy, but I never wrote them down. I had to come up with new ideas that may have been different/better anyway but it would have been nice to have it all written down. Somewhere.
- I started writing these bulleted lists in the story journal for Darkness3, allowing myself to just brain dump simple notes, not complete sentences, just quick little jots. It really helped, and so for Purge, I expanded on this idea.
- I created a Zero Draft chapter in Scrivener and kept multiple text files inside with random notes and ideas for what I wanted to do, or questions I needed to answer. I allowed these words to “count” toward my first rough draft word count and I didn’t delete anything.
- Once I was finished with the draft, it was easy to just compile the final draft without this chapter or any of the cut scenes.
- For new characters, I found their stock photo as quickly as possible so I could fine tune the description to the photo, instead of trying to find a photo to match the image in my head. It made it so much easier than searching endlessly for a unicorn image that’s just not quite right.
- I worked on multiple projects at the same time. In January, I worked on Snow Song and Queen’s Purge, until Shara won out. I also wrote scenes for both Shara and Karmen late last year as I already mentioned.
So what now? This week, I’ve been doing the normal “clearing the baffles” I’ve blogged about in the past. I cleaned my desk. I reset all my crystal bowls for sprints. I did my sprint analysis and project retrospective in my journal. I brain dumped everything I could think of for the next book(s).
Here’s where it gets tricky. To go forward in Their Vampire Queen’s universe, I am going to probably be writing on several books at the same time. That’s how much this story has grown in my head. Yes, Shara is still the queen, but she needs the Triune tables filled. She needs her allies and siblings. And I can’t write HER story if I don’t know THEIR stories.
So today, I spent time creating new Scrivener projects for: Queen’s Alliance, Queen Takes Darkness3, Queen Takes Sunfires3, and Queen Takes Grail. I already have Queen Takes Death started. Then I went through my very full TVQ story journal and copied all brainstorm ideas and future notes that are still important into Zero Draft folders for each book.
If I dwell on how big this is… I freeze. It’s Rik-level big. Ha, if you know, you know.
But seriously, every time I thought about where to go from the end of Purge, I was overwhelmed. I had no idea where to start. The scope. The depth. The sheer vastness of it all. Even I can’t see where I’m going over than vague hints.
But doing all this “manual” work helped me figure out how to start Queen’s Alliance.
And sometimes STARTING is the hardest part.
