The Creativity Project: Restructuring
Realizing I mixed up the order of my books.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks replotting my series. I’m not happy with myself for having to rip the second and third books apart and start over. I had book two typed up and was filling in the missing parts and book three was mostly drafted.
Then my writer’s block hit. And it hit HARD. I haven’t had this bad of writer’s block in forever because I always have multiple stories going at the same time.
It made me sit down and rethink my series. I write romance books, this series is contemporary romance which means each book is stand alone. But there’s a thread in the background of events that kicks off with book one.
One of the problems with the thread has always been how long it takes for each book to happen because then background events have to take a ridiculously long time. And it bothered me.
When I started writing these books, book one was never meant to be a real book, just a writing exercise to clear my brain. But the characters stuck and became real people in my head full of stories they wanted to tell. Book three’s story popped into my head as I was finishing up book one, so I started writing it, knowing that I would have to go back and slot in another book in between.
Book two’s story finally materialized in my head at the beginning of this year. It had been bothering me that I could see the two characters, but I didn’t know their story. I drafted book two and set to typing it up.
The story petered out around 40 thousand words. I had a few scenes that still needed to be typed up, but the entire book felt flat.
Parts of book three felt forced, like events took too long and drug out.
On a drive to a friend’s house, it came to me: I was putting the books in the wrong order. Book two needed to be book three and vice versa. There wasn’t enough external tension in book two and it could easily be achieved if I moved it later in the series. And there was a line in book three that made zero sense based on who the characters were, but I needed it to justify the story.
I’m now back at the drawing board. I spent a week replotting both books, and it made me sad for the time I lost. And some of the scenes that will hit the cutting room floor. The change in order also changes the seasons in which each book takes place and now, the Thanksgiving and Christmas scenes are toast.
If I had stuck with my original intuition, I could’ve avoided this mess. But it was a really good exercise for me to think over if I was switching the books because they needed to be or if I was self-sabotaging. As a younger writer, I would’ve switched the books without a care in the world and it wouldn’t have mattered if it was the wrong thing to do.
This has thrown me off of my plans for the quarter, but I think it was necessary for the health of my career. I can still get back on track and not derail me for long.
How are your plans going? And surprise bumps in the road or is everything still smooth sailing? Let me know!
