I got no words written today. And that’s alright. What I did instead was plan some last-minute changes I’m making to the Guardians of Gaia series. The story is more or less complete, I just got requests for content that I hadn’t planned for. It turns out people actually wanted more backstory, so I had to figure out what I was going to do and where I was going to put it.
That ate up all my writing time today. I still have edits to do but my brain didn’t want to do that today. So instead I planned out the last parts of the story and where they all fit in the grand scheme of things. This I did on paper, because I enjoy handwriting notes like these to myself. But also because it’s easier for my brain to keep track of notes like these. I have hundreds of different documents across multiple platforms, and it can be hard to keep track of everything even in just one place. So I brought out my trusty notebook, which keeps those ideas at the ready until I need them.
I’m not quite done with this part though. I need to nail down which aspects of the backstory will make the cut and which ones are extra, and that’s been hard. I didn’t include more because I know how much I hate slogging through extraneous backstory, but a beta reader pointed out that, in this specific case, it all ties into the main story. And that’s what he was asking for. He said the story felt incomplete without it, so could I add in some to round the story out?
Of course I can, was the answer I gave him. The problem was how to work it in, and how much to add. I know the characters and their stories, and I included what I felt was needed. But with a request for more, it left me short space, space I had dedicated to other things that I can’t axe to make room.
I, being the writer, was too close to the problem, because I could see different ways of handling it but which was the best? So I tapped a writer friend of mine in and ran the problem by him. And his solution, which I’m going with, was to add in an appendix with the extra stories. That Tolkien did it too, and that’s where he put all the stuff that didn’t quite make the cut. And the more I thought about it, the more the idea grew on me.
So today, I’ve been writing down different backstories to potentially include, and where they can go. Time is ticking on the first book, because I’d like to have it ready to put up for pre-order by the end of the year, and I still have things like editing and covers to finish sorting out. And not all of the content I want to include has been written out yet. I got a start on it, and if I have to, I can send it to my editors last too. After all, it’s not like my beta reader asked for additional chapters. These are just short stories chronicling the life and adventures of the people you’ll be reading about next year, that show where they came from before the story happens.
But that doesn’t mean I want an entire books worth of backstory either. If I happen to generate that much and demand is high enough, I can release a companion book but I’m hoping to narrow it down to the highlights, the parts people most need to know and will be excited to read about.
If there are requests for more after the series is finished, I can easily release a bunch of short stories. But I’m hoping to pare it down to the parts that serve the story. I don’t want to bore readers, but I don’t want to take it off the table completely. Hence why I’m weeding through notes taken over the last fifteen or so years and seeing what I think I should add and what I can earmark for later if there is enough demand.
Part of the reason I’m doing this is because the series was supposed to be one book, but one didn’t cut it. So, I made it a trilogy, but I had to skip over five years’ worth of content that I realized I needed to write, there just wasn’t anything novel worthy that happened in that time. As it stands now, the series is a trilogy with a planned book 1.5 that covers the five-year span between books 1 and 2, that fills in all those gaps that weren’t worthy of a whole novel but needed to be told. I’m not against adding short stories here either, I just worry (probably more than I need to) that it’s going to suffer from bloat if I add every last detail to the mix. I mean, some people like that. Look at the popularity of epics. But I’m not a fan of epics, and I don’t want things to drag on long after interest has waned.
That’s what I spent today doing. Mulling over what parts I can add in without risking bloat, and what I’ll reserve in case people want to read more about the characters and their adventures long after the series has wound down. If you ask me, it’s all interesting. But I don’t know how much of that is because I created it and so it’s all interesting to me, and how much is wishful thinking. We’ll see what the future brings.