Multi-threaded Plotting, and Status Report 2018-06-17

Starting with the status report: as of Sunday June 17, I am just about to hit 50,000 words. I was out of the country on business the past week, and the week before I was still cleaning up some of the plot changes that I mentioned in my last post. So while I did manage to hit my average daily quota of 550 words, I didn't hit or even come close to my stretch goals. But I am still excited to tell this story, still excited about the changes that I have mapped out, and excited to publish it early in 2019.

Now, on to "multi-threaded plotting". The meaning of this phrase is that the story has more than a single storyline, and I am writing the book from several different characters' points of view depending on which plot thread I am in. Not only that, but I am currently only writing one storyline from beginning to end. Once this part is done, I will go back and write the parallel storyline from its beginning to end. And that is what I mean by multi-threaded plotting.

Those who have read The Hand of Tyr know that it is basically a single-threaded plot that follows Balfrith and his companions. There are a few scenes with Balfrith's family, from his father's point of view, and those are important to the character building in that story as well as the resolution of the conflict between Balfrith and his father. But the vast majority of the story really does just follow Balfrith.

In the second Balfrith book, there are two main storylines each with their own POV characters. Balfrith is of course still the main character and his story is generally the central plot of the book. But there is another very important storyline that runs parallel with most of Balfrith's story, with its own main POV character who I will not name at this time. By the end of the book, these parallel plots come together into a single unified story.

As mentioned above, I will have written about 50,000 words by the end of this day. And that is all in the Balfrith storyline. I have almost completely ignored the parallel storyline, except to make myself an occasional note to remember something. But I have not yet written any prose for the parallel story.

Once Balfrith's storyline draft is complete, that will be my first big milestone for this book. And I will be quite happy to announce it on the day that it occurs.