Do you ever lie in bed half awake, clinging to dreamworld? I do that a lot and this morning, I was thinking about the second book in my series. Honestly I haven't given it much thought. I left a lot of openings for things to come, but I didn't have a central plot. I realized though it would be stronger if I could share with an agent or editor that this is the first of two or three manuscripts I have in the same world. If it's good, they like stuff like that. I also have been going back and forth on whether or not this should be a series or a trilogy. It is definitely going to take the first two books to set up the story as I originally envisioned it in my head. I just don't know if the set up allows for it.
I mean...most of the series I read anyway there is a driving question that guides the plot. Who is the killer? What is this new supernatural bad ass? Is there a Holy Grail? Look at the Anita Blake Books. When they originally started, the character was chasing a different bad guy in each book. Now, it seems she's just existing. She used to work for the police, but we hardly ever see her do police work in the more recent books. She might stop a bad guy, but really the books are about her staying alive. More soap opera than thriller.
I guess I need to think about that a little more.
The whole point was, while lying in bed, I made some pretty significant progress on the second novel. The more i thought about it, the more it kept unfolding in my head. Finally I jumped up and ran to my office where I have blank sheets of butcher paper pasted all over the walls and just started writing with my sharpie. I was like that guy on Heroes who used to do all the paintings. He would go into a trance and paint the future on canvas. That was me. I was writing so fast, trying to capture everything in my head on paper so that I wouldn't forget. I had notes of things to add into novel one and then questions to ponder on book two. I even have a central plot.
I think.
Oh well. That's just never happened to me, but I feel like these characters are buzzing around in my head and finally telling me what to write instead of me guessing! So cool.
