Impressions Update: Part One

Yes, I finished writing part one months ago, and yes, I keep you up to date on my progress through the weekly writing updates, but I wanted to share more in-depth thoughts about the writing process, the struggles and success, and the considerations that went into the first third(ish) of this novel.  I think it will be useful from a writing process perspective for those other aspiring authors who read these posts, and interesting to those following the story’s progression.  If nothing else, I might like to know what I was thinking when I go back to do revisions on the first part, or when the story as a whole is finished.

You might recall that this entire novel project arose from a short story of the same title I wrote several years ago and received very positive feedback upon.  This book, which, if it turns out well, is positioned to be the first in a trilogy (but is also intended to stand on its own), includes the original story, and the sequel, but the parts based on what I’ve already written don’t come until the end of part two.  Part one is all about backstory, exposition, foreshadowing, and character development, and in that sense is the most different from anything I wrote in my original attempts at the story of Impressions.  My first attempt at writing this part of the story, which led to me dropping the idea entirely for years, was a failure, so I knew going in that getting part one right might be challenging.  Considering that, I’m pleased with how it turned out, though there will be revisions.

I do minimal outlining, even for novels.  I tried doing a thorough, chapter-by-chapter outline of Impressions before my first attempt at the project, and it sucked all of the energy out of it, contributing to me putting the project down until this year.  This time, I did a few paragraph summary of part one as a whole, a little like the episode summaries that constituted my “outline” for Blood Magic, and used that to guide my writing.  Since I knew that I wanted an Earth-analog setting, I didn’t worry too much about worldbuilding, and instead built what I needed as I went, making notes of terms and names like was discussed in this post.  Both of those decisions allowed me to jump directly into the writing at the start of the year.

The hardest aspect of writing part one was, and is, pacing.  It is my full intention that this novel should be a relatively slow burn, building up gradually to more adventure, but that doesn’t mean that the whole first part should be boring.  In that sense, my inspirations are books like Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, or The Lord of the Rings, in which many chapters go by before the main conflict becomes clear or any significant action happens.  The trick, then, is to make the parts before the main conflict arises interesting to the reader.  I have to earn the reader’s trust that all of this luxuriating in detail and backstory has a purpose, is leading to something that will be satisfying and worth the investment.  Making the story immersive, the characters interesting, and laying a few hints that there is more to come helps with that, along with smaller-scale conflicts and interactions that will lead into the larger one when the time comes.

If part one is “slow,” and I have to worry about boring readers or losing them in the buildup because the novel is not conforming to their expectations (I had one reader say after reading the first chapter that they assumed something tragic was going to happen to Raven’s home/family because of the time I spent establishing them, which is not the way I intend to create tension there), it is also covering in-story time preposterously fast.  Some thousand-page stories take place over weeks or months – The Wandering Inn took seven(?) volumes to progress through a single year, and they are not short volumes – part one of Impressions covers two whole years in thirteen chapters.  Of course, part two is going to cover even more time, so that challenge is not going away anytime soon.  Conveying that, making it not feel erratic to the reader or difficult to follow, is as difficult a task as holding the reader’s attention while the main plot very slowly develops.

My hope is that, if you stick with the story to the end of part one, you’ll be hooked.  The last few chapters of part one, despite spanning a whole year, build a lot of momentum leading up to the major inciting incident that kicks us into part two, the second radical change in Raven’s life.  The beginning of each part is marked by a major change in Raven’s accustomed dynamic, a large disturbance from equilibrium to which he must adjust.  By the end of part one, I hope that readers will understand some of where the story is going, without knowing the exact shape of the overall conflict.  This is not a standard plot type, though it has elements from them, and that too is walking a line for readers.

I’m really pleased with how part one turned out, in almost every respect.  It will probably end up being the longest part, which I’m comfortable with: it’s thirteen chapters, almost sixty thousand words, which puts me on track for a roughly one hundred fifty thousand word novel of three near-equal parts of just over ten chapters each.  Despite the slow pacing, I think the story moves well, I dropped a lot of hints about what is to come, and the conclusion felt well-supported and exciting.  Revisions will be mostly focused on refining that pacing, ensuring that the passage of in-story time is sufficiently clear, that all of the necessary foreshadowing and worldbuilding is in place and consistent, and that the right scenes for character development and so forth are present and clear.

Part One did have its challenges, places where the writing slowed down or where I’m not certain things worked right in the first draft, but overall I am pleased with it, and with my timing finishing it, since it took about a third of the year.  After three years of not working on novels while I focused on Blood Magic, I’m very pleased with how well I got into work on Impressions.  For now, part one is behind me, and I’m well into part two.  We’ll do this again when I finish the second part, so I hope you found this interesting.  Impressions is coming along well, and I’m looking forward to the time that I can share it with you.