November 2022 Update
Well, I’m glad I wrote that it would be unlikely that I would be drafting book 2 by January, because that probability has now officially gone to zero.
I finished rereading “Creating Character Arcs” by K.M. Weiland and replayed “The Last of Us” on PS4 to map out Joel’s character arc. I played the game several years ago and loved the story and fall arc of Joel such that I thought it would be a good candidate to revisit and break down. Plus, I got to play video games—something I love, but rarely get to do anymore.
I also answered the questions at the end of every chapter for “Creating Character Arcs” for the two main protagonists. It was time well spent and resulted in a major revelation for me on one of the arcs. The major revelation was that I was trying to fit the whole character arc within one book, but really the way its structured it will be over multiple books. Once I hit on that, it’s much easier to structure and pace their arc.
At the same of all of this, I still have that series bible problem. I had worked out a rough structure for the series bible but was waiting to do a read through before starting to populate it. I reached the point with the character arcs that I thought it was time to sit down and do another read through armed with my new insights and questions filled out to flush out the character arcs. And since I was doing a read through, I figured I would kill two birds with one stone and highlight all the things for the series bible (different colors of course).
Good plan. Tedious in execution. It’s taken me an hour or two to get through the first ten pages or so. It was brutal. At that rate, it’s going to take me months. I expect it to get faster as I go, but I’m buckling in for a long process. My new nebulous target is to be able to pivot to outlining/brainstorming book 2 by April of 2023. That’d only be 3 months behind my original target. My hope is that all this work will make planning/drafting book 2 faster such that I’ll make up the 3 months and still have book 2 drafted by Jan. 2025. We’ll see!