This is something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of months years. I have a character I like, and four three separate stories that follow each other to build into a bigger character/story arc. Very early days yet.
Current status: timelining
7-Aug-17 07:35: I’m working on the four stories, building up descriptions of the events in the form of a dozen or two paragraphs for each. The first one is essentially complete; the second is mostly there but needs more detail for the ending; the third is something like halfway done; the fourth is nothing more than a vague outline at the moment.
19-Aug-17 08:04: I have the stories complete to the point where I’m about to start building timelines TODAY.
20-Aug-17 14:41: I made a start on the first pass of the timeline for the first story. Seventeen scenes timelined so far.
27-Aug-17 10:46: Oops. I jumped the gun a bit—I realised the story wasn’t right so I’ve stopped with the timelining and gone back to story building. There were things that were just wrong, and it’s meant that the entire second story has been ripped out and replaced with a new one that fits better with the whole four-story arc, and that in turn means changes to the other three stories to get everything working together. I can see this taking at the very least a couple of weeks of building, revising, refining, and so on before it’ll be in proper shape and I can get back to the timeline.
16-Sep-17 08:37: I got the stories in shape to the point where I’m ready to go back to building timelines. Luckily the first story had minimal changes (the real changes involve an all-new second story and major work on the fourth) so the work I’d done on the timeline is mostly still good. For all four books I’m looking at a total scene count of around five hundred. So far, I have eighteen. A long way to go.
15-Oct-17 08:01: Timeline has not been going well the last couple of weeks because of a flap that’s been going on at work. In any case, I’ve decided to put this project on hold for a little bit while I get Smoke & Mirrors ready for self-pub; see the WiP page for details on that.
26-Nov-17 12:00: Thanksgiving is now over… for me that’s an entire week of not getting any writing done, because of cooking, cleaning, and entertaining of various sorts. Don’t get me wrong – this is not a complaint. It’s good having the family together for a bit. But I do wish I could take another week off and focus on writing now that things are quieter. As far as this project is concerned: Still working on the timeline, but it’s as and when I find a few minutes here and there.
15-Jan-18 12:00: On hold for the time being; Britannia One is now the live project. See the WiP page for more on that.
07-Apr-19 13:06: The entire original timeline has been shredded. I’ve started over. So now I have three interconnected stories, and a target scene count for each of fifty or so. I have a top-level outline of all three stories, and I just finished the first cut of the timeline for Story 1. It’s short on scene count; it has thirty-three scenes, and really needs another twenty. I’m going to hold off doing anything about that until I’ve got the other two timelines drafted, then I’ll come back to it.
04-Feb-20 13:22: On hold because of personal stuff going on, as well as the fact that my publisher seems to be shuttered. Priority is being given over to getting Artemis and Phantasms self-published, and that’s not going to happen until I’m back in the UK.
Pete Ford 