I’m currently writing the second and final book of The Distance Duet, Time Is the Greatest Distance, which is the sequel to book one, Desire and Social Distance (available now as eBook and paperback!). Here’s a sneak peek at the blurb:
Distance is not always a matter of proximity.
As Elena and Greyson embark on their new life together in Greyson’s New York brownstone, difficulties with his children make the honeymoon short-lived.
Meanwhile, Greyson has become distant, haunted by nightmares and a sense of foreboding that something awful is about to happen, which pulls him away from his intimacy with Elena, making her unsure about their future together.
But when a ghost from Greyson’s past reappears, throwing their lives into upheaval, nothing is certain anymore.
Will the emotional distance between them ruin what was once a promising romance, or will their love for one another triumph over the evil that has invaded their lives once and for all?
Without spoilers or giving anything away, I will say that when I first started writing Desire and Social Distance, the twist that is now in book two was originally written in the first version of book one. While writing book one, I knew and kept a close eye on what was going to happen in book two, trying to foreshadow and set up the conclusion of the duet. Book two is far more action-packed and suspenseful than book one, which was a slow burn, whereas book two is anything but! But two is also dual POV, so you see the story both from Elena’s and from Greyson’s perspectives.
In my writing process, as I detailed in my last post, I tell the story to myself first, writing in third person and using stage direction language, then during my second pass I tell the story to the reader in first person. When plotting a book, I start with the beats: the hook, inciting incident, key event, the first plot point, pinch point #1, the midpoint, pinch point #2, the third plot point, the crisis, the dark moment, the climax, the realization, and the resolution. Once I have those beats mapped out, I start to fill in with obstacles between the beats. Then I write both main characters’ narrative arcs, which include the following eight stages: 1) stasis, 2) trigger, 3) quest, 4) bolt, 5) shift, 6) defeat, 7) power, and 8) resolution. Once I have both character arcs plotted out, I combine those with the beats and write a chapter summary in order from chapter one to the end, including only what happens with my main characters. Once that is complete, I write the character arcs for my minor characters – yes, every significant minor character in my books has a simple character arc consisting of those same eight stages, just consisting of lesser events and less emotional change. Then I read through my chapter summaries, deciding which chapters need more action, and add side character subplots from the minor character’s arcs to round out the shorter chapters. Once that’s done, I revise the chapter summaries to include the subplots, and then I am ready to start blocking text! When I say blocking text, I am referring to telling the story to myself (writing in third person what each character does and says, mapping out each scene that appears in the chapter in rough sketches. I use a purple, ten-point font–Alegreya Sans–to write the blocking, to differentiate from the black 12-point Times New Roman I write the actual reader-ready text in). Once I have all the chapters blocked, I make my second pass and change everything to first-person POV, adding sensory details and going much more in-depth than the blocking was. During this phase, I do skip around, writing the scenes that excite me the most in that moment (Do I feel like writing narrative action, emotion, or spice right now? I ask myself), making notes of additional scenes and ideas that occur to me as I write out the book’s text. I write each chapter with a word-count goal of between 1,000 and 2,500 words, and adjust as I go. Some chapters end up extremely long while others turn out too short, so I have to adjust. And, as I do in The Distance Duet, keeping up with days and dates at the beginning of each chapter helps me keep a handle on how time is passing and how many hours or days have elapsed since the previous chapter, which helps me to orient the placing of events within the text. Usually I write the ending scene far before I am done with the whole novel, and keeping the end in mind actually helps me build an escalating plot bridge from where I am writing to how everything comes together at the last few chapters.
This is my method–it doesn’t mean all authors work this way or that even any other authors work in this way and with this methodology, but it’s what works for me in the long form.
Trivia tidbit about books one and two: the last line of book one, which I won’t write here so as not to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t read it, echoes the title of book two, so it reaches out of the text and points to the title of the next book. With that in mind, the end scene of book two hearkens back to the beginning of book one. This kind of interconnectedness exists between opposing plot points, too, and is actually called Chiastic Narrative Structure, but I won’t bore you with my English-major nerdery by going into detail about that.
Anything else you want to know about my writing process? Drop it in the comments, and I’ll answer in another post!
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Sophia Thorne 