Getting out of Boston

For five months I have been trying to get the central character in my novel series out of Boston. While I mean this literally—she needed to leave Boston 1752 and make it to Philadelphia—as I toiled over the pages Boston took on a much more metaphorical role. 

Backstory: Each of my three (so far) novels about this character has two sides: Historical and Modern-ish. You can read one full side first or read them intermixed—I call them “modular novels”—and get a different reading on the characters depending on how the stories unfold. 

Book one was my thesis novel and only had a historic side until five pages into a companion novella about the modern day conflict that was driving the narration about the historic content, I realized they were so integral to one another, they needed to be in the same book. It’s weird but it works. 

Book two I tried to write both sides at the same time, but see my post on Narrative Voice to read why that was a dismal failure. I gave up and wrote the historic content first, followed by the modern, then went back and used the modern conflict to shape up the historical chapters. Well, I was so excited about the modern story that I jumped right in and wrote the entire modern side of book 3 in five weeks. This is when historic character- Meg arrived in Boston.

Book three is the last “regular” novel in this part of my series. Book four is going to be a novel in stories (because playing with new forms is fun!) before the series continues with new character arcs and major plot lines. 

The conundrum: For the past five months I have been stumbling over words trying to transition Meg’s emotional and spiritual arcs from the first two books to something that will have enough fodder to mine for the next part of the series. Boston had to be both a satisfying ending and a convincing setting of stakes to drive the story forward. 

As any series expands so does the cast of characters. A significant dilemma is which minor characters to introduce/highlight/leave off the page. I actually have a spreadsheet that details every character mentioned in the series and how large their role is in each book. I try and plant a “character seed” at least a book ahead for major players so that six books in people aren’t like “wait why didn’t we know about this incredibly important woman? This feels too convenient!”

My book three saw the introduction one major character that has been hinted at since the beginning, as well as two reoccurring characters—one whom we’ve met modern day—that need enough page time to assert the emotional weight they carry with the protagonist. Sometimes a throwaway interaction strikes my imagination in a way that turns that character into a major player, expanding the cast even farther. 

Aside from new characters, I still have my regular crew to develop. Character elements are behaviors, beliefs, weirdsies and the like that make Meg and her like interesting. Some of the elements are innate while others may appear through interactions with other characters, traumas, or as a result of the self-actualization process. In a stand alone novel, the author resolves the crucial elements as part of the story arc, but in a series new elements need to uncovered to keep the story fresh. Otherwise it feels like the character is stagnant. 

The last major consideration I had was plot. I had physically moved Meg after two books, but I needed to give her a realistic emotional transitional time (Boston) before moving her on to the next phase of her life (Philadelphia) and that was going to take a series of events that would make her question her previously held beliefs and behaviors , spurring her on toward a new corse of action worth reading about. 

Also it has to be historically plausible, include real people and places, and take into account the weather. No biggie. Sigh.

My normal StoryBuilding methods of outlining a novel went out the window on this one and I ended up with fairly detailed notes in my scrivener margins reminding me who needed to be doing what when. Even so it has taken me five months to write 30k words. But I did it.

This week, with a lot of hyperfocus and free time, I got Meg out of Boston. It’s a first draft. It needs more humor, more tension, more emotional response from Meg, but that can wait for after The Long Sit (the months long steep each book gets while I work on the next one). For now, Meg is on a ship heading south then up to Philadelphia where I will pick her up a few years down the road. But that can wait until next week.