Thresholder Update/Notes

Note: This was originally going to be the author's note for the chapter, but it got long, mostly because it's a bunch of stuff I've been thinking about. This is also public, rather than patron-only, so if you have a comment, no current-chapter details please.

I am very tempted to just present this chapter without comment, because I think "writing's not going so well" posts are terrible to both write and read. But I've also been trying to diagnose, so ...

Moderate series plan-level spoilers follow, along with some of the stuff that will be in the post-mortem.

I think one of the big problems I've had with Book 4 is that it should have been two different stories. This is not the first time I've written something that was actually two different plots, but it's always something that I try to avoid. At most, there should be an A plot and a B plot that follows, which is how most books of Worth the Candle were intended to be structured (A and B being related either logically or thematically).

Instead, we have Fenilor and Third Fervor, and I don't know what a disentangled version of this would look like, but separating these into two different worlds would have streamlined both of them and made them better, I think. Add in the Farfinder, and it's too many moving pieces, even if we're at the point now where it's simplified down. The overarching plan was to move through this world in thirds, with the first third being the near-utopia (with all the dissonant elements you get from looking at any utopia for long enough), the second third being in a country that's just barely post-transition, and the third third being a country that's on the cusp of revolution. And maybe it's been because of the delays, but it feels like the split has been less equal than I feel like it should have been.

There are also a lot of details to track, which was always something I knew was going to be an issue as Thresholder went on, but I definitely shot myself in the foot with this book. Why did I do that? Because I thought it would be cool. I'm a big fan of going large, of having lots of stuff, of having things be on the edge of just too much. There are a few narrative functions that it serves too, from better fight scenes (in my opinion) to being able to include some red herrings, to just being pleasant to read. I am willing to shoot myself in the foot for a better story, the problem here is that 1) I'm not sure the story actually was better for it and 2) it's probably one of the main things impacting writing speed and my negative feelings toward the project.

So, here's the news: there's going to be a book 5. I think there needs to be, narratively. Writing-wise, I am apprehensive about it, because the writing has been glacially slow, but I'm telling myself I'm coming off an unplanned sabbatical, and I'm not as worried about burnout as I was, and I've tried to make a plan going forward that will help to deal with some of the overhead/friction in terms of the story itself.

This biggest thing is leveraging the leap between worlds to do some resets. This was always supposed to be one of the strengths of Thresholder, so I'll be invoking it here, stepping down the "number of things" quite a bit ... in order to make room for more things. I am willing to go as low as one magic system, along with all the existing powers, plus enemy thresholder powers, plus some other stuff, which as I write this now still seems like it'll be a fine number of things as far as complexity goes.

The plan is also for a shorter book, and I know my track record isn't great on doing that, because I like longer books. I guess we'll see: plotting it is still a work in progress, and I want to make sure that the plot is well-baked before I actually start writing, just to see if I can iron out any problems beforehand. Realizing a book should have been two books is really the sort of thing that would be far far better to catch before any writing whatsoever has taken place.

There's a line in the show Barry where he says that he's done doing bad things, that he's going to be a better person, and then he inevitably does some bad thing, then he says "starting ... now". He does this over and over. It's the main thing that stuck with me from the series. And as far as writing goes, this is sort of how I'm feeling, like I'm going to will myself into higher output somehow. And of course, that way lies burnout and frustration. I think one of the lessons of the show was that this is fundamentally not a willpower problem, it's not something that's going to be changed just be gritting your teeth or whatever, it's either an underlying problem or structural force or just something that needs to be changed in some other way.

And still, my feeling for the last week has been "starting ... now".