With about a week left on the Tales of Dominions Kickstarter, we’re close to funding. A huge thank-you to everyone who’s pledged so far.

But did you know that you can get more than Tales of Dominions? At every reward tier (including the ‘just because…’ £1 tier) you have the opportunity to buy add-ons. These include the following:

And that’s not all…

Intrigued? Then click here to check out the Tales of Dominions Kickstarter.

I’ve done it! After what feels like far too long, I now have a finished first draft.

It feels good to reach this point but this is only the start. Editing is vital to writing, and this draft needs a great deal of editing. This book and series are more ambitious than anything I’ve previously written, with multiple points of view spread over multiple story arcs that all need to weave together seamlessly for the series to work.

I’ve been reticent about sharing too many details about the story itself (because so much can change), but I’ll give you a brief overview of the story strands in this first book. One involves a generation ship, a craft the size of a city travelling between the stars and seeding new colonies. On this ship is a kind-of detective who starts investigating what seems to be a straightforward case, but it soon develops into something that threatens the whole ship, and might involve strange signals the ship is picking up.

Another strand follows a rag-tag crew of a courier, running less-than-legal jobs across the various star systems. Their current job throws them into tensions in a particular system, where they’re forced to choose sides if they’re to remain at liberty.

The final strand involves a new member of Unity (a sort of galactic government), someone with lots of promise but who’s still naive about the way things work. She’s fighting for recognition against the backdrop of potentially alien signals emerging across the galaxy.

These strands will interact as the series progresses (and more strands will be added), but for the first book to work there has to be some kind of cohesion between them. But at the moment they feel too much like separate stories.

There’s also the matter of this first draft’s length. I normally aim for my novels to be no more than 100,000 words, with first drafts normally clocking in at around 125,000 (I tend to waffle as I find my way into the story). But this draft is a ridiculous 230,000. Each strand could easily be a book on its own.
This is something I considered — and then rejected. I doubt I could pull that off. The overall story would feel far too fragmented.

So I have a great deal of work ahead in wrangling this draft into something that resembles a coherent book (and that’s before I deal with the words themselves). It’s a huge task. And it’s not one I feel up to at the moment.

I won’t dwell on possible reasons for this (tired, busy day job, holiday season approaching?). Instead, I need to come up with a solution.

And I think I’ve found one.

Back when I wrote my first series, Dominions, I’d have multiple stories on the go at the same time. I’d finish a first draft of one novel, then jump to editing a previously drafted novel. Then I might plan and draft a short story or novella. And when I reached the mid-point of the series I took a short break in order to plan and write what became the first book in my Shadows trilogy.

And I felt very productive. If one particular project (novel, short story or whatever) was becoming too much I could jump to something else. I’d get energised by working on something different, and the problems in the original project would be churning around in my subconscious, running through all kinds of potential solutions.

This stopped when I reached the end of both Shadows and Dominions. I wrote my next series, ShadowTech, one book after the other, with very little in the way of ‘filler’ projects (a few short stories but not much else). And now, since the summer, I’ve been immersed in this new space-opera series.

So I need to have a secondary project. I need to have something else I can work on when the primary project starts dragging.

And I have just the thing.

I believe I mentioned in a previous post that, as I’ve been planning this series, I’ve had all kinds of adjacent ideas. Things have cropped up that fit in with the story-world (story-galaxy?) but won’t work directly in the main story arc. And I’ve had thoughts of different side-stories, even whole side-series.

So I’m going to work on one of them for a bit. I’m taking the captain of the courier ship, Kane, and exploring his back-story. In the main series he has a strong connection to his ship, Seraph. But how did he come to be Seraph’s captain? And how did he pull together his crew of misfits?

This will be a far more linear tale. In writing Kane’s back-story I’m following one character, one strand. The story itself won’t be galaxy-spanning (although there’s plenty of scope for travel to other worlds and other stars). Rather than being a complex story told over a complete series and following multiple point-of-view characters, Kane’s tale will be primarily a series of individual adventures.

I’ve started work on this, and I’m enjoying it. I have a rough outline, but I’m letting the story develop a lot as I go. I’m having fun exploring Kane’s character, and that means I understand him more. When I return to editing that original novel I’ll have a far better grasp on his character, which will enable me to ensure he’s acting as he should and not doing things that are wildly out of character. Also, as I explore the galaxy through Kane’s adventures, I’m developing my understanding of the setting and the technology, as well as how the people in this galaxy function.

Just as this side-story (and others that I’m sure I’ll write in the future) provide more information on the story-world for those who want it, they also help me create a more lived-in and realistic story-world.

So I’m not really taking a break. This is research. This is development.

It’s all part of that spiral of writing, circling around and around but always building. Is it easy? No. But nobody ever said writing a decent book, let alone a decent series, was easy.

If it was easy, there’d be no fun in it. If writing was simple, there would be no challenge.

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This post first appeared on my Substack. If you’d like to receive these ongoing updates on my new series as they’re posted, please consider subscribing to my Substack for free by clicking here.

So, I know I want to focus on characters in this series. I have ideas for the main thrust of the story (the overarching plot), but before I start writing I want to plan. And for that, I want some kind of framework.

The vast majority of stories (especially successful, memorable ones) conform to a structure. There are many such structures, but one of the most popular is the hero’s journey. This originated from Joseph Campbell’s work on myths and folk-tales. He uncovered certain core similarities between most of these tales. He called this the ‘monomyth’, and it later became known as the hero’s journey.

George Lucas was heavily influenced by Campbell when he wrote Star Wars. Luke Skywalker’s arc in that film is one of the classic hero’s journey retellings.

But not every great story conforms to the hero’s journey. There are other structures.

Back at the start of 2021, one of the many podcasts I listen to, KM Weiland’s Helping Writers Become Authors, ran a whole series on character arcs. Weiland identified six core, sequential arcs, roughly mapping a life from ‘maiden’, then ‘hero’, and through to ‘mage’. Only when a character successfully negotiated one arc, she argued, could they progress to the next.

As I listened ideas started to develop.

Between each of these arcs are ‘resting’ arcs, where the character’s actions are more focused on helping others work through their own arcs. They became supporting characters in stories focused on others.

There are also negative arcs. These happen when a character becomes stuck at the low-point in a positive arc, unable to progress from this dark point. So a potential hero who backs out when the going gets too tough can fall into the negative arc of the cowards. Or if the potential hero doesn’t develop the necessary humility (if they believe too strongly in their own abilities) they can become a bully.

Not many stories focus on negative arcs (because we tend to prefer stories with happy, positive endings) but there are some classic negative arc stories. One that springs to mind is The Godfather, where Michael Corleone, despite never wanting to become like his father, eventually succumbs to a similar ruthlessness to keep his family safe. Or, turning back to Star Wars, consider Anakin Skywalker’s metamorphosis into Darth Vader.

And, in The Return Of The Jedi, Darth Vader gets a moment of redemption. His negative arc is reversed. There is always hope.

One thing that struck me was how a negative arc isn’t about a wilful desire to do bad things. It’s a downward spiral, or a weakness, or a misguided belief. It reminded me of something I’d heard many years ago — the villain is always the hero of their own story.

There are so many examples of this. Consider the minor conflicts between parents and teenagers, the desire to protect on one side and the yearning to experience on the other. Or go large (which I need to if I’m writing space opera). Think of political differences in so many countries. Think of conflicts between countries, between different groups within geographical areas. Each side believes itself to be in the right, their actions justified.

It’s not about simple right or wrong anymore, much as we’d like it to be.

Now consider a leader’s actions.’ Do they act to retain the status quo, or to usher in what they believe to be a much-needed change? Are they being poorly advised, either through malicious intent or through misinformation? Are they struggling with tensions between personal desires and the necessities of their office?

Let’s take a step back and return to my planning. I have a central story idea, a dilemma that has the potential to totally alter the course of humanity’s future. But, at least at the start, the exact nature is ambiguous. Different characters are going to have different views on it, and these views are going to influence their actions. These differences will lead to conflicts.

At the same time, my characters are all going through their individual arcs, battling situations that might only be tangentially related to the central thrust of the series. They’ll be pulled in different directions, forced to make hard decisions and accept compromise — or accept the consequences of rejecting compromise.

As I plan this series, I can use the character arcs Weiland identified. Some will keep to their positive arcs, others will fall into negative arcs (possibly to pull themselves back onto the positive path later on). There won’t be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ characters, only a cast of characters all trying to do the right thing, or at least doing the only thing they believe they can.

So I can construct a framework out of these arcs, giving the series (and individual book) structure. I can build the plot around that structure, confident that the heart of the overarching story will be the characters.

The next stage is getting to know those characters. More on that next time.

And if you’re interested in learning more about KM Weiland’s character arcs, click here.