Heretic Spellblade 5 - Planning

Intro

This post will be a spoiler-lite commentary on how I plan to approach Heretic Spellblade 5 (and 6), with a focus on outstanding plot threads, writing issues, and character arcs.

This book will be a different challenge for me, as I’ll explain in a bit.

Overall Story

Book 5 actually has three major plot threads to cover: the aftermath of the civil war; the role of Trafaumh; and establishing Omria/Charlotte as the true threat.

By contrast, Book 4 had a much narrower focus. It handled the civil war while ending a bunch of plot arcs and setting up a new one. That allowed it to be very punchy and have some great scenes and (imo) good pacing. That will be much harder this time.

The crux of the issue is that all of these plot threads interweave. Trafaumh is undecided between the two prophets, and has an impressive military to match its many secrets. But Nathan is limited in his ability to influence Trafaumh due to the fact the Empire is still reeling from the civil war. That means Charlotte will begin to act through non-military overtures.

Internally, the Empire needs to handle many of the issues that caused the civil war. It would be easy to simply say “Nathan won, everybody is happy” but that’s kind of not how the series works. The many nations of Doumahr are so unstable due to their underlying conditions, which is what makes it so easy for Messengers to exploit them. If Nathan wants to establish stability, he’ll either need to treat the cause or suppress the symptoms – the latter is a lot easier, but also not where his morals naturally lead him.

Trafaumh itself will also have these same issues, and those are much nastier. They’re very much a militarized theocracy, and its system of government has been concentrating power as Doumahr’s instability grows. Baudelaire isn’t somebody that Nathan has fought before, even if he knows a lot of her secrets and her general attitude. While he knows that she’ll take drastic actions to stop Messengers, he doesn’t know what else she might do. Trafaumh also has other political movements, which I plan to cover in more detail than I did the Spires ones.

Finally, Kadria’s boss will be redoubling his efforts to invade. While a lot of the systems of the multiverse were explained in Book 4, Omria’s history wasn’t, and it’s not fully understood what the outer beings are really after. Their actions, and Omria’s, will be what shapes the overarching narrative of the rest of the series.

This is a lot to pull off, and I’ve been trimming certain things that I don’t think I’ll have time to cover in full. But that ties into the next topic.

One Book Split in Half?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m writing/planning Books 5 and 6 together. This has been more trouble to plan than expected, mostly from a structural perspective.

See, I usually plan my books out in a loose three act structure. While I bend certain aspects, the structure ensures that pacing never gets too crazy and that there are important events happening at all times – even if some people refuse to consider anything other than a battle scene as an important event.

So my natural thought was to plan one big book, then split it in half. I quickly realized that was a terrible idea, as the pacing and plot beats don’t work that way. Instead, I stepped back and mapped out what I needed to achieve across both books, and used that to guide me for certain important plot events.

I mean, I could simply write one book and split it in half. It’s a popular approach for basically any webnovel type thing. But I’m fairly critical of the pacing of this stuff, and I tired of light novels with no real conclusion long ago.

The real benefit I have is that I know what the state of things needs to be by the end of Book 6, because I already know the plot of Book 7. I also ended Book 4 with a pretty good idea of several major plot points of Books 5 and 6, and it’s mostly a case of working out which book they go into and how much setup they might need.

Execution might be hard, though. We’ll see.

Kingdom Building

Earlier in the series, there was something of a focus on kingdom building, or even smaller scale stuff. That fell aside in Book 4, as Nathan deployed the resources he’d spent the past three books building up.

Right now, I’m not sure I want to spend too much time on this aspect. I could easily write an entire book about handling the aftermath of the civil war but then little else would happen.

However, I can’t skip over it entirely. The approach I plan to take is to zoom out from a lot of the nitty gritty details that Nathan used to care about. He has a bunch of Champions and subordinates to manage things, and is now assisting Alice with running the Empire. Expanding Gharrick Pass is of lesser importance than the strategic decisions he makes about deploying Champions and other Bastions.

This also ties into a development phase for certain characters that I planned earlier in the series. We’re at the point where most of Nathan’s Champions will become trigems and reach the peak of their power. But Nathan already knows that defeating Messengers and competing with power on the level of Omria requires more than a few trigems. So I’ll be tying some of that into the kingdom building aspect.

Oh, and I guess this ties into the political aftermath of the civil war.

Character Arcs

Books 3 & 4 closed off a bunch of character arcs, or at least tied them up fairly neatly. While I started a few character arcs in Book 4, there are more that need handling.

Ciana has an ongoing one, as although she’s now very close to Nathan, her codependency is extremely apparent. I ummed and ahhed over my plans for this one during Book 4, and we’ll see what it finally becomes.

Fei needs to continue the beastkin home arc that was started in Book 4. I have a firm idea of how to close out Seraph’s character arc. Alice is shifting into her role as Empress, but Anna needs a bit of love too. Sunstorm received a nice chunk of development in Book 4, but I want to nudge her along in this book for reasons.

But there are a few characters that desperately need their character arcs to be explored properly. Namely, Sen, Narime, Reine, and Fyre.

Sen has been trundling along in the background, but as she said in Book 2, she’s not really troubled by things anymore, because her former life was so horrific. But there were some hints about where I’m really taking Sen in that short story I wrote, and I’ve had her character arc in mind ever since writing it.

Narime has gotten no real character development since joining. That’s partly intentional, as she’s characterized by her age, devotion, and a certain level of stubborn nostalgia. Nathan even commented that she focuses on her homeland only in the positive sense. But I don’t want to leave her alone, and Trafaumh is very relevant to the foxes.

As for Fyre, her characterization can finally be fleshed out now that she’s not a huge mystery. I left out a scene where she explained her motivations and interest in Nathan from Book 4, but it will return this book. At the same time, I already know what I plan for her and the Messengers in Book 6 and need to lay the groundwork now.

Reine just got introduced, but she has a lot to develop over the course of the next few books. I won’t give anything away, especially as I’m mulling over where she might ultimately end up (particularly if Book 7 ends up as long as I worry it might).

I do have plans for Astra and Nurevia, but I’m mostly building them for stuff next book. Astra’s character arc will be related to Charlotte and Omria, given her history. Nurevia’s is more complicated and will likely carry all the way through to Book 7, as it relates to her history and issues with her race.

For everyone else, their characterization will be filled in over the course of the book. Like the abrupt return of Sunstorm, I sometimes add stuff while writing.

Leopold, or the lack thereof

The death of Leopold brought some real gravitas to the previous book and helped establish that the rest of the series will be a bit darker. That’s not to say I’ll kill off a major character each book, but I’m not going to be as hesitant to avoid killing people, particularly enemies and non-harem allies.

But Leopold’s absence leaves a huge gap in the way I approach my books. Namely, Nathan doesn’t have another man to properly converse with. The past books all involved some one-on-one time between the two men, and it made for a nice change of pace.

Right now, the main replacements for Leopold’s position are antagonistic. Deverese is deeply suspicious and envious of Nathan, while Gareth is working with Charlotte. That means I’ll need to look elsewhere to fill out these scenes, and I have a couple of ideas. Nathan did nab a merchant spy from Arcadia in the last book, after all.

Length

I said that I wouldn’t go over 600 pages for my books after Spellblade 4, and I’ve largely stuck to that. That book came out as a 19 hour audiobook, and once I start getting into the 20-25 hour range, I suspect a lot of the harem audience will check out. This is a genre where a lot of the “longer” authors are in the 11-15 hour range, and 6-8 books are extremely common.

Then again, audiobooks aren’t a huge part of my audience. Maybe that will change with Neural Wraith, but the vast majority of my audience are in ebook. I could speculate as to why, but there’s no real evidence so I won’t.

So while I won’t let Books 5 and 6 get away from myself, I might let them get a bit longer if that makes the story better and doesn’t result in glacial pacing.

I am really worried about Book 7, though. One of the things that increases the length of my books is the increasing complexity and cast. Given my plans for that book, it could easily end up being ridiculously long. But unlike Book 5, it doesn’t have an easy way to separate it into two. There’s just a lot planned for it.

Character Bloat

Finally, let’s talk about my least favorite topic.

Both Heretic Spellblade and Demon’s Throne easily categorize as Epic Fantasy, even if they’re not at the crazy doorstopper size of all the post-ASoIaF books. That means big casts, lots of countries, and anytime new countries are introduced, that means new characters.

This also ties into the harem aspect. Nathan has a very healthy harem right now, and some of them are still developing their relationship with him (Fyre, Reine, Vala, Astra, plus the Messengers). But if he goes into new countries without prospective harem members, it can be a little boring. At the same time, I don’t want to introduce too many new characters and harem members at this point, as the series won’t have time to develop them.

For now, I’ll keep Book 5 focused on existing harem members. I have some idea for what might happen in Book 6, however, but want the flexibility to jettison the ideas if I think I can’t develop the characters in Book 7.

As for characters in general, Trafaumh will require me to introduce a few more. There also need to be new Messengers to pose a threat, and Falmir has to start introducing people. I also have a very important character I’ve been dying to introduce since I thought her up during Book 4.

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Commentary: That’s about it for the planning update. It’s shorter than usual, but that’s because a lot of the planning is about fitting in the many characters and plot ideas into the books. I feel that Spellblade’s formula is well established, and I don’t plan to change it for those who are unhappy with it. If you weren’t onboard by Book 4, then you’re lost to me, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not worth wasting time trying to win such readers over at the expense of existing readers.

As I know somebody will ask about Vera, I’ll simply make it clear that although I have an idea for what to do with her, I’m not sure I’ll execute it. She will play an important role in Book 7 however, so I can’t completely ignore her. But I don’t expect her to become a harem member, except if I decide to just have her join at the end of the series. If her cover wasn’t so iconic for the series (and if I didn't want my artist constantly working on future books), I’d actually have it redone and replace her with Sen, but what’s done is done.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions.