There have been so many lessons learned in the process of writing these three books, but in many ways I've taken the most interesting ones from writing the final book. Here are a few of the things I wish I'd known before embarking on the trilogy journey:
The fatigue is real
About a third of the way through the draft of the third book, I vowed to never, ever write a trilogy again. You know that point during the drafting process, around 30,000 words in, where you've got past the flush of the 'shiny new story' but haven't yet reached the 'home stretch' and the middle acts feel like the steepest mountain ever? That point felt triply worse for me on this third novel, because it was really 230,000 words in, and I couldn't see my way to get those final 70,000 down on paper. As the final chapters drew closer, the inner editor screamed louder and louder - 'This is your last chance to get it perfect! Only perfection will suffice!' The temptation to watch Love Island instead was very strong indeed.
By the end, though, it's addictive
I may have spent a large portion of writing A Midnight Dark and Golden pledging that this would be my one and only trilogy, but by the end I did a 180 degree turn. There's something intensely satisfying about drawing out multiple character arcs over three books, or 1000 pages. You get the chance to expand smaller characters in ways you hadn't anticipated; you can forge unlikely connections in a way you would be hard pressed to do in a single, 400 page novel. At a certain point, the cast begins to generate their own stories, which is a delightful frustration when you've spent many years attempting to map their journeys in detail across multiple volumes.
You can retcon more than you think
I'm sure there are fantasy authors out there who have the ability to work out every single detail of their world, character arcs and magic system before writing a single word. I'm sure there are fantasy authors out there who not only work these things out, but stick to them as well. I am not one of them. 90 per cent of the best parts of my books came from a sudden realisation that the story would actually be much more exciting if I used a throwaway detail from an earlier novel or chapter and turned it into a world-building or magic-y twist. That, of course, meant throwing away or revising a lot of what I had planned in future chapters, but it was absolutely worth it. And making it fit with previous books is much easier than I thought it would be - who knew that when you're the one making the magic system, you get to invent new rules?
Which leads me on to...
Now you know your characters, trust them
That bit I wrote earlier, about characters generating story? It's absolutely true. After two novels and ten years, you end up knowing your characters pretty well. Would it be weird to say that they know their author pretty well too? By the early chapters of A Midnight Dark and Golden, I could almost hear some of my characters telling me, 'Oi, that trajectory you planned for me eight years ago? That doesn't really fit with the story you're now telling, does it?' Thus two crucial characters who had been on separate, tragic journeys, told me that they would quite like to team up, please and thank you, and one of them would like a happier ending if it wasn't too much bother. It was quite a bother, to be honest, because I'd been writing the conclusions to their arcs in my head for years. However, I heard them out and emailed my editor. She came back to me, as I knew she would, to confirm that the new ending was much more emotional and powerful than my original plan. 'Fine,' I said to my characters, 'You win.' But they were right, and the new ending to their arcs is one of the scenes I am most proud of in the whole trilogy.
Beware nostalgia
Like a back-to-back binge-watch of Ever After, Clueless and Ten Things I Hate About You for a Millennial, my third book was a full-on nostalgia fest. I found myself adding callback after callback to moments in the first two books. I know already that there are too many. I couldn't help myself, and have already briefed my editor to tell me where and when to reign it in. But in the moment, while writing that first draft of the last book, those callbacks were a necessary for me. A way to say goodbye to the characters who have lived in my head for so long, and who are so soon - too soon - going to be flying the nest.
Holly Race worked for many years as a script editor in film and television, before becoming a writer.
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