I did my 2000 words a day this week, some days very easily, some days…not so much (wasn’t this meant to be fun?). I’m at 36,000 words and have moved into the second phase of the book, told from Rana’s POV. I was meant to get to 40,000 from Jannin’s POV before switching to Rana, but his part finished early. I’m not concerned – I skimped on some of his scenes (often because they were just going in very stupid directions), entirely skipped others as being too hard to write before I know Rana’s half of the story in detail, and also know there’s at least one more scene I have to add in, so he’ll easily make 40,000 on the second draft.

This is my first sustained experience in writing a sequel, and it’s been enlightening. I’m trying to keep developing characters but stay true to their personalities from the first book (due to be published in the next few months).

It’s been especially hard to do this with Jannin, who was the young wizard-villain in the first book. In the first book, he gets to literally pop in, flirt with our heroine Rana, say something enigmatic which not conincidentally moves the plot forward, and pop out. For a major character and plot-driver, he has little to say and little page time. As a POV character, he’s not nearly so much fun to write – turns out the guy’s got problems, who knew?

The other issue I’ve found has been in leaning too hard on the first book, especially in assuming knowledge of the relationship between Rana and Jannin. In this first draft for the second book, they barely interact, because, hey, the first book showed Jannin loves Rana and why, and her ambivalence about him, so no need to demonstrate it again…except for readers who won’t read that first book, of course! At the moment, they barely exchange two words before haring off to pursue their two different but intertwined narratives, so it would seem to new readers that a) Rana’s really mean to Jannin and b) she’s awfully keen to rescue him given how mean she is to him…

But that’s a goal for the second draft. For now, I’ve got another week coming up of 2000 words a day…