Trilogy

IIIWe like our stories in three parts. That’s why trilogies are so popular. But how hard is it to write one?

It depends. Sometimes, you have an ending for a story arc that defines everything that comes before it. Those are not so hard to write. It’s when you don’t know how it ends that makes it tough.

Amargosa was intended to be a trilogy from the outset. The meddling kids would cope with their world being occupied. They would get scattered in the middle story. And they would fight in the liberation. Pretty straightforward. Right?

Well…

I decided that each novel would be preceded by a trio of novellas explaining what was going on elsewhere in the Compact and beyond. Unfortunately, this also spawned a bunch of plot threads I now have to resolve somehow. Hmm…

Plus I never really knew what would happen in the final novel until I started writing it. Complicating things was my decision to (Spoiler alert!) kill off Laral Umish at the end of Second Wave. It made for a terrific climax. It also forced me to come up with a new antagonist now that I’ve not only blown up Umish, but I’d already killed off his father in the very first novella.

It won’t be the last trilogy I’ll write. But I know I will never pants one of these things again.