Hello, dreamers. It’s WIP Wednesday.

Last week, I passed a major milestone: Phase 1 of the novel is complete. With that, I’m taking a week away from the story to focus on notes and research for Phase 2, but I’ll still be writing on other projects. That said, here’s the latest on my current work-in-progress:

Aquarius 1

So Phase 1 was everything I hoped it would be. It’s not perfect, but nothing is. It’s not the best I can make it, but that’s not how first drafts work. For now, all that matters is it’s written. For now, that’s enough.

The final chapters of Phase 1 ended, as planned, with the first action of the novel, and it went better than I could have hoped. It was a powerful sequence, and I managed to inject potent interiority into the basic plot I’d already written out. That was the goal. Now, I inhale.

So, before I go on, a bit of explanation.

The novels I’ve written taking place in the Dotiverse follow a non-standard format compared to most novels. Rather than writing them in three parts, I write them in four parts, which I call phases. I adopted this format while writing Pioneers, mainly because when I first began writing, it felt too expected. So, since then, I’ve adopted the four-phase format.

As most of my novels deal with human exploration of an exoplanet (and are hard sci-fi), the four-phase approach feels sensible. Roughly speaking, the four phases tend to go as follows:

Phase 1: the spacecraft arrives in a planetary system, and begins moving toward its destination planet at sublight speeds.

Phase 2: the spacecraft arrives in orbit, and the crew makes their initial landing on the surface.

Phase 3: the crew settles into their mission, exploring the planet and forming bonds. Typically, this is the longest part of the book, ending with the climax. My climaxes usually encompass two chapters; the first introduces a sort of small-scale problem, the second contains the cataclysmic true climax.

Phase 4: the crew deals with the fallout of the climactic events. The main characters who’ve bonded are split up. Generally, this is the shortest part of the book; I like to keep things fast-paced and tie everything up dramatically.

Between phases, I take a week-long break. I use this pause to revise my notes for the coming phase, perform additional research, and basically sit back and take a breather. That’s where I am now. Following the pause, I resume work by editing the previous phase, which helps to bring me back into the story.

The upshot of this is that I won’t be doing any actual writing on Aquarius 1 this week. I will instead be researching, revising my notes, and working on other projects. I’ll admit it’s a little disappointing; honestly, I’d really like to just press on. But I’ve learned through experience that this time off is crucial. Rest assured, come Monday I’ll be back at it. And I can’t wait. – MK