it is happening you guys i've officially started vlogging my experience of plotting and writing all
the way to publishing my next book which surprise surprise is the sequel to my YA
fantasy on wings of ash and dust i hope you guys are excited to jump into this first vlog where
i share all the feels and the ups and downs of starting a new book from scratch while i
focus on fleshing out the very rough outline i've had for book two plus in normal Brittany
fashion for all my fellow writers out there i definitely share a ton of tips and resources
on plotting and even character development as i go and not only things that really helped me
when i was working on book one but also new things i'm learning and trying out that will
hopefully optimize my process this time around so without any further delay here's vlog number one
here we go hey friends i am coffee cozy today because we're starting a
new adventure of writing the sequel to my book on wings of ash and dust this is my first time
writing a sequel my second time writing and completing a book to the point of publication and
your girl is feeling both really excited because a lot of you are really enjoying book one
and leaving amazing reviews and um just showing off the book online and it's been such a pleasure
and just such a dream come true and then a lot of you are asking for book two or just wondering
when the story will continue or when i'll come out with another book in general and the first
book took you know like over three years to get out and i feel like i've learned a lot you guys
have seen on this channel that i have shared as much as humanly possible during the time of
creating the first book about the whole process of plotting and drafting and editing and publishing
and marketing and all the different stuff and it was my first time really doing all of those steps
and i'm the type of person that really likes to make sure when i'm going to do something i want
to do it right i'm going to do it to the best of my ability i'm going to research all the things
but now that i've kind of like gone through it i'm hoping that it really doesn't take three years to
get you guys another book i really don't think it's going to i'm working on a plan and kind of
like a timeline to do all this stuff but the point of this intro is that i want to commit to vlogging
the experience i've done vlogs on and off on this channel sometimes they take a whole lot longer
to edit and to put together than a normal video so i'm not sure how frequent they'll come out but
progressively as i go through the steps again of plotting or the continuation of plotting because
i've always had like a outline for book two but i need to go back and flesh that out and finish
that out and then the drafting and the editing working with beta readers and critique partners
and working probably with professional editors again and then the cover design and whole
publishing stage and then the marketing and actually releasing i'd love to kind of take
you guys along for the journey as i continue to do other typical videos that i usually do of
like giving you guys tips and answering questions and stuff like that but yeah welcome to the first
video of writing my sequel if you are also writing a sequel or if it's just your first time writing
a book and you're going through this process i would love to hear about it in the comments
but particularly if you are writing a sequel if you have any tips or resources that have been
super helpful to you please let me know and yeah i just have like all the feels right now i've gotten
a lot of other things done that i need to get done this month so i'm ready to get back into the book
and i'm excited but i am nervous you guys i've been procrastinating like nobody's business today
i have all these questions running through my head of just will this book meet reader expectations
from the first book will it be easy to write or will my characters fight with me the whole way
and change a bunch of stuff as we go and then plus i have our first baby coming in mid-june so
i only have a couple of months of kind of normal brighter life sorry about the lighting changes
by the way this is a vlog so we're just gonna go with it but having a newborn an infant is going to
change a bunch of things about my time and potentially how fast this book can get done
so this is going to be just a journey that i'm going to take you guys along with i want to
show you my successes my failures all the feels so i hope you guys are excited and now i will
stop rambling so we can get into actually getting the book done and we're procrastinating let's go
as i get into things i also want to share that while i'm working on the outline for book two
part of my strategy is actually to convert the outline into a one to two page synopsis
to then share with my critique partners to see what they think of the overall story flow
the plot points um and if there's anything story structure wise that i could enhance or change
or clarify and this is a process that i learned from another author going to a workshop that i
did a whole video about which i'll link down below if you want to check that out but the idea i think
is just really genius of getting feedback on the overall story arc of the story the character arc
the pacing before you even start draft one can potentially be really really helpful
and i experienced this a little bit with another series i was writing called sisters of the shadow
wood which i'd love to get back to at some point as well and it just made the drafting process so
much easier so my first goal is to kind of look back on my outline try to translate it into a
one to two page synopsis which hopefully should only take maybe today maybe just a couple days
and then i can get that to my critique partners get feedback make some adjustments maybe get a
little more feedback from them and hopefully by next week i can start drafting this thing and as
i do that also using scrivener and maybe some of my notion pages i've talked about notion a
little bit on this channel before to do any more character development world building
development kind of like a series bible for the second book as a reference point as i write
i nearly forgot to grab one of my favorite references while plotting and figuring out a
story save the cat you can see i have a bunch of highlights and notes and sticky notes to quickly
reference things that i want and the other thing that i'm probably going to be referencing that i
don't want to get too distracted about today but my friend and fellow author bethany atazadeh was
raving about abby emmons uh playlist of videos how to write a novel with three act story structure
because in addition to the save the cat beats abby kind of renames some of the beats
explains them in a different way um talks about some different kinds of story beats
and so maybe i'll do some work on my own outline with what i know so far and then
reward myself with some extra learning on abby's videos which i have definitely enjoyed in the
past but haven't seen all of these so i'm really excited to dig into these later too
taking a little break to celebrate the fact that my tick tock that i
started just a couple months ago is finally over a thousand followers
after i posted this video here with um one of my readers opening up book one i was so excited
thanks so much you guys if you're already following me on there if you want to follow me
there's my handle having a lot of fun on tick tock mainly talking about my book some behind
the scenes stuff a little bit of writer things and also as a reader with my favorite fantasy books
so that's been a lot of fun and one thing i asked recently on instagram was if you guys had anything
specific you wanted to see in book two i always love to hear what my readers are really looking
for so their requests might actually make it into the book and i won't show any just in case some of
you haven't read book one because their requests definitely include spoilers but if you're watching
this and have read book one and you also have things you'd love to see in book two considering
what questions you'd love answered or what do you want to see happen with certain characters
please let me know because again it could totally affect the plot this early in the game
okay after tons of procrastinating in the morning and actually getting down to working on stuff this
afternoon i have gone completely through the outline that i fleshed out in nanowrimo and i
fleshed out even more and it's gonna need even more than that but i think i'm kind of at the
point that um maybe tomorrow i can start working on the synopsis version that i can send to my cps
so that's a huge win i'm really excited to see what they think of it so far and i'm really glad
that once i just like kind of pushed through and opened up the document and started reading and
working on it it was like things were clicking and coming back together and i was re falling in
love with the story all over again my computer's about to die so i've got to move to a different
room where i have the charger but i think i might reward myself a little bit by watching some of
those abby emmons videos so if i learn anything crucial from that i'll definitely let you guys
know for now i've just been using the save the cat beach sheet that's found in this book so if
you guys are looking for tips on how to plot this is definitely what i used for book one and i have
a bunch of plotting videos that i will link down below too if you're in this stage as well looking
for tips on how to do this i guess i should also mention that i am planning on releasing this book
like i did the first book first as a cereal and then as a full paperback with all the episodes
in it but as i am outlining what i think is kind of coming to the surface is that there will be
four longer episodes i'm thinking maybe closer to like 40 000 words for each of them whereas
the episodes for book one were a little shorter and how it will kind of work for the overall
story of book two with the four episodes episode one will kind of mirror act one
episode two will be like act two part one with the ending at the midpoint episode three will be
act two part two with like the bad guys close in kind of section and then episode four will mostly
focus on act three if you're not familiar with what cereals are again i have a bunch of videos
i can link down below but i'll definitely be using similar tips and plotting structures
that i shared in some of those videos to find the many story arcs that will happen within
these episodes that will then complement the overall story arc when you put all the episodes
together all right i think i'm gonna sign off for today so i can just enjoy learning from some
youtube videos taking notes and i'll check back in on the next day that i am working on this book
hi friends it is day two of officially working on my sequel and i actually did some work on it
this morning which i'll fill you in on but i got something really exciting in the mail
so i wanted to unbox it for a second and show you guys okay what this should be are my first
package of author copies yes it is oh i'm so excited um i had bought my own like directly
from amazon inside amazon prime when the books first came out uh because i wanted one to like
help promote it during release week but oh my gosh it's some more and they're so pretty so this again
is book one and i only got a few copies for now but i kind of want to display them
somewhere on my shelf so i might take a second to do that but a couple of these copies uh is going
to go to some people like my critique partner who has always given me free copies of her
books and i'm going to keep a few of the other ones on hand in case i do an in-person signing
or or maybe i'll sell them on my website let me know if you guys would be interested in that
oh and one more thing i wanted to show you guys is that one of my readers
did a book review um this is kathy and she was just so sweet and complimentary about the book
i was smiling ear to ear watching this video so thank you so much kathy and if you guys want to
check it out there is her youtube channel there but yeah so so fun and seeing things like this
is totally motivating me to get back to book two so that uh readers can enjoy the rest of the story
so i've taken a little break to focus on some baby stuff and i think you guys are really gonna
like this because we're planning my baby shower i have a few different theme ideas but i think
my favorite one that i think you guys will like is doing a fantasy themed baby shower how cute
is this maybe on the invite kind of calling our little boy our little prince i love all
the dragons and different kind of medieval themed stuff and this i think is going to be really fun
too if i get to sort of dress up like the queen or the princess who's having their first child and
maybe put like a crown on the cake for the little prince i just think this is super adorable so i'm
gonna be meeting with my mom and my aunt and a few of my cousins and my sister-in-law to do some
planning later today i'm really hoping they like this idea because oh my gosh it'd be so much fun
okay so back to book two what i did this morning and a little bit last night you started to go
through those videos i was talking to you guys about that abby emmons did sort of going through
similar plot points that are in save the cat but also there's a few different ones some of
them she explains a little bit differently which i appreciated her approach and then there's even
a few additional plot points that i think really help fill out the rest of the bigger plot points
that cover a lot of ground and what i really love that abby does is focuses on the main character's
arc and everything she talks about is how the plot points and the external part of the story affect
the internal arc of the character so i'm really enjoying going through her videos and actually
using a page in my notion to take notes and i love i've showed you guys in my notions video before
but in notion they have these little toggles so that i can hide um when there's a lot of notes in
one place and kind of rearrange things if i want oh i've got a terrible typo there but all of this
is proving really really helpful to help me really clarify and flesh out quinn's arc that happens in
book two because even though i have the same main character i also want to make sure that she's not
going through the same exact process she's probably going to be learning some of the same
things because i don't know that any character can fully transform and change permanently
after one book and she's always going to struggle with certain things that affect her personality
things from her past her past wounds but i also want to make sure that she's sort of going to
another level in her journey and that it's also consistent with the type of character she is
sounds kind of complicated but this is definitely really helping me and also as i've mentioned
before the enneagram is really helping me too so real quick one thing i'll show you
that i'm doing in scrivener is taking the 3x story structure beats that abby emmons is talking about
i have them all listed down here i'm not going to scroll so that you don't see any spoilers but with
each of the plot points she has specific questions so i'm answering them down below here and then
that's all kind of being wrapped up in context of the book's theme that i've chosen so i pretty much
know what quinn will learn and again we'll see if that changes at all as i write the draft but i've
whited this out so that again i don't spoil it for you but i have that here so as i'm answering
the questions and fleshing out the different plot points even though i have a whole other
outline here i've already created this is helping me kind of dig deeper into each part of the story
and then i'm answering that through the eyes of what the book's theme is what quinn will learn
and also her enneagram number which if you don't know what the enneagram is i've done a whole video
about it and how to use it for your characters that i'll link down below and i love the enneagram
because it focuses on how everyone has different kinds of personalities that influence what we
fear most what we desire most our motivations and goals how we act when we're in stress the healing
message or inner need we have the truth we need to learn which kind of ties into this what we're like
when we're in a healthy place and what we're like when we're at our best and hopefully you can see
how a bunch of this stuff are things we also always need to consider when we are creating
a believable fleshed-out compelling character there is so much more that each enneagram number
has as well and i do give a free sheet when you watch the video i just mentioned
yeah her enneagram number and what i've picked for the theme of this book is really really helping me
as i go through each of the plot points and i feel like i'm learning even more about quinn and about
the other characters and their motivations as i do this whole process and this is why every
part of the book process usually takes me a long time because i'm a researcher i'm an info junkie
i love learning new things but sometimes learning new things can slow me down in the process because
i'm like i have to learn this i have to like get all this in and make sure i apply all this stuff
to my story before i move to the next stage that being said again i really am finding a lot of
value in her videos and i kind of want to finish going through them and applying what i'm learning
to my outline before i create that synopsis i talked about earlier to send to my critique
partners so i know i said that i would be writing and sending the synopsis to my critique partners
asap and i still want to do that but i kind of want to get through these videos first so maybe
i'll try to calculate how long it'll take me to get through the videos and make a plan from there
of how quickly i can get synopsis to my cps okay i think i'm going to stop this one here but i'd love
to know in the comments what you guys are thinking about this series so far if you're excited to see
more and what other kind of things would you like me to feature in future vlogs of course
make sure you're subscribed if you don't want to miss how the synopsis writing really goes and how
long it actually takes me to get it to my critique partners i'll also link all of these videos in a
series playlist down below in the description and we'll see you guys in the next video