Progress: 42,016 words, Five Chapters (All first or second draft)

As I talked about in the last update, I’m still living in the past. I’ve spent a lot more time with my flashbacks recently, which has helped me tremendously in figuring out exactly what needs to unfold there. History can teach us and guide our future decisions, and I’ve used the flashbacks to give me a better grasp on how the rest of the story should be told.

I defined 12 flashback scenes, each shedding more light on our characters’ pasts and their transitions to where our story begins. It makes for an emotional zoom out of sorts. The way you feel about them at the beginning may change by the end. You may not love them all, but you should understand what led them to make their choices. You might also come to believe what Nathaniel’s father says:

The man isn’t the one making the terrible choices, Nathaniel. The choices are terrible to begin with.

What’s most exciting about creating this historical timeline is its correlation to the novel’s chapters. Every chapter has one flashback, so now I know Father’s Creed will be 12 chapters. I was avoiding a lot of planning here previously, so I just let it plan itself. Each chapter has about five scenes, four moving forward, and one back. With that constraint in mind I was able to plot out the remaining chapters and scenes, and it all feels right.

Here are the working titles for the chapters:

1. The Adler Farmhouse
2. Whiskey for Trade
3. The Town of Berlin
4. The Ride Home
5. Leaving the Farm
6. The Terrors of Nature and Men
7. Finding Strength
8. Into Battle
9. Moufette and Sons
10. King Cabot
11. In the Muck
12. Finding Home

I’m not yet at the halfway point for my target word count of 95,000, but I feel the momentum building. Now that every scene has been given a framework I expect to move with little impediment. There is still some research and fact checking to be done, but with each question I have, the answer comes swiftly. The world is alive and it speaks. All I have to do is listen, and take dictation.

Do you have a novel in the works? How far along are you? Tell me about it in the comments. Be sure to Subscribe and follow.

Thanks for reading.