Identifying What’s Already Available

Now, let’s circle back to Lena LaMarelle and her subplots through the Ever Afters, and me agonizing over her hands and the narrative potential in her losing them. I used the process I just described.

1. I identified known story structure and story currents.

What is known and can’t be changed:

At the time of said agonizing, I had completed and turned in the manuscript for Of Giants and Ice, the first book in the Ever Afters series. This means that the first book was off to the printers. The story contained in that novel was already fixed and couldn’t be revised any longer. I had to work with what I had. In case you haven’t read the series, the relevant plot for Of Giants and Ice is contained in the first section of the recap. 

What is known and somewhat fixed

I was also in the midst of a pretty substantial revision for the second book of The Ever Afters series, Of Witches and Wind. My original editor had seen it, and she’d given me notes. My new editor, who had taken over the series after the original editor, had also given me notes. With all this feedback, we were refining the manuscript into the book’s best version of itself. It also meant that though it was too late to change major plot points in that manuscript, I could add or modify details which could seed the plot for the rest of the series. 

What was completely fluid

My new editor and I were also in discussions to complete the series. My original editor had contracted two books of the series, which meant only Of Giants and Ice and Of Witches and Wind would be printed for sure. That’s a pretty standard practice in the publishing world, and my agent and I were hopeful that my new editor would offer a contract for the rest of the series. For her and the publishers to make the decision, they would need a better understanding of what I had planned for those final books. That took the form of extended book synopses what would become the third and fourth books in the series, Of Sorcery and Snow and Of Enemies and Endings, and that meant I had to finish plotting them out. I’d gotten started. I knew the ending, for example, but major pieces of the plot were still waiting to be developed, such as Lena’s subplot. It also happened to be the first time I’d plotted out a whole series. 

It was pretty high stakes for me, especially at the time. So, I had big feelings about more than just lena possibly losing her hands. To navigate through those big decisions and big feels, I leaned on my tools. 

2. I clarified my target. In this case, I reviewed my original goals for the series in order to better understand what I was missing. 

Remember where I was in my process: I was one complete and final book into the series, and I was already deep into the revision of Book 2. 

Though this was my first series, this story wasn’t new to me. Finishing it was.

So, I already knew my overall targets for the series. I’d needed them to complete the first two books and to gather the bravery I needed to pursue the publishing process. 

Here’s the target that guided me throughout Lena’s subplot:

While writing The Ever Afters, one of my targets was to create a main trio where each character was so well-developed that any one of them could have been the main character (usually the narrator) for the series. To accomplish this, the three main characters—Rory, Lena, and Chase—had to be foils to each other. I’ll delve deeper into how to structure foils in Growing Partners, the next season of the JourneyPen Project, but here’s the important part: whatever was in the character arc of the narrator Rory, her two best friends, Lena and Chase, also needed something similar happening in their own subplot. The details of the situation probably wouldn’t be the same, but the core of what they were feeling usually was. 

Like most middle-grade series (and like most fairy tales), the narrator Rory would defeat a big deal villain by the end of the last book: the Snow Queen. I’d already established the Snow Queen as someone who was similar enough to Rory, on a personal level, that Rory doubted herself as a hero. For example, the Snow Queen and Rory had a similar relationship to rules, both spoken and unspoken. To be specific, they both broke rules, sometimes without even realizing that they were doing so. Luckily, Rory also had a mentor to help her to navigate this tricky territory and grow into the fullest version of herself. 

So, if I were to reach my overall target of a well-developed trio, I needed to make sure that Lena had the same elements in her story arc: 

• A big-deal villain to defeat in the last book

• An adult Lena could hone herself against, especially around rules

• A mentor figure to help guide her

• A new normal where Lena becomes the fullest version of herself

You can also think of each of these as mini-targets to reach along the way.

Helpfully, by the end of Book 1, I’d already established one of these elements. Lena had a built-in mentor: her ancestress, Madame Benne, through the recreated spellbook and the memories of Melodie, Madame Benne’s assistant. Of course, since Madame Benne lived about a millennia ago, this mentor is not physically present. So, the help given would be focused on Lena’s dream of inventing. Lena wouldn’t get any advice about how to navigate the magical world from her mentor, which was somewhat helpful. Lena knew a lot about the magical world already. Without an in-person mentor, it was more believable that a smart kid like Lena would make a big mistake. 

As far as the rest of the list goes, I changed things up a bit. With the first two elements, the villain to defeat and the adult with a similar relationship with rules, Rory experiences these elements in the same person: the Snow Queen. For Lena (and Chase), I actually split these elements between two other characters, one inside their fairy tale community and one outside it. 

With these remaining targets in mind, I returned to what I already had, and I looked for touchstones I might be able to use.