As a lot of you know, I tend to be rather scattershot in my composition process. I’ll often write a scene or a chapter completely out of order, rather than writing each piece in sequential order. It’s not always the most efficient or economical way of doing things, but it does allow me to work on those parts of the narrative that I find the most interesting at a particular moment.

Such was certainly the case today, as I started on a chapter that will actually be one of the ones that has a lot of action. Most of the book so far has to do with religion and politics, and that’s true here too, but this is a pivotal scene that sets the stage for a later religious conflict that will consume the second and third books in the series.

I also found that this chapter is told from the viewpoint of both a minor character–destined to be a larger presence later–and from an incidental character, the latter a soldier in the Imperium’s army. For some reason, though, I find this character to be quite compelling, so perhaps he’ll come back to play a rather larger role. Still, though, I have a rather large set of characters to start with, so I don’t want to overdo it.

That’s not to say that I don’t have a strong idea of the entire narrative arc of the book. One advantage of starting this project during NaNoWriMo was that I was able to sketch out the entire story in very broad strokes.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the way that this novel is turning out. I do think I can crank out a fairly coherent version of this by the end of the year. It’s ambitious, but it’s doable.

Let’s do this.