FYI, I completed a 1000-word summary of Sovereignty, but I won’t post it here because it’s filled with spoilers, just in case it turns into a real book some day.
It’s now abundantly clear that there is no place for my original story in the book. Not even as a side plot. One of the original driving forces for this book was: What if there was a culture of people who bred servants in the same way that we breed pets? The original main character was going to be one of those servants.
That aspect of the culture did not make any appearance in the 1000-word summary, so I guess poor Ril won’t make much of an appearance. It’s so absent that I’m not sure I even want it to be in the book.
That issue aside, I have another problem to deal with. Reading the 1000-word summary feels like I’m reading a section of a history book. The events themselves are not particularly unusual. They could have happened (and did happen) in any number of neighboring countries in any of the hundreds of years of medieval Europe. (Or really anywhere that countries disputed territory along their border.)
My point is that the plot itself isn’t that dramatic. Which means that in order to sell this story, I’m really going to have to play up the drama of the characters.
It’s making me think more about my main characters, which appear to be Hayden and Elenora Metherel, son and daughter of the king. (I don’t want to call him a "king," though: I want to think of another non-European-sounding name for the ruler of a country. I was using "sovereign" but that didn’t turn out to work very well.) Why are these people interesting? Why would anyone care about their fates? What makes them different from any other generic medieval fantasy characters?
I will probably need at least one more POV character as well, because Hayden and Elenora aren’t always around to see every part of the story. One might be Garrett Andaloran, and another might be a gangster named Faust.
I also feel like this story would be helped by adding some mystery elements. There is a spy in the story, and I think if I make "finding the spy" a larger part of the story, it would help to draw readers along to see what happens. (It works for me, at least.)
Currently I’m working on writing short 50-100 word summaries of each scene to be put into the book. It’s a bit depressing so far. It’s very disheartening to see how many scenes are brand new. There won’t be much I can import from the first drafts.
(No, I haven’t thought a new country name for Elaheron.)
