In addition to working on my Dakotashi Book 2 revisions, I’m also brainstorming Book 3 and beyond. It’s possible I’m getting ahead of myself, but I like to know where I’m going, at least in a general sense.

I had two ah ha moments while working some ideas out that got me thinking about connections. One of the ideas from Donald Maass that really clicked with me was plot layering and nodes of conjunction. Plot layers are basically the things that your main character is dealing with that are not connected. For example, your main character’s case as a detective and the blind dates her roommate keeps setting her up on. A node of conjunction is a place where you see these to plot layers can connect. For example, the blind date turns out to be one of the witnesses your MC just interviewed or later turns up in the case as a suspect. Now the two plot layers are connected. (That was off the top of my head. I don’t write detective fiction.) Although it seems like coincidence, in a novel it helps build a cohesive whole with additional resonance for the reader. You can do this in revision, but it’s less work to do it while brainstorming!

So it made me feel extra special to think of two ways to add connections so close together. I don’t know that either is exactly like what I describe above in terms of plot layers and nodes of conjunction, but I think that any connections that weave plot elements and characters closer together are a good thing. The first is for Book 3. I was thinking about a problem that Dakotashi is going to be dealing with and figured out a way to connect it to the over-arching story that’s going to be threading through these first several books. This will help tighten plot elements together.

The second is for some other time in the future, not sure when yet, but it connects someone who is going to be very important to Dakotashi’s future to someone who was very important in his past. I’m really excited about this one because it will make this relationship have more emotional impact even when it is still new. This one in particular would seem like a coincidence if I explained it without context, but built into the story, the reader will have the context, the characters their specific reasons to be when and where, and in the end it will seem more like fate!

Is that all vague enough? Sorry about that!