Once again things didn’t turn out as planned. I wanted Chapter 16 to deal with the marriage of two characters but that was thwarted by bureaucratic rigamarole. Then, where to go from there?

So, my original plan was to add a new character to the current core group in Chapter 17. Well, the way it worked out was that the protagonist from Chapter 1 is the addition. This character brings a whole new set of problems—what would a story be without problems—and as it worked out, he fit perfectly into the mix.

The result is 17 becomes 16. Do I go back to the original 16? No, as much as I would like to, those two characters are secondary to the overall aim of the story as a whole. I now have two characters that can lead the story towards its inevitable end. Chapter 17 deals with tragedy and recovery. I’m also thinking of adding in a bit of love, nothing wrong with that is there?

What have I learned from all of this? Well, for me, don’t set plans in concrete. Don’t even set them into freshly poured concrete. Go with the flow of the story. Bring protagonist 1 into a relationship with protagonist 2 and let the secondary characters all around support them until no more words can be thrown into the mix.

And, the word counts? Chapter 16 comes in at 7,413 bringing the total to 104,767, pending revisions.

How many more chapters, well at least one, maybe two, depends on how many words I can squeeze out of the old gray matter and whether the additions can add anything rather than just word counts.