How many trilogies?

[Storm Kesocascay]

I've been having a lot of Gods of War questions for some reason. O.O

My original plan was to make the series a total of 3 trilogies with "Gods of War", "The Night and Day", and "The Hunt for the Seven Sorrows" (contains 7 books).

The original plan was that the Seven Sorrows, the Kaiyumian version of the Seven Deadly Sins incarnated into demons, would be Arylos's main conflict and the part of the story where it's called "The Hunt for the Seven Sorrows" are of Arylos hunting down the Seven Sorrows one-by-one until they were all dead. That means one book per Sorrow.

Well, I realized that was a terrible idea.

Every time you pick up a Seven Sorrows book, you know exactly what's going to happen; Arylos finds the location of the target Sorrow, he hunts it down going through all of its traps and dungeons trying to find it before the previous Sorrow is reborn, kill the Sorrow in an epic battle, get a glimpse of the next Sorrow, repeat. (very little foreshadowing or plot changes making it boring to read and too predictable.)

Well, during the time I was writing this, I realized that the gods were dictated by the Nine Sages the whole time so I decided to make the Sages the main conflict and have the Sorrows as something to busy Arylos's time and making him more mentally unstable and definitely self doubtful. (He's planned to have a complete mental breakdown from the stress sometime in books 3 or 4.)

Using the Sages, I can shorten it to 4-6 books with more plot changes and more interesting things going on. I also thought that THREE TRILOGIES was WAY too much to read (and far too much for me to write) when nothing really interesting happens. But I feel if I add the Sages and make them the primary conflict, it will affect Arylos's personal judgement more as the fate of Reality is in the balance for the gods are planning to rebel ahead of schedule, not giving Arylos time to train Iris to be a goddess to complete the prophecy in time.

What do you think? I personally think that my second plan works out better, but I would like some feedback.

Thanks for any advice that you can give.

 

[Storm Kesocascay]

You know, I'm actually REALLY pushing for using the Nine Sages now because, to me at least, it seems more interesting and has a more underlying reason for the major and minor conflicts.

 

[OGone]

Without reading the book I have no idea but the way you described it sounds like the Sages would make more sense. Sorry I couldn't be much more of an input. I wouldn't try to be mechanical though, I'd just write the books and see what you end up focusing more on. Who says you have to focus on one or the other? If you mix it up then at least the books won't be as predictable. The Sage option would probably be better for this.

Shorter the better though, if you CAN write the whole story in four books then you certainly should.

 

[Storm Kesocascay]

Without reading the book I have no idea but the way you described it sounds like the Sages would make more sense. Sorry I couldn't be much more of an input. I wouldn't try to be mechanical though, I'd just write the books and see what you end up focusing more on. Who says you have to focus on one or the other? If you mix it up then at least the books won't be as predictable. The Sage option would probably be better for this.

Shorter the better though, if you CAN write the whole story in four books then you certainly should.

That helps me a lot.

Right now, I'm finding ways to incorporate the Sorrows and the Sages together. I'll find one soon.