Can the mc take the throne? Once they're powerful enough
Not in the timeline of Pactbinder - it would be a pretty impressive move indeed for them to become monarch in their first year of university!
If Pactbinder ever became a truly long-running series (which I'm very much not committing to - my priority is making this book a good and satisfying standalone experience), given the broader setting's worldbuilding, I imagine themes of governance and the machinery of power would have to play a big part in some aspect.
I can’t remember if you’ve already mentioned whether this is a standalone or the first in a series.If it’s the latter I don’t think anyone would mind too much if another male ro Silas/Julian were to be more fleshed out in a sequel as a route. If it’s the former then perhaps leaving it as is would be the best course of action. There will be naysayers regardless of choice but do what works best for you and the progression of the story.
Thanks for the ask and comment!
At some point (when the story is significantly more progressed) I'd love to have a proper conversation about Pactbinder's big-picture structure; short answer is that I would love to continue the Pactbinder's story past this book, but I want to approach this story like a standalone narrative that works on its own, rather than banking on a sequel's existence. Some more thoughts below cut.
Whilst I think Pactbinder lends itself well to a trilogy (this is the Pactbinder's first year in a three-year university course after all, and there are a couple of long-term plot hooks regarding the Pactbinder's fate that one year could never encapsulate), and I know what the core plots of a book 2 and 3 would be, I still want Pactbinder to work as a standalone narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end plus a resolution to what I consider the story's main plot.
This is due to:
Practical reasons: The biggest reason, of course, is that I just don't yet know if the story will have nearly a good enough reception / find a large enough audience for me to be able to justify the significant time and dedication a trilogy would require.
Even if I do end up committing to a trilogy, I think a more standalone book 1 (which still does the work to set up for sequels, of course) leads to a better experience for readers - after all, it is already shaping up to be a decently long book, so I imagine that the writing time for a book 2 would be quite long. As such, I want to reward people's time and investment with a story that ends instead of leaving them on a multi-year cliff-hanger. A book 2 can get away with that, I think, but not a book 1!
Artistic reasons: For now, I just want to stay disciplined and focus on making Pactbinder '1' the best story that I can make it (and above all, ensuring that it gets finished), so I don't want to get lost in hype for future books (though this is hard, I think about a hypothetical Book 3 quite a bit haha).
All this is fine and good and I'm very confident in this as my approach, but you can probably see how it makes decisions that risk scope creep or might rely on book 2 payoffs big deals for me as an author!
But it's a fun problem to have and we still have a long time to work it all out, so it's all good!
