To add on top, the AP3 outline is officially longer than the original draft of AP2. That is pretty insane to have an outline that long. I think my second draft of AP2 was above 260 pages, and I doubt the outline will surpass that. Despite the heavy workload, I'm glad to have made so much progress with AP3 and AP4 this year.
I'm above 130 pages for the AP3 outline and I have less than 40 pages of the original draft to go through before I can finally start the second draft. So, I wrote over 30 pages since the last update, which is the most amount of pages added to the outline in a week. However, it was very challenging because I scratched out ideas a few times. As I said before, recontextualizing the book has been a difficult process. For example, I'm at the second last battle of the book. In the original draft, the battle played out one way, but for the outline it has to play out a different way. This caused a lot of writer's block that took a lot of effort to overcome. At the very least, I'm nearing the end of the outline. Either I finish the outline this week or next week.
I'm now above 100 pages on the AP3 outline. This covers up to 1075 pages of the original draft. I'm past the Germany segment and am getting close to the final plot points of the book. It seems I keep adding 20 pages to the outline every week. Hopefully, I can finally finish the outline in the next 2 or 3 weeks. Also, it is kinda crazy that the outline is so long. This is longer than the first drafts of Nibowin: The Island of Death and AP1. The second draft for AP3 will surely be an interesting task for me.
I'm close to 80 pages on the AP3 outline. I made a lot of progress since my last update and I'm nearing the end of the Germany segment of the book. In the original draft, nearly half of the book took place in that country. A major character died in the end of the Hamburg arc, but for the outline I decided to keep them alive and bring them for Berlin, the last arc in Germany. I also chose to redo how another group of characters get introduced. I think things will get a lot easier once I get past Germany.
I have to be vague because a lot of things happen in this book. There isn't any way you would be able to predict what happens next after reading the first two AP books.
So I'm about 60 pages into the outline for AP3. This covers about the first 850 pages of the original draft. I'm making progress everyday and I hope to get it done later this year. Though, I don't always make a lot of progress each day. I tend to spend at least 30 minutes sitting at my desk trying to figure out what to write next. This is the difficulty of writing under heavy constraints.
I last left off in the middle of an action scene. This is the last major battle in Hamburg, Germany. The characters have gone through many trials to combat a major "General" of sorts who works for Merlov Krachenko. I can't go into more specifics without going into spoiler territory. The last thing you are likely familiar with is Sipho and team flying in Petrenko's jet in England, and that jet getting shot down. Maybe…
The first drafts of the first three AP books exist in one timeline, while the second drafts of AP1/AP2 (i.e. the published versions you're familiar with) exist in another timeline. While writing the outline for the second draft of AP3, I have to make it fit with the second timeline. One big issue I noticed with the first draft of AP3 is that it has a lot of plot holes and inconsistencies. For example, in Germany, there are different factions: German military, Russian military (i.e. Merlov's henchmen), and Sipho Morgess's crew. There are times when the Germans and Russians are working together against Sipho Morgess but then also against each other and sometimes the Germans and Morgess team up against the Russians, which makes no sense. I was in high school while writing AP3, so I didn't have a deep enough grasp on plot consistency. This makes preparing a second…
So I have been making a lot of progress on my AP3 outline. I'm above 30 pages of notes so far, which cover the first 600 pages of the original draft. I never wrote an outline that long before and AP3 will be the first book I write with a full outline to guide me. It has been very difficult, like I mentioned in my last posts. One of the most annoying things so far is needing to rearrange certain scenes to fit within my notes. Let's say I have a battle in Augsburg, Germany in the original draft, but in the new draft, I need to have that battle take place in Stuttgart, Germany and add in a different context. Or the Augsburg battle takes place on Chapter 27, but now I need to move it to Chapter 38. This is the type of complexity I've been dealing with…
Sometimes I regret adding extra details to AP1. For example, groups like Warhawk, Zaeed Front, and the Afghan insurgent groups were not in the original drafts for the first three Armored Piercings. They do add an interesting dynamic to the world of the series, but it created a lot more work for me. One recurring issue I had while writing AP4 was repeatedly forgetting details I wrote earlier, which resulted in plot holes later on in the book. I don't usually write outlines, but for AP4 I had to write multiple for each main plotline so I could properly keep track. I may need to do the same with AP3. I think I was premature in stating that AP3 will come out in 2026 at the earliest.
So, I just ran into a snag with AP3. There's a section set in Germany in the original draft, in fact a big chunk of the book takes place in that country, and I'm having difficulty trying to figure out how to reconcile a rewrite with my outline notes so far. The main reason for this is because I stopped working on the outline for AP3 when I decided to focus heavily on finishing AP4. Now coming back to this months later, I forgot the ideas I had before.
My approach to rewriting AP3 is similar to how I rewrote AP1. The beginning of AP1 and a few other missions were mostly unchanged. So with AP3, I'm trying to recontextualize the book with my published versions of AP1 and AP2 while keeping the same story beats of the original AP3 draft. But also after finishing AP4, I have to be…
I already started writing down brainstorm ideas for Armored Piercing 5, which is about 3 pages now. I won't jump into AP5 right away, despite really wanting to. When I finished my 1st draft of AP2, I started on AP3 a few weeks later. If I were to guess when I'll start my 1st draft of AP5, I'd say 2027 or 2028.
So I finally finished my 1st draft for Armored Piercing 4 on August 19. It stands at 1465 pages, which solidifies it as the longest book I've ever written in my life. I started writing this book in August 2017, which means I've been working on this for 8 years! It has been a crazy journey working on this. I will write a blog in the future about my writing journey on AP4. Now I can finally return to working on my 2nd draft for AP3. The outline will take some time and then I'll get straight to writing. If I can repeat the writing speed I had in the tail end of AP4, maybe I can publish AP3 next year. We shall see how long it takes.
I'm now above 1440 pages for Armored Piercing 4, making it the first time I ever went over 1400 pages for a book. It still amazes me how much progress I've been making on the book this year. I wrote the last major battle of the book and things are in a falling-action attitude right now. I could possibly be finished with the book by the end of the month or early next month. Very exciting times!
I recently passed 1380 pages in Armored Piercing 4. I'm well on my way to reaching 1400 pages, which would be another first. I feel like I'm nearing the end of the story, so I don't think I'll hit 1500 pages. Hopefully, I will finish the story this month.
With Armored Piercing 4, I have now surpassed 1330 pages, making it the first time I ever wrote a draft that exceeded 1300 pages. I'm very proud of the progress I've been making these past couple of months. I wrote over 100 pages in one month alone, which is the most I've ever done in a long time. I hope I can keep this up!
In my current draft for Armored Piercing 4, I have now surpassed 1280, which means I'm well on my way to hitting 1300 pages. This would be another first for me. It's been very exciting to reach these many pages. As a reminder, I write my first drafts on paper, so I have a thick stack of papers. Story wise, things are moving at a very fast pace and some characters have to deal with shocking revelations. I won't mention any plot details since Armored Piercing 3 is still not out yet. I'm very motivated to finish AP4 soon so I can get to work on AP3.
I recently surpassed 1230 pages for AP4. This makes it the longest book I've ever written. My 1st draft for AP3 was just below 1200 pages. I never imagined reaching this length for the book, but there's still so much story to tell. There's no doubt I'll surpass 1300 pages, and maybe I'll hit 1400 pages, which would be insane. I'm trying to finish AP4 as soon as possible so that I can get back to working on a final draft for AP3. It's been 4 years since publishing AP2 and I don't want to keep any fans waiting for more years. When I finish AP4, I might write a blog post about my writing journey on that book.
I surpassed 1170 pages for AP4 and there's still a lot more to write. I have no doubt I will break my 1200 pages record I made with AP3's first draft. It's crazy that I've written so much over the years, but it's sad it took me over 7 years to reach this point. AP3 took me 3 years to write. I think the hardest challenge with AP4 compared to the rest of the series is keeping track of all the plotlines. There's a story you see at the forefront and another story that's in the background, but that background story has a huge impact on the main story. AP3 will be a huge effort to edit for publishing, but AP4 will be a bigger monster.
I surpassed 1100 pages for AP4. Things story-wise are moving at a fast pace. But one of the most difficult parts of writing this book is how complex the story is. There are a lot of moving parts and I've made many notes to keep track of different storylines. I keep forgetting details from early on in the book and I think I'll have to reread the whole book before finishing it. Maybe I'll write a blog about how hard it is to write a book with multi-level storytelling. Even AP3 will be tough to finish. My outline for changes for that book is about 17 pages now, and that only covers the first 300 or so pages. If I ever work on a different series, I'll try to keep it simpler to make it easy on myself.
I'm very close to publishing a new book soon. After that, I should probably spend more time on getting more AP books out. I've been going back and forth on whether I want to make spin-off books. I'm not keen on doing prequels, but it could bring more eyes to the series. I dunno.
I think I'm gonna split AP3 into multiple parts. It's going to take a very long time to type up the whole thing, so it's better I split it. This will extend the number of entries in the series to above 5 books, but it's been almost 4 years since I published any new AP books. If I work at it, I could have Part 1 done by the end of this year.
