To be honest, what I have is pretty incoherent narriative-wise. For some reason, I envisioned this more of a televisoon series, rather than a book. Its pretty much a survival series about a teenager (17) trying to survive. So, a lot of the plot is based on the MC traveling (in which the plot leads the MC to travel and find civilization), and there's all kinds of things on the way to the destination. Zombies, hungry animals, mutated dogs, evil towns, , etc... He befriends a dog, a girl that becomes his main love, a sorta vampire-ish character....Its kinda hard chop the different sidequests into bits. I have each 'sidequest' or 'episode' already bulleted. Would it be easier to write a chapter for each seperately on its own, or do them in order like a regular book? The other thing is the conclusion: I'm thinking of splitting into 2 books: The first ends with a cliffhanger where we see the protagonist having to rescue the girl while in jail, with the only hint of success being blood on the back page (its written as if it was a recap of events in case he does not survive). Would that piss people off seeing a conclusion like that? The 2nd ending is completely unknown.....I have no idea how to explain it. I want to come up with something poetic to the protagonists life that makes him the perfect person to lead the world back to civilization (effectively making him some form of messiah)...but it doesn't really explain why the world went to shit. I thought of using aliens, but then I could only think of some kind of war to unite humanity, which sounds real stupid to me. I was also thinking about an accidental experiment, or a war that its consequence led to many secret projects out-of-the-hat and exposed.......Its frustrating.... Should I not start really writing this up until I have a real ending, or just write it anyway and worry about the real ending later? Thanks!
You can start writing without a full plan of the work, but there are some things you must know or your writing will fizzle out before the end. You need a PLOT, not all the little details on the storyline. Why is he travelling? It would be easier to survive in territory he knows, surely? It seems to me that your plot needs to be why the teenager is travelling, and where the quest is leading, not all the incidental things that happen on the way...And each book must have a proper story arch with an ending, not just a cliffhanger.
You will never sell it as two books. Trim away unnecessary sub-stories until you have a cohsive story that will fit in one book. No new writer has any business thinking of more than one stand-alone novel getting to market. That will be challenge enough, and as much as a publisher will be willing to consider taking on.
