space-filler: I use three consecutive question marks (???) when I cannot think of a name, or a city, or the right word to use. Then I continue writing, and come back later, search for all "???" characters, taking my time replacing them with the right word or name as they occur to me.
Well, I did not think the first novel in my "pirate" trilogy would take more than 10 chapters, but then the characters all starting fighting amongst themselves, lying to each other, stabbing each other in the back, and doing all sorts of delicious things like that, and before I knew it, the first book had 60 chapters and one epilogue, with a nice 150K words total.
There was a minor character in that first book (1700s England): a ten-year old boy named Michael, who became one of the main characters in the second book. He returned to London from his sea adventures, only to find that his best friend, Molly, was gone. He learns that someone murdered her father and is now trying to kill her as well, and he (Michael) spends the rest of the 60 chapters trying to save her, tracking her all the way to the mysterious castle in County Cork, Ireland.
There was a minor character in the second book (a pirate), who was an orphan and had grown up working in a large mansion just outside London, where he had barely escaped with his life after he discovered some criminal goings-on. But now, in the first chapter of the third book, he discovers that his mother is still alive, and is in secret hiding, and that his father was killed by the very man who owned the mansion where he had grew up. So now he is out for revenge.
In fact, all three books are about revenge, which is a nice topic for trilogies.
Well, I finished the first chapter of the third book, but am researching England of the 1700's, in order to make the story more historically correct.
And in the meantime, I am trying to finish a collection of short stories, which read something like Hans Christian Andersen tales.