Condensing a human life, fully lived, into one not-huge book is, well, I did it once, and I’m still not entirely certain how I managed it. Some readers didn’t like how I did it, in that I had to leave out chunks of the character’s existence, and allude to events and people who don’t appear in the main flow of the book. But I did it. Once, and I don’t know if I can do it again.

The book starts with the protagonist in his late teens, more or less, out hunting. Things happen, a deity steps in (which in the Merchant and Empire world is an accepted happening) and changes everything. Over the course of the chapter readers observe why this intervention greatly complicates an already less-than-idea parent and child relationship, and learn through asides and flash-backs why the MC is now his father’s heir.

From this point, the book skips a little, hitting the most important moments in the character’s life, his developing relationship with his feudal overlord, and selecting a spouse. The deity’s presence is a constant through the story, and that’s one of the things that has to be present in the tale – a common thread of some kind binding the character’s life together. In this case it is his role as a priest, explorer, and how that has to balance with his feudal duties to both his overlord and his people. You can see that there are lots of places for conflict to develop along that thread.

The MC’s life story is told in a semi-episodic fashion, with the religious theme, marital theme, and feudal themes tying everything together, despite several skips of years or even decades. The character ages and changes, as do those around him. Politics comes and goes, as would happen in a feudal society. The feudal overlord and the MC have a complicated relationship, also not rare in our world.

So, how do you write a life story? You have to sort out from the beginning what ties everything together into a semi-coherent whole. Semi-coherent, because some characters will have more scattered lives than others. I read a book written in the 1930s about a young woman living in the mountains of Tennessee-Georgia in the 1840s-70s. Her world was small, and had happy moments and terrible moments, but she carried on with faith and determination to do the best she could with whatever she had. Her world centered on her family and community. The book skipped a few years here and there, but flowed well and was believable. In my book, the character covers hundreds of miles, and the story jumps extended periods, even decades at a time.

I focused on the most important events and periods of the MC’s life – the things that made him who he was. The choices included his being given a religious Vocation, his first meeting with the Great Northern Emperor, his marriage, some of his most important explorations, and a few other things [I’m trying to avoid spoilers]. The book ends with him as an old man. Every event has smaller details around it, of course, but the idea is to show the events and people who made him who he was, and how they linked together. His vocation, his odd relationship with the Great Northern Emperor, his love of his family, those link the story together.

If you choose to try to write a life in one book, first sketch out the MC’s story, making note of the most important events. Then consider what will tie those together. Use that to tell the tale, binding the high points and low points together. I had the advantage of knowing the rough contours of a historical figure’s life, so I could look at those elements, then build from there. I did not use all the major events of the model’s life. He was a rough idea, something to work from. My character went his own way.

I still had readers who were unhappy that the story was told in an episodic manner. They did not like the jumps of years and decades. They would have preferred a longer story, or one in multiple volumes, that covered everything. I do not have the skill to do that and do it well.

Would I do it again? Perhaps, if I had a character that style of story fit. Would I do it the same way? I don’t know. I do know that there have to be linking elements, ribbons and threads that bind the story together into a comprehensive whole.