7 Things You Should Know About Writing A Book Series

We are one month away from the end of the Outer Earth series.

One month away from a trilogy that has consumed the past four years of my life, that has sold thousands of copies across the world in multiple languages and given me a reason to keep living, mostly because I have the most kick ass readers on Earth.

It’s bittersweet for me, and a little scary. I don’t claim to be a veteran of scifi (like, AT ALL) but I know a little bit more about writing a trilogy then I did a year or two ago. Here are a few things I’ve learned.

(Regarding the images: I wrote lovely captions explaining what they are and where they’re from, which WordPress refuses to let me display. They’re all CC-sourced.)

1. You have to tell people it’s a series

This one got to me. It walked up and kicked me in the nuts while my back was turned, leaving me writhing on the ground, trying to ask why, why, dear god WHY. Metaphorically, I mean. I didn’t actually get kicked in the nuts. What I meant to say was –

You know what? Forget I mentioned my nuts. Let’s not go there.

What I’m trying to say is, it really surprised me early on that people didn’t realise that the Outer Earth series was, well, a series. That’s the problem with living in a world for so long; you take the most basic shit about it for granted. I never felt like I had to explain that there was more than one book, because in my world, only having one book was a physical impossibility. Of course, this didn’t take into account the shifting attention spans of a million readers, and so I totally forgot to point out that TRACER was the first of a trilogy.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m always delighted when people enthusiastically demand more. I was just a little puzzled but they felt the need to. Didn’t they realise that ZERO-G was being published in less than six months? Didn’t they understand?

It’s a well understood practice of bookselling that you don’t put the number of a book in a series anywhere on the outside cover or spine. It hurts sales. Someone won’t buy a book if the only ones available on a shelf are numbers two or three or four in a series. And while the information was, of course, available inside, it became clear pretty quickly that I actually had to tell people that this was a trilogy.

Learn from my mistakes. Make sure people know early on that you’re doing this multiple times. Protect your nuts. Even if you don’t have any.

2. Developing a character across multiple books is a LOT of fun

By the time you get to the end of your first book, you and your main character are like a couple who have just moved in together. You know each other’s habits. You’re reasonably aware of the little quirks and foibles that make up your respective personalities. But there’s still a lot to discover. The first chapter of your life together is over, and the second, more intimate one is about to begin.

Because if you think you’ve discovered everything about a character after one book, you’re living in a total dreamworld. Part of the fun of writing a series or a trilogy is getting to hang out with that character again. It’s about digging deeper into their mind (not literally, because ew) and figuring out what they’d do in a situation even more fucked-up than the one you threw them into the first book. It’s about seeing how they evolve, and grow, and surprise you.

This might sound a bit like raising a child. It isn’t. For me, living with Riley Hale as I wrote ZERO-G and later IMPACT was like discovering that the person I’d moved in with was a really good cook, and had killer taste in music, but had a terrible habit of leaving her clothes all over the place*. It was illuminating and enjoyable, and I wouldn’t change a single bit of it.

The person I live with in real life does not leave her clothes all over the place.

3. You won’t want to stop after three books

I thought I would.

From the moment I finished the first book, I knew that the Outer Earth series was going to be a trilogy. I saw the whole story, running the length of three books, and then wrapping up neatly. I knew what I wanted to tell, I knew how I was going to do it, and although I had a few dead ends and stumbles along the way, I knew that it would work out. Eventually. After some whiskey and a LOT of coffee.

But here’s something you discover after you’ve finished writing a series. The world you’ve lived in for so long doesn’t want to let you go. It’s nagging you to come back, to explore that corridor you didn’t run down, to find out some more about the little peripheral characters who populate it. It’s the same as getting a tattoo: at the time, the pain is intense, and you’re convinced you’ll never do it again. But the second you’re out of there, you start thinking about your next one.

Believe me, I speak from experience here. What the hell else do you think I spent my book advance on?

Fortunately, Orbit Books felt the same way I did. So after IMPACT comes out on August 25, we’re going to be releasing… something. I can’t tell you what it is. It’s not a new book, per se, but it’s something to do with Outer Earth. Hang tight.

4. George RR Martin Syndrome Is Real

This is the idea that the author will die, or go insane, or be otherwise inconvenienced before a series is complete. It’s the reason given by readers who don’t want to commit to the thing, named for the sixty-plus, very large Song Of Ice And Fire Author who is due to deliver number six in the seven-book series around 2025 or so.

Of course, I’m not going to die. I’m never going to die. I will be around for the heat death of the universe. But it still shocked me when I had people saying that they would read the trilogy when it was complete. I was like, but that’s ages away! A whole year! We could all be dead by then!

If you start writing a series, you will get to experience this, too. The good news is, as soon as you’re finished, you should see a big uptick in book sales. In theory. I’ll report back.

5. Continuity is HARD

“OK, so I know Riley did a cargo run down this corridor before, and I know there’s a power box about halfway down with some graffiti on it… no, wait, hang on, I got that wrong, the power box was in the corridor below. And come to think of it, it wasn’t a cargo run: she was being chased by someone who wanted to cut her liver out. I wrote about it in the first book. Or did I? Did I cut that scene? I’m pretty sure that that was the one my editor said would make the book unpalatable to people who didn’t like having their livers forcibly removed, for some weird reason. And was Riley wearing a jacket at the time? What colour was it? How long do I have to do this before I can legitimately have another cup of coffee?”

This happened to me. Do not let it happen to you. Create a series Bible. It doesn’t have to be an actual Bible (although how cool would that be?) It can be in notepad with things scrawled on it in increasingly erratic handwriting. But whatever you do, don’t leave this sort of thing to the copy editor. It takes more work, and they will be annoyed, and then they will cut out your liver.

6. Writing them gets easier…

You start writing a trilogy. You stumble around in the dark, equipped with a flashlight that works only intermittently. Maybe you have an outline, maybe you don’t, but either way, you’re going to bump your head on things.

And then you get towards the end of the first book, and you start the second, and the lights start coming on. You know the world by now. You don’t need to consult your map as much. Things come a little easier. YOU ARE THE MASTER OF ALL YOU BEHOLD.

7. …But the last one is the scariest

I can’t improve on what Pierce Browne wrote about this. In the acknowledgements to Morning Star, the final instalment of his terrific Red Rising trilogy, he said:

“For months I delayed that first sentence. I sketched ship schematics, wrote songs… histories of the families of the planets and moons that make up the savage little world I’d stumbled onto my room above my parents garaged almost five years ago. I wasn’t afraid because I didn’t know where I was going. I was afraid because I knew exactly how the story would end. I just didn’t think I was skilful enough to take you there…”

The final book in a series or trilogy is the hardest. You will have readers by now, even if it’s only your mom. The expectation will be increased. Your characters will be rocketing toward a conclusion, and the task of making the payoff worth it is more daunting than giving your teenage crush an orgasm (Now you see why I said I couldn’t improve on Pierce Brown).

The problem is, you gotta do it. There’s no choice. You’ve come this far, and you can’t quit now. This might be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but it has to be done. And once again, Mr Brown has all the motivation you need:

“Once I thought the writing [Morning Star] would be impossible. It was a skyscraper, massive and incomplete and unbearably far-off. It haunted me from the horizon. But do we ever look at such buildings and assume they sprung up over night? No. We’ve seen the traffic congestion that attends them. The skeleton of beams and girders. The swarm of builders and the rattle of cranes… everything ground is made from a series of ugly little moments. Everything worthwhile by hours of self-doubt and days of drudgery. All the works by people you and I admire sit atop a foundation of failures.”

Read the most explosive scifi trilogy around

I can’t provide all the links to every store on every continent, but trust me: your favourite retailer probably has it. For now, here are the Amazon links – they’ll take you to the right store for your country.

TRACER / ZERO-G / IMPACT