To Write A Series

Someone asked me for a post on writing a series. My response was . . . less than eloquent. I know nothing at all about writing a series. Note how that hasn’t stopped me from attempting one.

Actually, I have a few series running around my head: a duet, quartet, novels with sequel potential, episodic series . . . but this is the first try at crafting, so all I can tell you is how I’m approaching it.

A single novel is hard enough. Now, I’m writing the second of seven. They’re not episodic; they’re meant to be read in order, and I hope that at the end of it, events and developments will tie back into elements of the earlier books. This means I actually have to *gasp!* plan. Most of all, I can’t let the looming specter of the SERIES overwhelm me.

So I approached the series planning like I do novel planning. After all, all seven books together do make a single story — aside from scope, I don’t see a whole lot of difference between writing a story in one novel or writing it in several. The three-act structure touted in screenwriting classes doesn’t work for my brain. Instead, I have my seven “beats” that provide me with a focus and a framework to go from. That’s not why I decided on seven books, but it has made the planning easier.

Planning the series this way made nailing down the over-arching plot much easier and gave defined objectives to each book. Those objectives, in turn, helped me define the seven individual plots. Once I knew the plot — could sum it up in a sentence or two — the steps needed to reach the goal became much clearer. And the clearer the goals, the easier the writing.

Of course, this series has also been percolating for over three years. We’ll see how long it takes me to write.

I know that not all the series in my head will use the same method, but it seems to be working so far for this one! If any of you have run across good resources for writing a series, I’d love to hear about them.