Changing a series

One of the most difficult things about being a writer of a series is when you have this revelatory moment (usually in book 2 or 3 of the series) about what the series is REALLY about. And then you have this problem because you’ve already published book 1. You’ve set up the rules. You’ve set up all the characters. The world. The magic system. Everything.

And you’ve done it wrong.

Do you know how simultaneously humiliating and infuriating this is?

Well, if you haven’t been stuck in the middle of a series, you probably don’t.

I can hear you saying to yourself that you’ll never be in this situation because you will PLAN things out in advance.

Well, what do I have to say about that?

1—I hate you.
2—You are wrong.

See, we do plan things out. I’m a pantser by nature, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t make notes on a series. I mean, a series is a big thing. You don’t assume you’re going to pants the whole thing. And you’ve spent years working on the first book, playing around with a draft of the next one. Plus I’m not a newbie as a writer.

And this still happens. I swear it will happen to you.

So I don’t really hate you. Come and talk to me when it happens to you and we’ll commiserate.

For you readers out there, I feel sorry for you. I apologize in advance for all writers who change the rules about the world and the magic system in the middle of a series. We try to do it cleverly. We try to pretend that the main character just misunderstood something, and now we’re making it more clear.

Yeah, we knew you were smarter than to be fooled by that, but it was the best we could do. And really, it’s worth it to keep reading the series. Just fill in the blanks yourself. Feel free to write a letter to your author and tell them how they could have bridged the gap better. You can make them feel even worse about their mistakes.

And then go with it. Because the reason you liked the first book? Well, the author is really going to use all that and more for the second one.