Process for writing a series

[Eric]

I know we have a lot of folks in our group who are writing one or more series. How is your process different writing the series versus writing a standalone story? Do you break out several stories in advance, and how do you break them? What are the challenges that you run into?

I'm currently working on Maloch, my followup to Ring of Destiny. I knew what the story for Maloch would be before I finished ROD, but I didn't set to breaking it out until after ROD was published. Now I'm toying with the idea of breaking my series the way a tv show is broken, which is several stories fully worked out in advance. I'm really curious how other folks are handling their series, what works for them, etc.

[Christopher]

I began my series without thinking it carefully through. Big mistake. After about 100 pages in, I stopped and had to regroup. I ended up creating the equivalent of a Gannt Chart to map out subplots, character progressions, themes, etc. In addition, I wrote about 100 pages of backstory/history that never really showed up in the final product itself; however, I needed that backstory to keep me oriented properly as I progressed through the series. If you will, it served as a rather substantial compass.

Even with all that prepping, though, when I was done with the series (3 books), I had to spend a great deal of time working in reverse and carefully adjusting threads. Extremely time-consuming. My hat is off to anyone who can sustain a lengthy series and still keep everything internally consistent.

Due to my experience, I'm pretty hard-core in advising that writers seriously consider finishing the entire series before publishing. I've seen a lot of first and second books go out that hang together, but then the third book comes out after the fact and goes off the rails.

Best of luck with your series, Eric.

[Mary]

I tried to be smart about starting my series for exactly the reasons Eric cites; I made the relationship charts and even made a character notebook with cut-out pictures. I 'finished' three books and began CreateSpace publishing.

The only thing I would add to Eric's advice is to leave off the series and do something else for a while. Once I got the story out of my head I could read it more objectively and found inconsistencies, dropped words, and worse, characters acting out of character in the earliest book. For example, a couple of characters developed a certain way of speaking, a way they used their words that showed their individuality - the first book did not follow the patterns.

No matter how good the planning, those characters will pick up their own ideas and traits along the way. The differences between books three and four are few, but book one needed to show the roots of character that branched out later. I also overdid the backstory and have now cut out most of the first chapter since enough detail comes out later. I'm having to pull book one and issue a revision because I was over-eager to publish.

My next series will get the charts and pictures too, but none will get published until they are all done and I've had a chance to take a vacation from them, come back and do the final edit.

[Don]

Try shifting time frames if you get stuck. My series has a jump of 16 years between books 2 and 3, which allowed me to start focusing on a second generation of characters while still writing about the original group in a support role. I didn't quite map out my series until I got to the most recent books, mainly because I needed to keep track of dates and time frames (they're written as journals with time stamps).

Be ready for surprises as well. Not everything you think is going to go into the series will go in, and other things you don't think of will come to you: for instance, in my series there is a weapon attached to a bloodline which allows its bearer to call upon a paladin, and it has an evil counterpart; when I was planning out the remainder of the series, a third, even more powerful sword made itself available, so now it's going to be a pivotal McGuffin to the conclusion of the series.

[Eric]

Nice idea about time jumping, Don!

I have another book that I can work on whenever I feel the series overwhelming. I've noticed that I can separate quicker by focusing on a different writing project.

[Jeffrey, Lentarian Fire Thrower]

It's not a bad idea. Now that my series is over, I'm getting tons of people asking me if a fourth will ever be released.

While there isn't a fourth Bakkian Chronicles planned, there are other books planned for that setting. One of them jumps several hundred years into the past. Should be fun!

[Thaddeus]

I'm not writing one right now, but will after my next book. I really enjoyed Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria Revelations, which is a six-part series, and in the back of the books he states that he wrote the entire plot at once. I think this really helps, as the characters and plotlines are tightly integrated.

So, as someone who is rather rubbish at continuity, I'm going to do the same. I won't detail absolutely everything, but the central plotlines and main characters will have their entire course from book 1 to 3 planned out before I start on draft 1 of book 1.

I'm also probably going to include a list of characters, which I didn't for Bane of Souls and won't for Journey to Altmortis (my WIP). This may be handy for readers, especially books 2 and 3.

[Eric]

My current series is only semi-serialized, so I don't have to track much in the way of continuity.
I'm thinking of doing a fantasy serial, in the fashion of Yesterday's Gone.

[Thaddeus]

Hmm. Not read Yesterday's Gone. Sounds like a series of stories occurring in the same world, but not necessarily directly linked (like Joe Abercrombie's stand-alone books).

That does seem like a good alternative to the traditional series (and is what I'm doing with Journey to Altmortis, the book after Bane of Souls). Saves the author needing to recreate a whole new world or try and keep a series' storyline consistent, and gives the reader familiarity for both the world and some characters.

[Eric]

Yesterday's Gone is a fully serialized story. There are multiple POV's spread throughout the world, but they are all dealing with the same mystery. Their paths cross at various times.
Each episode is 15-20K words, and they release in sets of 6, followed by an omnibus shortly thereafter.

The writers are Sean Platt and David Wright, and they also do the Self Publishing Podcast (link below). If you're interested, these guys talk a lot about process and marketing, and they are publishing titles at a monstrous rate.

[Will]

I've got two series , but I'm careful to make each individual book a stand alone. It makes things easier for me, and opens the readers' choice a little as they don't have to buy anything in a set order.

[Thaddeus]

Cheers for the reply, Eric. It sounds like an interesting but complicated writing style. I'll have a look for it.

Hey Will, I think that's a very good point. Sometimes books in a series can seem less like stories in their own right than tying up loose ends from a previous book and/or setting up the premise of the next one.

[Just had a look to see your books and must disagree heartily with the idea that the Lake District is anything other than a lovely place to go on holiday].

[Will]

Actually, the Lake District is one of my fave places on earth, and I'm planning to move there in around 2 years time.

Another point is that if you write the books as stand alones, it allows you to change focus, develop different characters, and stay fresh whilst writing.

[Walter]

I know we have a lot of folks in our group who are writing one or more series. How is your process different writing the series versus writing a standalone story?

I think this depends on what kind of series, speaking technically, one is writing. There are multiple ways of handling a series. One would be like Tolkien's classic, The Lord of the Rings, where the writer is telling an episodic tale which is simply too large to fit into one single book (George R. R. Martin's series, A Song of Ice and Fire would be another example).

Then you have series where each book tells a self-contained story. There might (and usually will be) continuing threads based not only on the main but on ancillary characters, but overall each book tells a complete story. (I've only begun it, but I get the impression that Jim Butcher's series, The Dresden Files, would fall into this category.)

For my own series, The Breed Wars (which begins with House of Shadows), I wanted to double up, with each novel telling a self-contained story while a larger tale occupies the background. My own reason for this take is that I did not want to cheat the reader by ending a given novel with 'To Be Continued', but I also wanted to tell another story on a grander scale, one spread out over time, rewarding the reader with the promise of things to come.

Since I've only the first book in print so far (I'm currently working on the second in the series, The Secret Room), only time will tell how well I succeed in this. :)

[Eric]

Walter, I am doing something similar with my current series (self contained stories with a larger, background tale being told over several books).

I am fascinated with the rise of the serial, though. Amazon's serial brand is aimed at duplicating how books were serialized in the days of Dickens, but I see a different breed of serialization taking shape that is closer to comic book and television storytelling than to the current Kindle model.

The new model, exemplified by Yesterday's Gone, is continuous storytelling in a perpetually evolving world, where storylines come and go through the life of the series (which could be endless, assuming the writers can continue to manufacture relevant and interesting storylines).
The success of Yesterday's Gone (there are others, too), seems to indicate that ebook readers are opening up to a new reading experience. Until now, the ebook experience has been modelled on the print-book experience, but I think that is changing.

[Susan]

I think it depends on how complex the overall story is. Plus, like Walter mentioned, if each book is a story in itself, it doesn't require making lists and diagrams to keep track. But, if the entire series is telling an overall story, it requires making lists just to keep tract. My series, Dark Deception, is less complex and I'm able to keep tract of all the characters and events in my mind without having to write down anything while I write the books (I'm working on the second one now). Plus, the main character is different in each one and some of the events in the story are based loosley on true events.

Plus, I think everyone is different too when it comes to methods of writing in general. I suppose it depends on quite a lot. I just write and somehow, by the end of it, the story comes together. I even surprise myself with some of the things that happen. I'll write something and at the end of the chapter I sit back and say, "Wow. I didn't see that coming." lol.

[Walter]

I'll write something and at the end of the chapter I sit back and say, "Wow. I didn't see that coming." lol.

That happens to me all the time. :)

I recall reading something once about the truly great chess players. Most folks think these grandmasters think 10-15 moves ahead, but a former world chamption said to his interviewer that he only thought a couple of moves ahead on average. He just 'knew' what the right moves were to make.

I touched a bit on this concept in an article I wrote for my blog, "The Sexing of Baby Chicks and How to Write More Better", the inspiration for which I drew from neurosurgeon David Eagleman's book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.

Any curious souls can find the article at my blog, located at http://sloggingtowardsbethlehem.blogs....