Monday’s post opened the discussion of the multi-book series. Readers of fantasy and sci-fi enjoy reading multiple-book series. They don’t want to let go of the story when they are invested in a character.
Thus, it makes sense to consider whether your story is complex enough to hold up well across a series.
Today, we’re going deeper into planning. A series takes two forms.
- The infinite series of standalone stories. Some feature a particular group of characters, but others might feature a different protagonist. They are all set in a particular world, whether they follow one protagonist or several. The installments may feature different characters and often jump around in that universe’s historical timeline. Think Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series or L.E. Modesitt Jr.’s Recluce
- The finite series – a multi-volume series of books covering one group’s efforts to achieve a single epic goal. Think Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series or Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time
I ended up with my current multi-book series when I was at the 60,000-word point of my first draft. That is the point where I realized the story wouldn’t fit into one 90,000-word book. In fact, it will likely top out at 250,000 words after editing.
Because I am an indie, I need to keep my production costs in mind. The pandemic will end someday and purchasing stock for a book that runs 250,000 words will be excruciating once I begin going to book fairs or signings again. Not only that, the cost of formatting a book that size and having a cover made will break the bank here at Casa del Jasperson.
How do I know this? Experience.
A book that is 135,000 words long costs me $6.80 in its paper form. Purchasing stock for book fairs or signings becomes a worry. Not only that, in its paper form, it must sell through Amazon for not less than $17.99. They set the minimum price based on the options you choose at the time of publication.
So, I panic. It’s tough enough to squeeze all the costs of publishing a book of 90,000 words in length, when you are working with a normal family budget. This is an expensive business.
The best option for me is to write the whole thing and then break the book in half or thirds, creating a series that I will publish a month apart. The costs are the same in the long run, but the size of each book is far more manageable for a reader and spreads production costs over a longer period.
When I arrive at the 50,000-word mark, I go to my outline and see where I am in the projected story arc and timeline. Can I tell this tale in one book? If not, will it work in two?
Then, once I know how many books it will take, I decide what event will be the first finale, a satisfying stopping point for a reader. Even though several threads are left dangling at the end of each installment, the final event of each book must be a real, satisfying finish, or the reader will feel cheated.
If you are done with your first draft and are just now realizing your novel could be the beginning of a saga, you should consider making notes as to what the future holds for your crew beyond the end. Otherwise, you may find yourself writing a continuation of book one, but with no goal, no purpose.
I follow several fantasy and sci-fi authors who write sagas, where the story of that world is told from multiple characters’ points of view. Each protagonist lives at different points in time, and each one is unique, detailing watershed events in the history of that world.
I also follow several mystery series featuring the cases solved by one detective. The Richard Jury series by Martha Grimes encompasses 25 books, each one different. Recurring characters in the series include his neighbors in his Islington flat, personnel at his New Scotland Yard office, and friends of his sidekick, Melrose Plant, in the Northamptonshire village of (fictional) Long Piddleton.
If you decide more than one book will be set in that universe, you should consider creating a page in your storyboard that notes the timeline and events for each book. Specifically, note what order each novel takes place in the history of that world. You don’t have to go nuts. Just write a brief description for your use.
So, for a saga you might want to draw up an overall story arc for the entire series. For a standalone book featuring a recurring character, you likely won’t need to have an all-encompassing projected arc.
However, you would be wise to storyboard each book and note the dates of certain events, so you don’t contradict yourself, and so that a protagonist born in 1981 in book one doesn’t accidentally get younger as time goes on.
Next week we will look at creating a calendar for stories set a fictional world. We will look at some of my failures and see why simpler usually is better.
Think about it – the universe contains all we can measure and know, all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all forms of matter and energy. It likes balls and spirals and has a structure that repeats itself. This is reflected in the shape and behavior of the smallest particles to the largest quasars.
First off, no matter our conscious thoughts regarding the universe and God, writers don’t exist in reality. We exist in what we think reality is, and collectively, we create it as we go along, for good or ill.
But if you make a map of what you can see, your own 
As I wrote, the outline for that first book took its shape. The written universe is in constant flux, and the storyboard records the changes and keeps the fabric of time from warping.
Once I have decided the proposed length, I know where the turning points are and what should happen at each. The outline ensures an arc to both the overall story and the characters’ personal growth.
In other words, something we can’t see or measure is out there, shaping our known universe. For lack of a better term, scientists refer to it as “dark matter” and “dark energy.”
Unless your story is set in a school (such as the 
In real life, if a person had the kind of power that our fictional empaths wield, we would hope they were noble, compassionate, and above all, respectful of other people’s wish for privacy. One would want them to be circumspect and never rummage in people’s minds uninvited.
What does healing cost the healer? Does it exhaust them? Does some of the healing magic come from the patient? Do they need to sleep afterward?
Magic should exist as an underlying, invisible layer of your written universe, the way gravity exists in reality. We know gravity works and accept it as a part of daily life.
First, the ability to use magic is either learned through spells, an inherent gift, or both. Your world should establish which kind of path you are taking at the outset.
Consider musicians. A person who wins international piano competitions most likely won’t be a virtuoso at brass instruments.
Like science and magic, superpowers are believable when they are limited in what they can do.
However, we can learn a great deal from books embodying poorly executed plots and badly scripted dialogue.
Structurally, the books in this subseries feel like he knew how to end it but struggled to fill in the arc. Past events and conversations get repeated verbatim to every new character. Long passages of remembering and agonizing over what is done and dusted fluffs up the narrative.
To me, book 21 reads as if (while books 19 and 20 were in the publishing gauntlet) he still had to fluff up the ending to make book 21 long enough to be considered a novel. The evidence of a lack of genuine inspiration is the absurd “scar” the protagonist is left with after winning an unbelievable victory and nearly dying.
Everyone, even your favorite author, writes a stinker now and then. 
It deals with things like the mass of objects, the speed at which they travel, how speed and mass are converted to energy, and how mass warps the fabric of space and time.
But what about “It?” Here, we are dealing with possession by the inanimate. We don’t need an exorcist, although a good maid service would resolve a great deal here at Casa del Jasperson. But in this case, we are referencing something owned by the inanimate:
In the case of number 4, the sentence would be stronger without it. Most of the time, the prose is made stronger when the word “that” is cut and not replaced with anything. I say most, but not all the time.
In the written narrative, the many forms of this verb are what 
“Lay” is a transitive verb that refers to putting something in a horizontal position. At the same time, “lie” is an intransitive verb that refers to being in a flat position.
To lie is an intransitive verb: it shows action, and the subject of the sentence engages in that action, but nothing is being acted upon (the verb has no direct object).
The verb that means “to recline” is “to lie,” not “to lay.” If we are talking about the act of reclining, we use “lie,” not “lay.” “When I have a headache, I lie down.”
All around us, gravity works in hidden ways. Gravity on a small scale keeps everything securely stuck to the surface of Planet Earth.
Creating memorable characters is the goal of all authors. After all, who would read a book with bland and uninteresting dialogue? Dialogue is where most information is given to the characters and the reader. However, when we are just beginning to write, many of us are confused about how to punctuate conversations. It’s not that complicated. Here are four rules to remember:
When you envision your characters in conversation, you must think about what the word natural means. People don’t only use their words to communicate. Bodies and faces tell us a great deal about a person’s mood and what they feel.
For this reason, we don’t want to inject an excess of flushing, smirking, eye-rolling, or shrugging into the story. Those actions have a specific use in conveying the mood, but anything used too frequently becomes a crutch.
We are emotional creatures. When we are just starting on this path, getting an unbiased critique for something you think is the best thing you ever wrote can feel unfair.
I could have embarrassed myself and responded childishly, but that would have been foolish and self-defeating. When I really thought about it, I realized that particular plot twist had been done many times before. I thanked him for his time because I had learned something valuable from that experience.
Treat all your professional contacts with courtesy, no matter how angry you are. Allow yourself some time to cool off. Don’t have a tantrum and immediately respond with an angst-riddled rant.
When you are pantsing it (writing-by-the-seat-of-your-pants), themes are like your drunk uncle. They hang out at the local pub until closing time and then weave their way home through dark alleys. Sometimes, as you are leaving for work in the morning, you find them under the neighbor’s shrubs. Other times they make it home.
I often sit on my back porch and just let my thoughts roam, thinking about nothing in particular. Usually, I will end up considering the character’s quest or dilemma. I ask myself what the root cause of the issue is—if it is a crime, why is crime rampant? Is it a societal problem, such as poverty or war? If the core dilemma is unrequited love, what are the roadblocks to a resolution?
These layers offer us an incredible amount of subliminal information about that surreal world and what is going on in reality, what the Matrix truly is.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 