McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Question on Plotting out epic scale book series
meg_evonne:
Some really great suggestions here and i agree with all of them. My question might be to ask about your reader contract, or what you are promising the reader in your first book. Is it similar to Book II, III, etc? How are you going to handle the POV?
But here's another one. You've got massive stuff here already, is it time to start writing? I'd break off a chunk that you especially like and start living in the world. I'll be excited to hear how you decide to move forward. I understand that JB knows where his series is going and what happens, but not necessarily how he's going to get Harry out of his various conflicts. LOL As you work with the characters, you might find that not all the characters need to have their back story told. You might find that for some you can use mini-flash backs etc.
It sounds like your world is set... time to play, huh? Enjoy the ride! It sounds like a fun one!
kingaling:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on June 07, 2009, 03:15:07 AM ---Some really great suggestions here and i agree with all of them. My question might be to ask about your reader contract, or what you are promising the reader in your first book. Is it similar to Book II, III, etc? How are you going to handle the POV?
But here's another one. You've got massive stuff here already, is it time to start writing? I'd break off a chunk that you especially like and start living in the world. I'll be excited to hear how you decide to move forward. I understand that JB knows where his series is going and what happens, but not necessarily how he's going to get Harry out of his various conflicts. LOL As you work with the characters, you might find that not all the characters need to have their back story told. You might find that for some you can use mini-flash backs etc.
It sounds like your world is set... time to play, huh? Enjoy the ride! It sounds like a fun one!
--- End quote ---
The POV for the first three stories will be third person. They are each very similar in terms of storytelling and style and only differentiating in scale (IE getting bigger and bigger).
The 4 books after that is a very unique POV that we've devloped called First Person Third Person Omniscient (FPTPO) in short, the stories being told from someone elses point of view (someone who can see all and knows more than them) but it's so focused on them that sometimes it's like the narrator isn't a real person. We can hear inside their individual heads, or their collective mind that they eventually develop.
IT IS nearing the writing stage, we just need a few more extreme details before we get to writing. But we were hoping to have ALL the information on them before we get to writing, as everything has to have a reason and purpose and can't just be half assed and awesome for no reason. LITERALLY everything they do, every movement they make HAS an effect on something later. It's huge.
Interestingly enough the backstories have such a profound rippling effect on the entire series that to not tell it first would be irresponsible. Within their stories there will be flashbacks to past events, past lives etc. (none of the characters are on their first life)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: kingaling on June 07, 2009, 12:27:27 AM ---BUT I'm still finding it difficult just plotting it out. Trying to find a simpler way of compiling the information to stretch ACROSS the 7 stories. Does anyone have any advice, or perhaps a mutated version of the usual plotting norms?
--- End quote ---
If you could make it work, it would be excellent.
My thoughts here, as someone most of the way through something 500kwords long myself, is a variant on Jim's notion of Big Middle, which to my mind makes sense for a book the length of Storm Front. Identify your key points, your big scenes that represent major plot turning points; in a seven-large-book story I think you want two or three per book. Figure out what they are and how they relate to and echo off each other. Figure out what the movements between them are and how they echo off each other. (In the sense that, say, Harry defending Molly in PG echoes off his experience of his own trial at age siixteen, or that Harry being the intolerant Warden and prejudiced against Helen Beckitt in WN echoes against Morgan being the intolerant Warden and prejudiced against Harry in SF, or how Harry getting to Elaine in time to warn her about the Skavis echoes off how Harry feels about not having been able to save Elaine when he was sixteen). The clearer you get the internal connections and the more soild they are, the better the book will hold together.
The other thought I would offer is; don't lose control. Don't wander off down side stories and details about insignificant characters; be clear on where your point of focus is and stick with it.
meg_evonne:
--- Quote from: neurovore on June 08, 2009, 04:24:34 PM ---If you could make it work, it would be excellent.
My thoughts here, as someone most of the way through something 500kwords long myself, is a variant on Jim's notion of Big Middle, which to my mind makes sense for a book the length of Storm Front. Identify your key points, your big scenes that represent major plot turning points; in a seven-large-book story I think you want two or three per book. Figure out what they are and how they relate to and echo off each other. Figure out what the movements between them are and how they echo off each other. (In the sense that, say, Harry defending Molly in PG echoes off his experience of his own trial at age siixteen, or that Harry being the intolerant Warden and prejudiced against Helen Beckitt in WN echoes against Morgan being the intolerant Warden and prejudiced against Harry in SF, or how Harry getting to Elaine in time to warn her about the Skavis echoes off how Harry feels about not having been able to save Elaine when he was sixteen). The clearer you get the internal connections and the more soild they are, the better the book will hold together.
The other thought I would offer is; don't lose control. Don't wander off down side stories and details about insignificant characters; be clear on where your point of focus is and stick with it.
--- End quote ---
Thank you Neurovore for chiming in. I always find your suggestions not only useful, but as I work through things, I realize how crucial they are. You helped me out with a really complicated POV once and sent me a long posting, which I printed (as I did this one!).
Interested in your First Person Third Person Omniscient and find it intriguing! So one of my favorite books that is sort of similar to this is from Konisburg's "From the Mixed Up Files..." only there the narrator turns out to be a pivotal character in the final growth of the young protagonist. I seriously want to takle a project that uses that approach so much, and considered it for the recent YA. The idea was exciting to members of my class, but I couldn't get it to work, because the narrator was simply not that important to the over all series story arc. So i kept mine to Intimate Third Person (Neurovore's suggestion). Her suggestion was for a different work, but I finally got to use it in the YA.
Question/Concern: So the reader is enjoying your books in the first person POV, then does 'something' happen to cause the switch? The impact of the plot must change right? I suspect you have that one already grounded.
But here's a thought that I as a reader might find unsatisfying.... Won't I want to know who this narrator is? You're going to have to give this reporting narrator a personality, won't you? Should I be guessing who the narrator really is and how that narrator character gets involved or eventually interacts with the plot? I think I might find that irritating-especially if the narrator isn't revealed ever or if it's in book 7 or something?
Maybe I mis-understood, maybe you just mean straight Omniscient who can slip into minds left and right without explaination? But your First Person Third Person Omniscient felt more like a character with unusual abilities that can get into those minds. I don't mean that the narrator is making comments on the other characters POV thoughts, but still First Person indicates to me some impact of some sort.
i don't think I'm explaining well at all what I'm asking. Or maybe I am. More please?
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on June 08, 2009, 05:38:05 PM ---Thank you Neurovore for chiming in. I always find your suggestions not only useful, but as I work through things, I realize how crucial they are. You helped me out with a really complicated POV once and sent me a long posting, which I printed (as I did this one!).
--- End quote ---
Honour to be of service, ma'am. *blushes*
--- Quote ---But here's a thought that I as a reader might find unsatisfying.... Won't I want to know who this narrator is? You're going to have to give this reporting narrator a personality, won't you? Should I be guessing who the narrator really is and how that narrator character gets involved or eventually interacts with the plot? I think I might find that irritating-especially if the narrator isn't revealed ever or if it's in book 7 or something?
--- End quote ---
I don't know that "character" is of necessity precisely the right word for what I am thinking here.
There is a form of narrative voice that's fairly standard in nineteenth-century fiction - Trollope, for example, and even more so in Dumas, where the narrative perspective is often translated as "we" either including or directly addressing the reader, stopping to explicitly tell the reader a bit of historical background and kind of self-aware about the location of a narrative camera, as it were. This basically gets broken by Dickens and degenerates ultimately into the modern bestseller quasi-omni, which is not really an omniscient voice at all, just slopping in and out of everyone's heads with no discipline.
I think a narrative voice has character - certainly in Trollope, where it usually has inherent social assumptions that make me want to take it outside and slap it about - but that does not mean that it necessarily is a character, if that distinction is clear.
My experience of trying to do something like this is that it is incredibly damned hard, though that could be because the voice in question is not the most sympathetic in the world, it's supercilious and a bit of a know-all and loves casually dropping bits of information that I then have to figure out context and implications for.
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