McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

On Writing a Series

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pharis81:
Does anyone have any suggestions on writing a series of novels? How much of my character's past should I reveal in the first book? Should I sandbag some of my characters skills/abilites for later books? What pitfalls might I encounter?

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
How closely connected do you intend the series to be, is the first question I'd ask ?  If your potential reader finds volume 2 in a second-hand bookshop years from now, how much will they need to have volume 1 first ?  There are series where the individual volumes are pretty stand-alone, and there are ones that are like one big novel with several annoying extra sheets of cardboard inserted every hundred thousand words or whatever, and they are very different things.

pharis81:
I'm going to write it more or less like a sit-com. The individual books will stand on their own, but references will be made to events from past books. What I'm trying to do now is decide whether I want the overall arc of the series to be character-driven or plot-driven. Right now I'm leaning towards character-driven. Kind of like the Fletch series by Gregory McDonald.

Josh:
A couple things.

First, if you're planning to write a series, I'd say to not kill yourself over putting all sorts of background and history into each book. Not even the first one. For one thing, your character is going to change. Writing a story does that. You change a lot of things as you go, people die, others are introduced. So trying to force a pre-set background into the story is going to give it a more static feel. Sure, it's great to have a lot of those ideas and outlined info to springboard off of, but keep it flexible.

And don't plan out too far ahead. It's great to have ideas, but until you've actually finished the first draft of that first book, nothing is there. If you focus too much on the legacy of writing a series just for the sake of it being a series, then you may try too hard to make it all complicated and plot-thready, confusing readers by the hints and background secrets you drop along for some event you're planning for the fifth book. Write it one book at a time, and you'll be surprised how it evolves.

Characters grow. That's one of the big things a story should do, is change a character. Make them smarter, or wiser, stronger, or having gone through some transformation. When I have approached projects that I thought had potential for more than one book, I focused on the first book, but at the same time just kept different files or papers where I would at least jot down ideas for future reference. Then, after I finished the first draft, I was better able to understand how some of those elements might tie in together, and how the next story could be even deeper than the first.

blgarver:
Whatever you do, don't wait 20 years to write a sequel.   i.e.  The Dark Tower

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