We are ambitious people. After all, we are indeed human beings. Writers are especially caught up in their work, designing stories and creating masterpieces. However, if you’re new to writing, don’t start by writing a full series. Here’s why:
My Trip to Writing The Fallen Age Saga
A series is defined as a set of books or stories that come together and somehow relate to one another. I currently have a series underway called The Fallen Age Saga. Now, I’ve been writing stories for over 10 years now. I didn’t start by writing a series. I started with stand-alone novels and stories. However, I quickly realized that having a series in mind would simply overwhelm me at the beginning and that I needed to stick to something small to start.
Once I truly felt comfortable writing novels, I moved on to writing sequels. Then trilogies. Now longer series.
When I had in mind that I was going to write trilogies or more, I always felt in over my head when I was younger. I had so many different stories and plotlines that I began to feel lost with how to tackle them. My first true trilogy was called The Shadow Trilogy and it was inspired by Ancient Egypt. I had written the first two books and started on the third when I felt like I wasn’t happy with the story at all. And then, I dropped it. I dropped the series and let it sit in my Google Drive because I simply didn’t like it.
Then, I tried to write other stories. For some time, I had two trilogies going at once. One of those trilogies expanded to become a dark fantasy series called The Doom Saga. The other became The Soldat Trilogy. After some time, I felt still displeased with my stories.
I then wrote Malware and determined that the best course of action would be to combine the aforementioned series into one called The Fallen Age Saga. It worked out because of the way the plotlines seemed to intersect each other.
I’m not saying that you need to write several trilogies worth of books before you try your hand at a series. What I’m saying is this: Don’t expect your first idea to become your big hit or the one that sticks, so-to-speak.
Expect Failure at First
You may write a series for so long only to drop it later, like I did. Or you may continue to rewrite the same series until it make sense to you.
Look, at the end of the day, I’m not going to tell you not to write a series. However, you need to understand that a series is difficult. It requires intense levels of time, world building, thinking, planning, plotting, and fixing. You can’t just jump headfirst into something without having some sort of idea of what it is that you’re writing.
You also need to really think about what makes your series unique to you. This is why I will always recommend starting out with just novels and not create an entire series from the first time. You will easily find yourself in a hole and you may not be able to wiggle out of it. That’s what kills stories.
Know your Plot
What you want to ensure is that you’re aware of your ideas before jumping into a longer series. You want to know what your beginning, middle, and end will be. You also need to ensure your plot will be engaging over several books. There are a lot of book series out there, but some might not click for some people.
Lord of the Rings had a very compelling plot line that clicked with people. There is a clear beginning, middle, and end to this story and it makes sense in the long run.
When you try to draft a novel, you’ll start to notice the patterns in your own writing and that will allow you to discover what makes your writing unique to you. Therefore, you’ll be able to draft several longer stories that make sense.
Still, I think that when a new writer starts off with a series, they tend to think it’s simple and overlook all the tiny details they have to account for. That’s how plot-holes happen. Always think about your story and if it needs to be longer than one novel. If it does, then limit yourself to thinking about a sequel. Don’t stretch your mind too far from the beginning. This way, you’ll be able to work through the challenges of writing a series.
More from the Writer’s Corner:
- How to Design Planets for your World
- Tech that you Need for your Home Office Right Now (Part 1)
- How to Design Countries for your World
Check out my book today and see how the journey from idea to story began with Malware.