Seriously, Series

One of the traps or pitfalls of writing a trilogy – or a triptych, or whatever term you want to use – is that the second book can be a long second act to get you from book one to book three, which borrows all of its energy from the first book.
— Justin Cronin

There is one final point, the point that separates a true multivolume work from a short story, a novel, or a series. The ending of the final volume should leave the reader with the feeling that he has gone through the defining circumstances of Main Character's life. The leading character in a series can wander off into another book and a new adventure better even than this one. Main Character cannot, at the end of your multivolume work. (Or at least, it should seem so.) His life may continue, and in most cases it will. He may or may not live happily ever after. But the problems he will face in the future will not be as important to him or to us, nor the summers as golden.
― Gene Wolfe

In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistences.
— L. Sprague de Camp

This is really frustrating. I know there are some great quotes out there about writing a book series, but I could only find a couple of them.

With the release of the third, and final, book in my Moonstone Chronicles series, I find myself wanting to go back and change things. Does this ever happen to you? If not, then you probably have a better handle on writing a series than I do.

I knew, from the beginning, that this was going to be a trilogy. In fact, I had planned it to be an Ennealogy, which is a nine-book series. There were going to be three written about Jessica’s father, as well as six written about . . . what comes after, I guess. I never really thought it out that well.

I made lots of notes, but the notes consisted mainly of character sketches. I wrote the same (short) twelve chapters over and over again, never really going anywhere because I had no idea where I was going.

And that, right there, was part of the problem. Being a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their pants), I didn’t take the time to think it through. I just went off willy nilly and sent Jessica off on her adventures.

My Elemental series is suffering from the same problems, only more so (I think). It’s not just because I’m a perfectionist that I want to go back and change things, it’s that I see some serious flaws in this series too. I wrote An Elemental Wind on a whim. It wasn’t until I finished it and it was released that I thought, “Oh, this was kind of fun. And you know, there are three more elements I can write about.”

I was about half way through the second book when I figured out the connection between it, and the first one. And then it was during the fourth one that I figured out a way to tie them all together. Trust me, this is not the way to go about doing a series.

As a die-hard pantser it pains me to admit this, but pantsing is not the way to go if you’re planning to write a series. You at least need to have some kind of an idea what the end game will be so that your stories can consistently move towards that end.

In this respect, the Moonstone Chronicles were somewhat easier to write than the Elemental series, because I knew what the end game was. But the Elemental series . . . if I had known ahead of time that this was going to be a multi-volume series, I could have found my purpose right from the beginning and there are things I could have included that would make my reader’s sit up and say, “Oh, so that’s why that happened in the first book. Cool!”

So in other words, my friends. If you’re contemplating writing a multi-volume series, don’t do it the way I did. In fact, maybe next week I’ll explore how you should do it.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

Wednesday I released my seventh book into the world, Magical Mayhem finishing my Moonstone Chronicles trilogy. It had been about five years since my last book release, and since things refuse to remain static, the process has changed somewhat. So uploading my book I was nervous, and in a rush, and so you might notice it doesn’t quite match the way the other two appear on Amazon. I’m sure it's something I can go back and fix, but I need a breather first.

I did the first 53,000 words (a little less than half the total word count) of Magical Mayham, formerly titled Wandering Wizards, for my 2013 NaNo. But I was still working on the second book of the trilogy, Lucky Dog, at the time and it’s kind of hard to move forward on a book when you don’t know what happened before.

I was in a weird frame of mind for most of the week. One of those times where I seem kind of removed (mentally speaking) from what’s going on around me. It happens some times, and I think it’s usually brought on by an abundance of grey weather.

I had a lot of stuff I was hoping to accomplish, both writing and otherwise, but none of it got done. It happens, and I’m not going to beat myself up about it because I’m sure it’ll happen again. All I can do is move forward and hope I do better in the week ahead.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1907+234+989=3,130
DOWN 378 words from last week

Goals For Next Week:
Get my blog posts done early.

EDITING:
0 pages
Nope. No editing. Didn’t even look for a copy of Elemental Spirit.

Goal For Next Week:
Start work on An Elemental Spirit.

MARKETING:
Okay. Marketing is officially back on the table. And I don’t just mean submitting new stuff, it also means promoting current stuff. Wednesday saw the launch of my seventh book, plus I have stories included in four anthologies.

I received an email recently, inviting me to participate in a new website geared to promoting books and reading. There’s a rather long, complicated form to fill out, but I have until January 15th to do so.

The other thing I was thinking about was creating an author’s page on Amazon. I have no idea how to go about this, but it’s something to think about.

TECH & TRAINING:
I had a dream the other night that there was a fire in my house, and I only had time to grab the kittens and get out. All my files, computers, and USB sticks were lost, which meant my life’s accumulation of writing was lost. It gives me new incentive to start backing up to Dropbox.

Goal For Next Week:
Start backing up files to Dropbox. Set up external hard drive.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I do simultaneous poetry posts on both blogs on Wednesdays, but this past Wednesday I delayed the one over here until noon because I ran a post about my book launch earlier. But the poetry post was a new one, the Chazz Effect form, which wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

Goal For Next Week:
Share a new poetry form.

CRAFTING:
When I arranged for the granddaughter to come over to do crafts with me, I did not expect to have to repair a bunch of the ones her mother and I had made previously. So that left us a little short of time for our own crafts. But we managed to do half a dozen snowmen and several penguins for their Christmas tree. Her penguins were uniquely her own. :-)

Today we’re going to try snowflakes out of pasta, and maybe pasta angels. And maybe I’ll even remember to take a picture this time.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep going on the Christmas crafts for gifting.

WHAT I’M READING:
I finished reading The Cabin in the Woods, by Sarah Alderson. Then I read Juniper Wiles and the Ghost Girls, by Charles de Lint, and My Killer Vacation by Tessa Bailey.

Goal For Next Week:
Maybe slow down the reading a bit.

GOAL REVIEW:

Well, I missed Monday’s post completely, but I did the others, plus there was a bonus post on Wednesday for the release of Magical Mayhem. But I didn’t count it in my wordage report because most of it was a rather lengthy quote from the book itself.

No editing – no surprise there. See, this is where it would be handy if I had everything stored in Dropbox, then I wouldn’t have to keep switching back and forth between computers, or USB sticks or whatever.

Marketing and Tech were more thought than action, but hope springs eternal that they’ll see more action in the week ahead. But I did manage to do a poetry post with a brand new form, so there’s that.

The granddaughter and I did do some Christmas crafts last weekend, and we’ll be doing more later today. I really wish I’d taken a picture of them, especially her penguins. She opted for evil penguins, so they all have red eyes. What a kid!

Did I say this past week was supposed to be less stressful? Boy was I wrong. Any week that includes an abundance of shopping (Christmas shopping) is bound to be stressful. Add to that we’re on death watch for the mother-in-law . . . unless she rallies, which happened the last time we were on death watch for her.

To be honest, I don’t see the week ahead being much less stressful, or productive, it being the time of year it is. But I guess we’ll see.