Novel Series
Writing a novel series? Here are some valuable tips on planning and executing your series, as well as how to pitch it to publishers.
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Transcript for Novel Series Video
This is Mary Kole with Good Story Company. Here I am today to talk about novel series. Now, this is a huge topic and I can only sort of glance off of it in this video. But I hope I will have some interesting insights for you, some interesting food for thought.
So, ideally, you will write a manuscript that wraps up more or less in one installment. Your initial manuscript will resolve 85% of the way. And you will leave open, you know, maybe 10%, 15% of the story for potential follow-up in a series. This advice goes out the window if you're self-publishing. You may want to end on a cliffhanger because then, the reader will be enticed to buy your next book and your next book. You may even want to chop one 90,000-word manuscript into three 30,000-word manuscripts that end on crucial tension points so that you can sell 3 e-books instead of just 1. But that is for our indie publishing people.
If you are looking at the traditional publishing world and wanting to be a part of it with a series, I would say we really don't want a cliffhanger. We don't want this just sort of dropping off in the middle because readers have spent $20 on your hardcover book. They really got invested in the story over the last eight hours of reading and to leave them in the lurch would be a little bit rude. So, we're resolving most of the story, sort of the main plot can come down for a nice and easy landing. But you can keep tension going with a planned series, at least something unresolved, something about the character's future, something about, maybe the character didn't get everything that they wanted, maybe there's still an emotional conflict that they're still dealing with. How do we sort of make that world and make that character carry through to something with serious potential if that opportunity presents itself?
Now, I say that, very deliberately, because it's not guaranteed that you will get a series in the traditional publishing world, unless you very clearly say, "This needs to be a trilogy. I have the next two books written, you know, that cannot function as a standalone." That puts you in a little bit of a weaker position because a publisher may say, especially if your debut, "You're an unknown. We don't really want to do invest in a series at this time." And you may not get a series under contract right off the bat.
You would be in a power position if you sold one book on a one-book contract, and then the publisher came to you and said, "This is selling like hotcakes. We have all sorts of reader engagement and people are demanding a series. We want to buy a series from you, turn it into a series." Then you're in a power position because the publisher is asking you for more books, rather than you begging the publisher to give you a duology, give you a trilogy, because you require that to finish out your series. So, I maintain that the strongest position that you could be in is having a story with series potential that could wrap up or could continue into a series. So think about that when you're sort of planning when to end and whether or not you could see the story continuing for more books.
Now, how do we continue a story into a series? This is a huge question and is entirely dependent on the story that you have, the characters you have, the kind of world-building you've done, the plot you have. But I will say, for example, if the main conflict wraps up, we need an even bigger conflict and, ideally, a different conflict for the second book, the third book. Ideally, each one is sort of an escalating jump to another plateau, a bigger conflict, higher stakes for the character. Let's say they end up with Prince Charming at the end of book 1. Well, in book 2, let's take him away. Let's threaten him. If they end up saving the world, maybe something comes along that's bigger and worse that threatens the world in the second book. If they repair society, society falls apart. Or if society is falling apart in the first book, maybe a new regime can come and, you know, tantalize society but there's a huge, dark side to it in book 2. So I like reversals for series. If something ends one way, subvert it, or change it, or turn it on its ear for the sequel. If the character gets something that they want, find a way to either sacrifice that or to turn it into something that they didn't want in the first place for the second book.
You want to be careful though about changing the type of book that it is. So, for example, in "The Hunger Games" obviously, really went well so she was able to pull this off. But we start with this premise, this broken society. We start with this premise of these really violent games that they're all engrossed in. Everybody dies except one person. That's sort of the premise. That's the first book. By the end of the series, the character of Katniss has become this rebellion leader. The conflict is huge. It's so much more about society, and politics, and the interplay of all the different factions that we're dealing with. So it has become less of just a straight-up thriller and more of a political thriller. This has happened gradually, and the society aspect was very strong in the first book. It just ended up much stronger as the series continued. But if you were to suddenly make your book a political thriller when the world-building and the society were not a huge part of the first book or the second book, that is something to watch out for because your readers will be used to wanting to read about XYZ. Don't serve them ABC, a complete departure from the beginning of the series later in the series, especially between book 1 and book 2. Ideally, you kind of stick to similar worlds, similar tones, similar genre, or category. It's not unheard of to sort of make a gradual shift, but it's something to keep in mind because if I'm not a dystopian reader, and your series is gonna go heavily dystopian when books 1 and 2 weren't really, you may disenfranchise them of your readers that way.
Another thing to keep in mind is age, especially when we're talking about children's books. So if you start a middle-grade series, you don't want to age the character that much because they'll be YA aged by the time you end the series. This could be a really big problem, so you have to consider how much time you bite off in each chunk of your planned series. That's something that you can easily get ahead of via outlining it.
Another thing that I would consider about a series is how dark you wanna get, the tone. Now, "Harry Potter," of course, is the example of starting off in middle grade, a lighter tone. You end up YA, darker, YA, or even adults because the characters are adults at the very end. Again, we could do this because it was "Harry Potter." But if you're planning a series, I would say keep the characters aged in the same category if you're writing children's books. Keep it all middle grade. Keep it all YA so that you can avoid some of the potential problems of jumping from one audience to another. Keep it all in the same category and then think about how you can escalate the character, what the character wants, what the character needs, what they get, and the sacrifices that they have to make and also, how do we sort of make the world bigger, make the conflict bigger, but sort of keep it cohesive with the first book.
Usually, we hear that the first book was so good, and then the series sort of fell off the map, and readers don't like it as much. With a series, you really have to think about your readers' experience and your readers' expectations. Now, I know a lot of people aren't gonna be huge fans of writing to expectations and I don't think that you should necessarily write to expectations, but keep in mind that for a series, characters become beloved. Readers naturally gain expectations the longer they spend with your series and with your characters, so that's just something to keep in mind. Is this going to be a natural extension of the first story, of the second story, of the third story or is it going to be a big departure? And if there is a big departure, there needs to be a really, really strong reason for making it.
Food for thought on novel series from Mary Kole and Good Story Company. Here's to a good story.
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