Hello, writers. I’ve just sent Jinx 2 to copyediting, the last part of the writer’s job before the ARCs (advance reader copies) are published. (There’s proofreading after that, but the ARCs are done before the proofreading. In fact, ARCs usually say “Uncorrected Proof” on the cover.) And I’m about to start on Jinx 3, so it seems like a good time to mumble out a few more observations about writing a series.
When you write book 2…
1. By the time you write book 2, chances are you’ve read book 1 hundreds of times. You know your characters pretty well. Hopefully they grew and changed in book 1… or at least the protagonist did. Ideally (except in the case of some private-eye type detective series, I guess) the characters need to continue growing and changing in book 2.
2. You’re no longer revealing your world as a new place, nor your returning characters as new people. But you have to issue a few reminders. These have to be both thorough—for the reader who has taken several years off between book one and two—and deft, for the reader who takes the whole series out of the library in a stack.
JK Rowling is good at this:
Nevertheless, it was quite galling to be told not to be rash by a man who had served twelve years in the wizard prison, Azkaban, escaped, attempted to commit the murder he had been convicted for in the first place, then gone on the run with a stolen Hippogriff.
--Order of the Phoenix
That brings Sirius neatly back into the reader’s mind, without slowing down the story and annoying people.
When you write book 3…
I’ve been given to understand by various industry professionals that contracts for a many-book series are a thing of the past. This may be specific to children’s fantasy, I don’t know, but it’s my impression publishers nowadays prefer to contract for a trilogy, max. That means book 3 has to deliver a satisfying ending to the story that began in book 1.
What I’ve learned from writing book 3 so far—and at this point the book is still just color-coded index cards on the wall—is that one can find oneself with quite a few
guns on the wall. And in book 3, all of those guns will have to be fired off. At somebody, into the air, or they can malfunction and explode, but they have to be fired off.
So it’s necessary to read through the first two books and find all the guns. Make a list of them. Then look over your plan for book 3 and identify where those particular guns will do their gunning. (NB—I’m not wild about this metaphor, Dr. Chekhov. It’s not working for me.) If there’re any guns that fail to shoot, you’re going to have to keep reworking your plan until you find a way for them to do it.
I guess a better way to say it is that you need to find the loose ends from the earlier books and make sure you get them all tied off.
After all, it’s too late to revise the earlier books.
In most cases..
Tonight’s challenge:
Though there are probably some exceptions, as a general rule your protagonist must grow, and must change.
Remember the callow youth?
A callow youth (male or female) is the Chosen One who must obtain the sacred jewel of Togwogmagog in order to save the kingdom.
The callow youth and his/her stout companion have just obtained the purple Onion of Othmar, which they hope to use to bribe the Dread Least Grebe to reveal the whereabouts of the Jewel of Togwogmagog. Froop has advised them to approach the Grebe obsequiously, because grebes are into that. So now:
Give us a scene, and make it a moment where the callow youth changes. S/he gains some new insight and applies it, has an experience that makes him/her more empathetic… something.
Try to limit it to 100 words.
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