Writing a Book Series
So you have a great idea for a book. You start your mind map and find yourself with a few pages full of ideas. You would like to include all of the ideas in the book, but some of the concepts transcend the outline and seem like they could stand-alone. Don’t worry. This only means that your book is just the first installment of a series.
If you’re planning to write a book series, here are three things you should take into consideration.
Continuity
Like any long term project, you want to stay true to your original work. This could be something as simple as a character’s birthday, style and tone, or keeping the same protagonist. Take the Hunger Games for example. Readers fell in love with the protagonist Katniss Everdeen. Could you imagine what would happen if the author changed the protagonist in the later installments? The readership would drop drastically. That’s because the readers have grown to love her, Katniss, throughout the first installment. The emotional investment that was established in the first book would be lost by changing the protagonist. In short, you want some things to stay the same.
Character Growth
As the series progresses you are going to want your characters to grow and change. Like any great book series, the antagonist must evolve along with the journey. This may come in the form of a change in a character’s core beliefs. For example, your protagonist may be an atheist at the beginning of the series, but circumstances may make them believe in a higher power. The second book in the series should really drive this home in the form of behavioral changes and other indications.
It’s going to consume a lot of your time
If writing one book seems like a walk through a desert, imagine writing three books. The dead honest truth is that writing a book does consume a great amount of a writer’s time, time that could be spent doing something else, but it’s what we love to do, so be prepared to sacrifice a huge chunk of time. With that being said, you should plan effectively. The first thing you should do is determine how long each book will be. To save you some trouble, if the first book was a novella don’t make the second book a novel and the third book a super novel. This is frustrating and confusing. Stay consistent with the length.
In conclusion
Writing a book series can be enjoyable if you know what you’re doing. Most authors start out by writing a series when they first publish. This is because the installment books help to increase profits. Two books are better than one.
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