Series: Is It Done Yet?

 This Week's Topic: Series--How Do I Know When One Has Played Out?

To know when a series has gone stale, it helps to understand what makes a series compelling in the first place. Writing a series that readers want to stay with comes down to two things: a) knowing the series's story arc--which is different from the individual book arcs--before penning the first book, and b) how many books it'll take to tell the series's story. Yes, the author should know from the get-go how many wedges they're trying to carve out of one pie complete tale. Each book serves as a plot point of the series. The series plot often runs as the secondary plot of the book; for the sake of pacing and focus, it never dominates the main plot of the book. The series is done once the overarching story is complete.

For example: A classic story structure is three Acts in one book. Trilogies are three Acts told over three books. One could argue a trilogy is a nine-Act story where the pinch-points are the equivalent of the climaxes of the first two books.

Yes, yes there are popular series for which there is no series story arc. Those series are--for all intents and purposes--stand-alone books (self-contained stories) with a repeating protagonist. There is minimal character and world development from book to book, which allows a reader to jump into the series at any point. 

Now, to the question of the week: How to know when a series has played out? The most obvious one is when the series story is complete...yet it won't end. Instead of writing a new series, the same cast appears on a wholly different quest. This can work quite well--as long as it's clear in the branding-- until the majority of the cast has developed into OPs (Overpowered Players), the stakes have risen beyond the fantastical, and the plots have no place else to go but into the absurd. 

Rattling off TV shows that Jumped the Shark is arguably easier than naming shows that were canceled too soon (aka before the series story was resolved). 

Another way to tell when a series is played out is when books within the series are long tangents that do not support the series story--it's being milked. When done a handful of times (or less) as clearly labeled side-stories, the readers understand those books are fan service (stories written purely for the appreciation of the fans {fan services is often smuttier than the original, too brow waggle}). The readers typically love it as long as the side-stories don't delay the conclusion of the initial series storyline, which is why these stories are best released after the conclusion of the series or as a seasonal/holiday bonus. But when the author tries to trick the reader into buying books unrelated to the series plot, then what an author gets is pissed off fans. 

Series that run-on too long tend to happen because of fear. Fear from the author that they won't be able to reproduce the "magic" that made that series successful. Fear from the publisher (who may also be the author) that their sales will plummet, thus their revenue will plummet, once the series ends. Nobody wants to end a good thing, but even the best cake rots when kept too long. 

On My Mind: The Unpredictability of Creativity

On my mind this week is the unpredictability and inconsistency of creativity. To wit, in time for Halloween, I'll finally release the fifth book in my Immortal Spy series, THE EXPOSED SPY, a full 22 months after I dropped book 4. In the Indie world, a two-year gap is series suicide. 

Ack! 

Couldn't be helped. No really. Fact is, it took me eighteen months to write it. I spent six of those trying to force a story that didn't want to happen. It took months and months of me coming at the plot from different angles to figure out why it wasn't working. Came down to not having the right foundation laid. The characters weren't far enough along in their development to support the plot. It was like I'd tried to skip ahead in the evolution of the series arc. Bad. Bad. No good. I needed to write an entirely different story that would force the characters to grow on-page to cement the foundation of the story that came after it. The story I was failing miserably to write. 

Once I figured that out, I wrote the damn book. It was ready to launch this summer, but I hadn't finished book 6 yet, and I didn't dare risk another two-year gap between releases. Book 6 in stark contrast took me six months to write, which is pretty damn good for me. It's now off with the editors, so I'm feeling fairly comfortable with a January launch date. 

Book 7, the final book in the series, is in the outlining phase. I've known how the series ends since Book 2. Now I just have to make sure the characters I've grown to love have a proper send-off. How long will it take me to write? No clue. Even with an outline, some days (or weeks, ugh) the words don't come. Being unable to predict how long it will take to write a book drives me insane. The inconsistency of ease from book to book is... GAH! 

Still, there's nothing greater than finishing a story and sharing it with the world.  

Meanwhile, here is the cover reveal for THE EXPOSED SPY, courtesy of the team at Gene Mollica Studios, dropping late October.

Those Who Have, Those Who Will

This made me laugh and I needed that. I figured I'd share the wealth.

On to the stuff I'm supposed to be blogging about. You know, there's a saying in boating. There are boaters who have run aground and those who will. I feel like that's the same way with writers writing themselves into trouble. Have I run aground in a boat? Oh yes. More than once. Have I written myself into a corner? Shockingly, not yet. I have no doubt that at some point it's likely that I will - it just hasn't happened yet. I put it down to one of the oddities of my brain. Sure. Migraines all the damn time. But in exchange, continuity issues seem to be a little bit of a weird and mostly useless (unless I'm writing) super power. No one else appreciates being reminded of what they said four years ago. I assure you.

I do have a situation right now in a WIP where I wish I could adjust a timeline. But I can't. So I have to cope. An acting teacher, talking about how to put up a Shakespearean play, commented that it's easier to create within the confines of a set of rules than it is to create in a void. Some days, I agree. Some days, I rebel. But one thing remains. If I write a series, there's a spreadsheet with all of the details I assume I'll need going forward. I'm frequently wrong and I have to go digging through earlier books to find some detail I half remember so I can get it right in the next installment. It goes in the spreadsheet at that point. But that's about the limit of my patience for guaranteeing that I don't write myself into something I can't write myself out of. So far. But. Like I said. There are those who have and those who will. 

On My Mind: Concept Fermentation

On my mind this week is the time an idea needs to stew before it is ready to become a compelling story. It's such an ambiguous yet necessary part of my process that refuses to be predictable or rushed. The most recent books in my Immortal Spy series I attempted to write on a schedule that allowed two weeks for concept fermentation. Two weeks. That should've been enough, right? Plenty of time for pondering and playing what-if. I already had the top-level concepts for all books in the series long before I released the first book.

So why wasn't two weeks enough to hash out a story?

Yet two weeks wasn't even close to enough time. We're talking months before the concepts really blossomed into something that resembled a layered plot that could carry a novel. Thank the Powers That Be that I'm not contractually obligated to deliver a completed book to a publisher on a set date; I'd be royally screwed. I'd be in breach, and I'd be persona non grata in the industry (deservedly so). As it is, I've earned no fair regard from my readers for the delay, which I truly regret.

Just this past week, the fog surrounding the fifth and sixth books finally faded. I'm 85% clear on how the characters will develop, what specific challenges they will fail and what challenges they'll ace, who will bear the brunt of which consequences and how that will manifest. I'm also clear on which tertiary characters will move them from beginning to end and which open threads from the previous books will be resolved as the series approaches the seventh and final book.

I have thirteen (incomplete) versions of the current WiP saved; thirteen versions of a story I tried to force into existence. Thirteen versions that petered out in the second arc because the concept wasn't fully baked. I tried to "write my way to right," to stimulate my imagination to conceive on the fly, to convince myself that what I had was workable, redeemable, fixable in edits, [insert platitude here]. I have months of arguably wasted effort sitting on my hard drive as some sort reassurance that because I wrote something I'm still working, I'm still a writer.

Being the sort of person who likes a plan and who thrives on ticking checkboxes on a list as a means of reinforcing my personal discipline, I find the unpredictability of how long it will take for a concept to fully ferment utterly aggravating. Once the story becomes clear, once I have jotted down all the pertinent points from beginning to end and completed something vaguely resembling an outline, I celebrate. I celebrate more at that moment than I do upon releasing the book.

Yes, I'm aware everybody has their own process, their own schedule, and their own methods of making it to The End. Yes, for this reason and so many others, it's sage advice to not compare your process or yourself to others as means of measuring success in a creative field. Still, I could do without the frustrations of waiting on a concept to fully ferment.

Self vs Trad Publishing: 5 Reasons to Continue a Failing Series

Since Jeffe's post hits all the big differences between traditional and self-publishing, I'm going to focus on one segment of it: Writing a Series

Disclaimer: I'm not traditionally published, I'm not a hybrid. I'm fully in the self-published camp.

In my genre of Fantasy, readers have a Big Thing about series being completed. They get quite peeved when the series doesn't wrap up in a timely manner. Don't get me wrong, some are willing to wait the 18-24 months trad publishing requires to get the next book; hell they'll even forgive a date slip. One slip. But boy, oh boy, oh boy do they get pissed when the series just...stops. There are many who won't start a series until it's completed because they've been burned so often.

From the creative perspective, the author usually knows whether they're writing a series or a standalone. Whether the series is a duology, trilogy, or the neverending story, the author usually has an idea. That idea is not always shared by the publisher.

Thing is, many new-author trad-publisher contracts are for two books. Sink or swim. 30 days (or really a mere two weeks) to show ROI for the publisher. If the books don't sell well out of the gate, there will be no third book. The contract determines whether the author has the right to continue the series on their own. 

Why would an author continue a series that a publisher deemed a bust?

Same reasons a self-published author continues a series that hasn't paid off yet. Here are my Top 5:

1. We love the series. We personally love the world, the characters, the plots. We know where the story is going and can't wait to get there. Books of the heart, as some would call it.
2. We know finding an audience takes time, a lot more time than a publisher is willing to give. It's not uncommon to hear of series that didn't take off for three to five years after release.
3. We control our backlists, so our books never have to go out of "print." We also control our marketing cycles, so we know when to push and when to throttle back. We have our hands on sales and marketing data, so again, we know what to push and when.
4. Our business models aren't built around shelflife. We don't assume that once we lose the endcap at Target, that our sales are done. (Hell, most of us don't get placement in any brick and mortar store ever.) Sure, grabbing the Top 10 slot on Amazon or B&N is amazing, but it's not a business model. It's simply a marker.
5. Our fans demand closure. The last thing we want to do is piss off our loyal readership. We rely on them to come with us from book to book, series to series, genre to genre. We're constantly looking to gain readers, not lose them. The fastest way to lose them is to leave them hanging. 

Now, the theoretical benefit of trad publishing a series is eyeballs and accolades. The risk is getting to finish that series.

Binge Reading, a Bookworm's Approach to Series

Do you remember as a kid finding a book in the library? It looked great, so you checked it out. Then you started reading. It's a hit out of the park. You LOVE this book. You're right in there with the characters, laughing, crying, fighting -- and then the book ends on a cliffhanger. Then and only then do you realize you have a book that's the first in a series.

Heart fluttering, you rush back to the library. There! On the shelf! More titles by the same author. You search frantically. You come up with books three and four and seven.

Right then. Right there. Your innocent little bookworm heart breaks just a little. And you learn. NEVER start a book without 1. first knowing whether it's part of a series and 2. that you can acquire the rest of the series.

Maybe your life was settled and you grew up in some rarified place where books were as important to your family as they are to you. If you did, you could generally be sure that if you developed an addiction to a series that was still being written (as opposed to one already completed) you'd be able to get a hold of the latest in the series when it finally came out. Those of us without such assurance, at the mercy of library systems without our loyalties to long-running series, learned never to start a series until it was finished and all the books in the series were available.

This is the long way of saying I strongly favor writing stand alone books, which is amusing, because everything I have is part of a series or leaves the door open to being a series. Funny how the world turns, isn't it?

As it happens, at the time that Enemy Within sold, series were THE thing. I'd written the book as a stand alone. Straight up, I admit that I did. And then my editor asked if I could make it a series. I was still so afraid someone would take back that publishing contract, I said that of course I could. So I did. Same thing happened with Nightmare Ink, though I wised up before I wrote that one and I planned it out as a series because I could see the handwriting on the wall. Sure enough. That same editor asked for a series treatment. At least this time around, I was ready for it. And now that I'm writing my series, I love them. I don't want to abandon them any more than I wanted to read the first book in a series I'd never find book number two for when I was a kid.

This isn't to say I don't love reading series. I do. And now that I'm an adult with my own book budget AND Amazon Prime, I can do my very favorite thing in the world: Find a series I love and buy the whole damned thing in one go. Because you binge watch GoT if you want. I'll binge read Jeffe's Twelve Kingdoms, thanks.

I desperately wanted a bookwormish sort of photo to give you. I don't have one. But I do have a little green garden frog who was hanging out in the zinnias yesterday. I have yet to ask what his reading preferences are.

Writing a Series vs. a Standalone

This week's topic is apropos for me, as THE SHIFT OF THE TIDE releases on Tuesday!

It's the third book in The Uncharted Realms series. Or the sixth in The Twelve Kingdoms, depending on how you slice these things. For some people these lines are more definitive than they are for me. Our topic is: Working in a series as opposed to working on a standalone book. What are the differences and how much do you plan ahead?

I confess that I've never written a standalone fantasy. The stories all feel too big to me to contain in one book. With a contemporary or erotic romance, I can write a standalone. With a standalone book of that sort, the story is mainly about the couple and how they come together, to change, grow, and find happiness. With fantasy, the arcs are bigger, more politically sweeping.

That said, you all know I don't plan ahead. Much.

Some of it is easy - the big bad must be defeated. Because I'm not George R.R. Martin. *cough* But finding my way to that resolution can be convoluted and full of twists and turns I can't predict ahead of time. I thought I'd maybe resolve the big battle with Deyrr in THE SHIFT OF THE TIDE, but instead the plot thickened and the stakes escalated.

At this point, I think it will take two more books to wrap it all up. THE ARROWS OF THE HEART comes next and will take us most of the way. Then I think I'll need one more.

Interestingly enough, speaking of planning, I'm doing a spinoff trilogy called The Lost Princess Chronicles. Those books will be PRINCESS OF DASNARIA, EXILE OF DASNARIA, and WARRIOR OF DASNARIA. If all goes according to my (hopefully not too optimistic) plan, the event of WARRIOR OF DASNARIA will coincide and interlace with those of the book after ARROWS OF THE HEART.

I actually have a plan! Now to hope it all works out...

Being Told What to Write Next

Nothing annoys me more than being deep in the guts of a story and having a shiny new idea pop up. It never fails. Never. Used to be, I'd succumb to the siren song of the bejeweled new thing. As a result, nothing ever got finished. My unfinished projects file isn't just a graveyard. It's an entire damned ecosystem.

That changed several years ago when I made a vow to finish a thing. To handle the allure of ideas popping in to seduce me away from soldiering on to The End, I instituted a policy: It takes a number, and it stands in line. This meant scribbling down the gist of an idea - just enough to be able to recapture the feel of the story, then filing it. I'd go back to hacking my way through my WIP.

Now, whether its luck of the draw, a lack of marketing acumen, or the alignment of the sun, moon, and stars, I have two abandoned series of two books each that had been contracted by a traditional publishing house that wanted nothing to do with any further books in either series. Well okay. My obligation to produce the rest of those books went up in smoke unless my contracts allow me to self-publish the follow up books in each or either series (combing the fine print on that point, with someone who speaks legalese.) Until that legal determination is made, I can't be sitting on my hands. I want to write.

No problem, though, right? I had an idea file to mine. I read through everything in that file. I weeded through my notes and incomprehensible (that sounded like a solid story idea? WTH?) tidbits of narrative with no future. I picked the one that I knew needed to be written. Big project with possible longevity. Utterly outside my skillset. Which clearly meant it was exactly what I ought to pursue. Planning, plotting, and research undertaken. Completed. Undertaken again. Completed again. Opening scene written.

And then, I'm embarrassed to say, lightning struck. I was totally sideswiped by a character who insisted his story would be told and it would be told NOW.

That's how Damned If He Does happened. I had no intention of writing paranormal romance. None. But when a hot dude walks into your head, takes up residence and refuses to leave, you either need hardcore medication or you need to write as fast as possible and get rid of him that way.

So I guess the answer to the 'how do I decide' question is this: Sometimes I choose and sometimes I am chosen. The last book picked me. No clue why. But it did. When I have the luxury of getting to choose, I pick a story out of my league. One that intrigues me and that can occupy my mind for days. Some day, when I am again under contract, I will giggle at the notion of getting to pick what I write next. But for now, I'm in a privileged position to write what sounds like fun at any given moment.

Rest assured. I've gone back to the big, scary, historical fantasy project. It's on track for a POS draft by 10/31. And yes. I do know what comes after that. NANOing book 3 of the SFR series. Cause that heroine has taken up residence in my brain and she's tapping her foot while waving her number beneath my nose. Apparently, it's her turn.