First off, hello everyone! I'm back It's been way too long since I've been on here. Hope at least some of you still remember me. On to the question. So my WIP is meant to be the first book in a series of potential five novels. I have a pretty good idea of the plot and the direction it's supposed to take, the important bits, the main conflict and the ending. The issue I'm facing now as I progress with my novel and flesh out the story more, is how can I manage to make my novel stand on its own while also serving as a good first book and series opener? On one hand, the novel needs to have a beginning, middle, and end, with enough closure to make it satisfying for the reader. And on the other hand, it needs to set up lots of things for future books and the overall series. Certain overarching plot points and arcs need to be set up and things like that. I want to leave the readers satisfied with the book and its ending but still wanting to read and know more. How do I manage that?
I don't know how you will do it. How I do it ... I thought it was with planning. And then I wrote the stuff below, of what I really did, and yeah, planning is in there, but only in that "no plan survives your first revision" kind of way. My WIP is 5 books, of which 1.6 are currently written. But it used to be 3. Book 1 was supposed to go through the wedding scene. Book 2 would get to the MC finally learning how to fly. Book 3 would be the war that resulted. But too much happened, and at 270K words I'd only gotten through the marriage proposal and morning after. So book 1 got split, and I couldn't just split it because it wouldn't have a satisfying arc then. So I had my foreground-series antagonist decide to get involved earlier than planned. Had to create a reason for that, so I did, and of course it revolved around pastries. Life often does. Resulted in an attempted kidnapping (not the worst thing the antagonist does, even in book 1). But then I realized: certain actions in book 1 would logically provoke my background antagonists to act decisively, way way sooner than planned. And the foreground antagonists actions gave her cover for it. But then THAT led to an even more satisfying arc closure in Book 1, including a major bit of internal growth for my MC. So the original new book 1 arc had it's closure move to the opening of book 2 -- the reader is told it's coming in book 1, but I pushed it back to book 2 because it's a great opportunity to recap book 1 for readers starting in the middle. And as a result everything in book 2 and onward needed to be revamped more or less, because of the arcs that closed too soon. But now I've got a nice thematic sequence for the series (Daughter-Woman-Mother-Warrior-Savior) that I like. And all the while, I'm holding the whole story in my head, as I have for three years, drifting off to sleep thinking about it. The main part of the story spans about 30 years, and lots of characters. It's great fun. Fortunately I have experience managing and authoring large software systems, which involve similar challenges. Sooo, uhhhm, I'm not sure, but does that help ?
You can think of it as a scale problem. The first story is small. A few characters come together over a problem. By book's end the problem is solved, but that means the cast is dragged into a larger problem. Think about how Star Wars only solved the Death Star problem but drew the characters into the Empire problem. The Vader problem gave way to the Emperor problem. Write book one as a fight in a greater war, whatever the actual situation. Win that fight in a satisfying way without scratching the war at all, even though the war is the context for that fight.
Welcome back, @Fernando.C ! You were the first person to welcome me when I joined the Forum, and it's good to see you back! The short answer is, write characters readers are invested in, who make people want to know what happens to them. My favorite example is actually from film: The Thin Man movies. Watch the first two (The Thin Man, After the Thin Man*) and you'll see that each is a completely self-contained unit, but After The Thin Man deftly picks up where the first movie leaves off. After The Thin Man is one of the few times Hollywood got a sequel right, and it's perfectly executed. Yes, they're movies, not books, but the principle of separate stories with a continued storyline for the characters very much applies. People wanted more Nick and Norah and Asta. You can spend hours and hours plotting, but none of that matters if readers don't care about the characters. Make your readers want to follow them. *Being a movie from 1936, After the Thin Man contains a cringe-worthy depiction of Asian characters. Just wanted to give you a heads-up about that.
Well, @Fallow stole my Star Wars answer, but he and @Shenanigator are right. Look to cinema. Hollywood has you covered. They can't put out an opener without a good, stand-alone ending unless it's something as big as Lord of the Rings. They might not make enough money from the first film to warrant a second, so they've supplied us with probably every possible solution to your question, and there are several ways to do it. These are by far the most popular though: "We've won the battle, but the war wages on." (Star Wars/The Matrix/Avatar,) "It's all over, but wait, there's more!" (The Evil Dead 2/Back to the Future/Every movie in the MCU,) and my personal favorite sequel device, because it's by far the thinnest, "We can make as many of these as we want, because we've established no boundaries whatsoever!" (Mad Max/Alien/The Terminator) There are novels that fit each of these formulas (The Hunger Games, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Ender's Game,) but more often, at least in the series I've read, the whole thing seems planned from the beginning with less fear of a flop than in the Hollywood gameplan. In fairness though, I don't read a lot of the ten to twenty volume "swords and orcs" fantasy series. They may have better analogues there. I don't know. A final thought: In the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling set up so many things in the early books that we were blown away by the number of callbacks in the latter books, but the first three are extremely episodic. It's an odd example though, because while the first three have fairly satisfying endings, they're also geared toward a younger audience. They're written as if she had no trust that they would even be read in the proper order, or that a young reader would remember anything at all from the previous volume. I would say that series is a sort of study in how to do exactly what you're planning, but the first parts of the roadmap are drawn in crayon.
This is why I strongly recommend no one write their first novel with aspirations of launching a series. As a new writer, you have a steep enough learning curve as it is without having to balance story arc against series arc. Furthermore, it's not at all uncommon for a first novel to become the only novel. If you write a stand alone novel, you may discover it already contains seeds for a sequel. I wouldn't suggest trying to develop them in the original novel, lest you leave too large a forest of dangling threads. Stick to the original plan, and don't even try to think much about the sequel until you have an accepted, complete first novel in manuscript.
I would agree with this, but if you write the "first" novel with enough context to a larger world, you have everything you need to make a sequel. Plus, the story is likely to be more interesting if it is a smaller problem in a larger one. Star Wars was produced as a likely stand alone, and it would have been just as good a film if it had never gotten a sequel. Same with the book Dune or the Hobbit. It takes so little to have characters and a world remaining at the end of a standalone to expand into a follow on.
This is my plan as well, but since my series is still all mostly theory I want to talk about a series I've been following. Kelley Armstrong has a book series called the Casey Duncan Novels. They are murder mystery. Every book has an immediate murder that needs to be solved. There is also a common long term issue throughout the entire series. It runs as a background issue to the immediate conflict of the book. A long term thing that won't be fixed in one novel. So, simplified... Book One: Murder, Upper Management Issues Introduced Book Two: New Murder, Upper Management Issues are Worst then We Thought Book Three: New New Murder, Upper Management Issue Will be the thing that destroys the community if they aren't stopped Book Four: New New New Murder, Upper Management Issues are becoming detailed. We are getting a more insiders view of it and they have done a very very specific bad thing ....
Hi @Fernando.C ! Glad to see you're still around. I have a duology planned with the second book roughly drafted. Both books are stand alone. They are tied together though the theme, characters and setting. First book the MC grows up in a village and goes to the city. In the second book the new MC is a lot like the other but she's grown up in the city. That allows for lots of parallels.
I guess it depends on who you are, why you're writing, and what you call a series. Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings for publication as a single book, the first of a planned two-volume set including The Silmarillian. His publisher broke LotR into three books. Cordwainer Smith wrote Norstrillia as one book but his publisher broke it into two; fortunately, it was eventually restored to a single book. These works don't qualify as series, in my view. I'm writing a story that doesn't even come close to fitting in one book, so I'm telling it in four or five. I'm adapting the story to that 5-book format, doing my best to make each book an enjoyable stand-alone experience that is enriched by the other books: no end-of-book cliffhangers in my books! And that's what I'm writing, even if it is my first long-form story. Seem to be doing OK at it. But then, I'm just writing for the joy of it, I have no need to make money by writing. I wouldn't mind, though. And I'm old, and have three decades professional experience designing large complex systems (e.g., microprocessors and software). Writing a big complex story is easier than what I used to do for a living, because a minor inconsistency in one chapter of a story doesn't usually propagate to cause issues everywhere else in quite the same way as in complex computer systems. So I'm not the typical first-novel writer, if there is any such thing. And I'm charging onward with my story, 1.6 books written and 3.4 to go. Based on how long it has taken to get to this point, I should be ready to query it in six years.
I think the main thing is that the inner and outer arc of the main character both resolve decisively, with the main action of the story being completed, even if there is a larger problem that goes unresolved. Imagine a WW2 movie that ends with someone escaping France. Just because the war goes on, doesn't mean it was a bad movie. A sequel could take place later in the war.
Thanks everyone for your replies and advice, it's good to be back! I love the idea of writing the book as a fight in a larger war. I'm sort of already doing that, since the villain of book 1 is an underling of the overall series villain. So I just need to flesh out the concept and make the central conflict of book 1 a bit more self-contained. @Shenanigator, you're absolutely right that the characters need to be engaging and interesting for the readers to care and want to continue with the series.
I wrote several series before I had a publishable one. In that I wrote 5 books. https://www.amazon.com/Shaman-Within-Hidden-Novel-Book-ebook/dp/B008P95FN0/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=gary+wedlund&qid=1553795669&s=gateway&sr=8-1 I had my first 3 books follow the storyline of one main character. After that I had a fresh character and her story, running a few years later. In the 4th book, I did that same, with a new character and her complete story, years later. What I went through, with that, is a complete evolution into realizing the amazing power given to the stand-alone within a series. I started out not even thinking about it, and I finished up thinking about it all the time. Here are the problems: 1) Publishers might want to do book one, and maybe book two, and kinda want to do book three, but maybe not book four and probably not book five. For all sorts of reasons, not necessarily quality. 2) If you are serious about your work, book two will be better than book one. ETC. And this ought to be radical, to the point where you know it right away. If that isn't the case, then you have little story, and I have no respect for you as a writer because you are not growing. This presents you with a problem when you realize that book two is miles ahead of book one. I found myself editing book one, of the series above, for five years. Book two was two years. Book three was one year. See where this is going. In the meantime, I can write a book in half a year and be ready to publish in two months, but I'm still editing the earlier dogs for years. That's massively counterproductive. 3) You end up wanting to publish book four way more than book one. How do you do that? 4) If it gets into book stores, books one and two are discontinued before you get book four in there. 5) The stories are usually better if they are standalone. You know that arc, the characterization, the whole conflict and resolution. Dangling that for five books is insane. So, I have written four or five series, since that one. In my series now, I will have a full theme, story arc (internal and external) to a full story for each book. I will also likely have a new main character. For example in my series The Condotte's Daughter, Tundy is the MC in book one. A poor sheepherder, Ellie, is the MC in book two. An orphan, Renee, is MC in book four. A rogue womanizer is MC in book four, Patrik. Time moves along in each. We might see people from previous books cross paths, but each story belongs exclusively to the MC. Four complete issues, arcs, themes, situations, all in the same world and overall conflict. The goal is payoff for those reading in order, but if you miss the order, it does not matter. Even if the same characters are in the series, I write it like that now. You have a full arc, a complete story, and if you happen to read book two before book one, no big deal. As well, consider this as a mindset: The world did not exist prior to this story. That is exactly how to think, series, standalones in a series, or single book. Nothing is different. Find your story, start at your story, and never ever look back.
First, I'll like to echo @Shenanigator's "Welcome Back"! Also, this is a great post! I love the question and the responses. Making a novel stand on its own and still the first of a series is what I'm trying to do with my WIP. My series is what Brandon Sanderson calls a serialized epic; where the next book will continue the story of the previous book. I've written the series' story, and plotted that story out over five books using a four act structure. I chose five books because, after trying three books and then four, the story read best as five 80K WC chapters. Each book follows the four act structure. Now, how they stand alone is that everything started in Act One finishes in Act Four. For example, Altesse leaves Tairseach( a fortress where she was taken as a baby and never allowed to leave) in chapter one. But leaving a place psychically, and leaving it mentally, are two different struggles. It's not until Act Four that Altesse truly escapes Tairseach. It's not until the resolution that Altesse, and her companions come together and are ready to move on the next chapter in the story. Here's an example of one of the supporting character's arch; Mirinae is investigating who in the Iolball (the religious organization running Tairseach) is wanting to kill Altesse. This is concluded in the first book, but asks another question that becomes a story arch in following book. In the resolution of each book, the ending concludes the story of that book, but opens the door to the next one. One more thing, I've purposefully front loaded the planning for the entire series into the first book. As I've worked on the first book, I've updated plots, and other elements that will go into the other books. When I finish book one I can immediately begin book two because the planning will be done. This is good advice. The serialized epic has its own learning curve as oppose to the single novel or the continuing adventures series. But, I would recommended the aspiring SE writer to plot the story, or what elements they have of the story, and see if it still holds their interest.
Brandon Sanderson did this with Mistborn. Make the central story self-contained but leave a lot of open questions.
I love Mistorn and I've definitely had it in mind as a good example of this. Like you said, Brandon does a really good job of telling a self-contained story in Final Empire while leaving certain questions and arcs open for the sequels. Now I just have to figure out how to incorporate that into my own book.
