I am currently writing on my first novel and I have yet to finish the first draft. I am planning on creating a series of books and I am wondering about developing the plot for the overall series. I already have ideas and themes in my head for sequels to the first novel but I am uncertain if I should have every little detail set in stone before I even start writing. Should you have everything planned out before the first word is written or are ideas good enough to build upon?
In the least you should have basic rules/laws established in the world, and work really hard not to have them deviate, other wise the whole thing will unravel. Consistency is a good foundational idea, so if it can't happen in the first (or previous) book, then it probably can't happen in a later installment (unless it doesn't conflict with the logic of the worlds rules/laws.) You're writing a series, you don't have to exposit every little detail of the story in the first book. Just get the ball rolling, since not everything is going to be in said first book. That is the thing with series is that it allows you to introduce the world and characters, and in later installments continue to build upon them a bit at a time.
I definitely wouldn't say that you have to have every detail of your series planned out but I do really extol the virtues of a character bible, if you have heard of it—for me it's a word document where I write down the names and a short blurb of all (or all the relevant) characters, and sometimes place names if neccesary. If it's important to the story I break them up into whatever categories they belong to, such as different families, different species, or relation to the main character (family-friends-household). It really helps keep everything straight.
If this is set in the real world, it will be easier. You know what the real world is like, and what can happen and what can't, etc. You'll need to do some research, depending on how much the 'real world' deviates from your own situation. However, this kind of story probably doesn't require a lot of pre-planning, because the rules of the world will apply no matter what your characters do. If it's an imaginary world, you probably need to do what Cave Troll suggested and set up the 'rules' of your world beforehand. It will likely be easier if you only deviate from the real world in one or two ways ...but explore these differences as thoroughly as you can beforehand. If, for example, you create a certain class of people who use magic, you'll need to decide what kind of magic it is, how it works, AND its repercussions. Who is this class of people? Are they born into it and start their lives with magical powers and need to learn to control it? Or are they ordinary people who need to learn it, the way we learn any skill? What happens if they are born with it and fail to learn how to control it? And etc. Are they worshipped, revered, feared, ignored, mocked? Push this kind of thinking at the start, so you know what you're working with. Otherwise you can start out with a class of magicians who are regarded as insane, maybe persecuted ...and then two books later everybody is worshipping them and envying them. That's fine if the situation has evolved, but not so fine if it suddenly changes for no reason. Lady Augusta's suggestion of a character bible is excellent as well. If you're planning a series, you already must have some idea of who will be in that series. Are you following a particular character, or family, or country? Make sections for these characters and keep a record of the relationships ...who begat whom, etc. I wouldn't waste too much time with the 'character personality sheet' thing, though. Let the personalities evolve as you write the story. Too much preplanning in that direction can suck the life out of a character and a story, in my opinion. Allow yourself to be surprised. As long as you have the relationships straight and the setting in place, your characters can do things you might not expect, which makes writing fun and reading a real treat. I also advocate setting up a Timeline. That's like a diary. It's something you write AS THINGS HAPPEN. This isn't an outline or something you write beforehand. It's a quick notebook (like a diary) divided into specific days, months, years, etc. As you write the story, take a note of the important events in a diary format. This will be invaluable later on. It works really well as a wordprocessing document, as you can add to specific days without making a mess of the thing. You can look back to check when people were born or died, when certain events occurred, how long journeys took, etc. This means you won't inadvertently put people where they couldn't possibly be, or end up becoming your own grandmother. Long-running soap operas have continuity issues, so you might want to investigate how these productions keep track of what happened 'before.' People who have been watching for yonks will certainly notice if somebody marries their brother, etc. But if the characters have been estranged for years, the new writers might have forgotten the characters both had the same father. This is where the continuity people can step in and say ...oops, better not. You might want to emulate their system.
Be careful with creating a world with too much depth. I have my own personal living, breathing world now and the difficulty is knowing how/where to start - and there are still huge areas to develop/discover as I go along. Make sure you have some overarching ‘theme’/‘feel’ to what you are trying to get out. It doesn’t have to be well defined just a structure from which to hang the various cultures, lans, religions, peoples, characters, etc., from. Go at it piecemeal. Write little snippets and consider how characters will/won’t interact in the broader scheme fo things. A great amount of detail can be fashioned in the readers mind by merely hinting at detail - this is a very nice way to leave yourself space for any future turns and twists that will spontaneously arise as you write - and make it easier to alter certain points too if need be. After a period of time the world will become part of your life and you will know instinctively what ‘fits’ more often than not.
(I assume you're talking about the plot here, not the world.) It really depends on how you write. Do you have to have the whole plot set up beforehand, or do you just go with the flow? Me, I like to set up the major plot points, along with a sentence or two as a summary of each (basically notes for myself so I know what's going on, or things I need to remember). It helps immensely for me to have a "guide" of sorts so I know where I'm going, and it breaks the whole thing down into manageable chunks. I'm working on a series myself, and doing this has helped me to figure out how many books I'm going to have overall, what happens in which book, etc.
You know what ... I have just realised when I say “world” it is practically synonymous with “plot”. I guess for me I see the “plot” as a “world within a world”. In terms of creating a story though I guess it would be better to say the “world” is what is hinted at outside of the “plot” - even though the plot is quite obviously entangled within whatever setting it is the writer wishes to convey (be this the ‘world’ of the school boy, dentist, or literally some ‘other’ worldly place abstracted to a larger degree from our more mundane view of reality). To OP I hope the above makes it clear I was referring to plot in terms of how you’re laying out your vision. When it comes to details I wouldn’t write if I knew the details of the story.
I think you can go ahead and write the first novel. Then from there you will have set up how your world works and should have more ideas on how to move forward with your series. That's what I would do.
I am the exact same way!!! I am on my first book, and I have ideas a for a series as well. What I did was just write what I wanted to write. Any scenes or small clips or simple lines I wanted. I thought about what each book would have and how I would incorporate it into the books set before it or after it. Because I did this, I was better able to make am outline for my first book. Some things still change, but not as much as it was changing before. I have a chapter by chapter outline for the first book now, and just general ones for the following. If I personally don't write what comes to mind, I might forget what I had wanted to write, or I might lose something important that could have helped my story. By writing anything and everything I have, I am able to think about the entire story and it's development more easily. Even if I have five different versions of the same exact scene. Hope this helps somehow.
I think you can start as soon as you are motivated to write. But as you make some progress, it's important to have a general direction on where you want the overall story to go from a theme perspective. You can explore side stories and take the plot in different directions but the overarching theme should still be there to hold things together as well as make your reader's journey rewarding.
Here are some concerns to consider: 1) If you are serious about writing, the 1st book will be horrible compared to the 2nd book. 2) But wait a minute. It's a series. That's not acceptable. How do you sell a 2nd book without the 1st one. This assumes that you are serious about writing, and just stating that you want to do a series suggests it. As well, you have to sell the whole series, and if you do, the book store has to house the entire series, or else you'll be trying to sell book 3 with books 1 and 2 off the shelves. Incidentally, book 3 ought to be twice as good as book 2, so bang, new problems, there. I do not suggest a series for any new writer. Beyond that, it's not even necessary to think along those lines. If you have a great world and a great story, you can easily have another great story in the same world. In fact, after having made all of the above mistakes, this is exactly how I address my series, today. I give my readers a complete book. Then I give them another and another, in the same world, maybe with the same MC, but maybe not. Whatever it is, it is its own book with its own arc and it's own sense of reader satisfaction. At its best, it doesn't matter what order you read them in. That provides me with the best of all worlds. Oddly, I learned this late, when in fact it is much more fruitful for new writers.
