Series Craft 101
How to Construct a Multiple-Novel Story and Create a Workflow System
Patricia Gilliam
©2013 by Patricia Gilliam
ISBN: 978-1-300-92876-8
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission of the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
1st Edition.
Introduction
For many people, the idea of completing even a single novel can be an intimidating process. I was in that group not long ago. In trying to transition The Hannaria Series from a set of short stories to my first novel, I spent almost two years writing myself into corners until I would quit in frustration. I loved writing, but I had misconceptions about novels as projects and no clear workflow system. Finally, I made the decision to step back and rethink my approach—looking not only at literary resources but production aspects of television shows, movies, and even video games.
Around the same time, I attended a talk by David Baldacci and was able to ask his advice during the event’s Q&A session. He explained that he analyzed the stories he enjoyed—breaking down the core elements of why he liked them and applying the overall techniques to his writing. It made me think of all of the generic writing guides I’d bought and piled up on my shelves—some read and others to apparently teach me how to write a novel through osmosis. Even with years of formal education and a technical knowledge about writing, I was still missing something important. I made the decision that I wouldn’t attempt another book until I figured it out.
What I realized over time was that great storytelling has a richness that can’t be winged or faked. As readers, we intuitively sense this but sometimes neglect it as writers. It’s the difference between walking into an empty house and one that’s been thoughtfully made into a home. As an author, the background work before and during a series can take years—even decades—but there’s a wonderful element of discovery that I wouldn’t trade for anything. It’s a lot of work on the front-end of a project, but there’s a long-term benefit that makes the rest of the writing process easier.
It took me six months of initial research—mainly focusing on character and setting development—before I sat down and tried to write a novel again. I finished Out of the Gray in April 2009, and the momentum has carried to where I’m now working on the sixth novel in the series alongside this guide. What makes my situation unique is that I’ve kept notes on the entire process, including what didn’t work for me. I also believe that what I’ve learned can be duplicated across genres, not just sci-fi.
Writing guides can fall into several different categories, and I want to be clear that this book is more of a case study of one way to do things—not an all-encompassing overview of everything you’ll ever need to be a novelist. To grow, you need to pull from a variety of sources and develop a system that works for you. When possible, I’ve tried to include lists of related resources that helped me. Even after writing several novels, I’m still in a perpetual state of learning and intend to stay that way for the rest of my life. Book and publishing industries are rapidly changing, and more responsibility and control is being placed on authors regardless to the method used to publish. Times of great upheaval are also times of great opportunity based on your perspective, and you need to stay informed if you intend to take your writing from a hobby to a profession.
I hope this book will help you get started with a good foundation, and I want to encourage you if it’s your dream to create a story on this kind of level. It takes time, effort, and a lot of patience, but it can be done. Best wishes in your writing.
Now let’s get started.
Why Novelists Need Systems and How to Create One
If you take any physically massive project—such as building a house—the idea of just jumping in without a plan and a schedule seems ridiculous. Even if someone attempted it, the end result probably wouldn’t resemble what was intended. Yet many of us have been taught novel-writing as a linear process with little planning—you sit down, possibly create a rough plot outline and a few character sketches, and then write the book from beginning to end just as a reader would view it. I tried this several times—believing I was doing the right things—but it always resulted in me getting stuck in an area where I hadn’t prepared. With something that’s going to take several months to several years of your life to complete, it’s worth taking the time to get organized before you start.
If you’ve been writing to some degree, you most likely have everything you need in terms of initial equipment and tools—a computer with Internet access being the most important if you intend to publish your book after it’s finished. In part because I didn’t have the income at the time, I bypassed the idea of purchasing specific novel-writing software—opting instead to use Microsoft Word and a creating a set of folders on my desktop for character and setting templates.
There are also two helpful websites I want to mention that weren’t around in 2009. If I was going to start from scratch today, Pinterest is a great social website—not only for promoting your work but organizing visual references. If you’re not familiar with the site, think of it as a digital version of bulletin boards where you can “pin” photos and other digital references by category. You can go as detailed as having a board for each of your main characters and locations if you wanted, and in some cases you could even share mutual boards and research with other writers. This can save you a lot of time. Popplet is a newer website that has great applications for mapping character relationships—and allows you to export that information as a .jpeg or .pdf file.
Your comfort level with technology may be different from mine, but my point is to leverage what you have first. If something is distracting or doesn’t help you, you don’t have to force yourself to use it. Once you know what does work, you put yourself in the position of being able to try new things and seeing if they save you time and effort. According to the situation, I still use physical notebooks and note cards—especially for plotting and keeping track of smaller tasks.
For simplicity, I’ve broken down my personal system into four main categories: Set-Up (concept, character, & setting development), Plotting & Production (actually writing the novels), Editing (revision on both a book and series level), and Marketing/Reaching Readers. This isn’t to say that you can’t focus on more than one area at once, but it’s a cycle that can keep you on track and gets easier with experience. Within each category, you have the opportunity to adapt everything to your own needs.
Set-Up: Creating Reference Materials Specific to Your Story
There are two goals to this stage. The first is to develop your characters and setting to a detail level that’s realistic to you as an author. From a process standpoint, this will put you more in a director position when you start to write your book—as opposed to having to start and stop every time you run into something new that needs to be created or thought out. The difference this made in my time management was significant, especially considering I had to fit writing around a full-time job and other activities at the time.
The second is to create a customized reference system for your series—which long-term will help you with everything from continuity to marketing. As you’re doing this, you’re going to feel like you have way more background material than you’ll ever need—which is a good thing since it allows you to be selective. By the end of this step, you’ll be an expert on your own characters and world. What you reveal in the actual books to readers will be a percentage of what you know, but the depth of detail will automatically be in place as you’re writing.
With any novel or seri
es, you’ll begin with a rough concept that you’ll expand and refine. The initial idea can come from a variety of sources. In my case, I had a set of short stories where I liked the characters and wanted to do more with them. I’ve known other writers that had one clearly visualized scene but nothing else. Since series are character-driven, I put most of my energy there first. Your setting can be treated similar to a character according to your genre, and there is an element to how your setting will affect your characters and vice-versa. To build up initial details quickly, I used templates as prompts. I’ve included both my character and setting templates as examples in the following sections.
Thoughts on Character Creation and Development
Put simply, your characters will make or break your story. Most of us have tried to sit through movies or get through books where there’s no emotional attachment for the characters, and it becomes a painful process. If a reader isn’t motivated to care about your characters, other elements like a great setting and plot usually can’t compensate. This is why you sometimes have to allot more time to this stage, especially if the plot or setting was the source of your original concept idea.
My templates are very detailed, but I don’t want them to seem overwhelming. I’ve added and changed them over the course of several years, and when you start out you don’t have to fill in every single category for every single character. Focus on what you need first then add more over time.
When you fill out a template for a character, keep in mind a quote from Aristotle: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” All of the traits and details of characters are meant to help you bring them to life in your imagination—your creativity adding to the equation and making them behave in your mind similar to actual people. When you write a character long enough, the original reference material is needed less and less.
Whenever possible, brainstorm ways to reveal character traits through action and behavior (show) rather than directly leaking description to the reader (tell). For example, one of my main characters smirks to the point it’s his usual smile—and over time his actions reveal he can be a mischievous person.
Another thing to watch is revealing background information through dialogue—making sure that the information fits the situation from a reader standpoint and isn’t just a device to sneak in information. In some situations this can be borderline, but the main thing is to avoid dialogue that sounds stiff, long-winded, or out-of-place when read out loud.
Once you’ve created template files for all of your major characters, a great warm-up exercise is to create short stories and scenes with multiple characters interacting. These may or may not be used in your actual novels, but it will give you a sense of relationships and help you establish the habits needed to write on a regular basis. These also make great marketing material and extras when you later promote your series, so nothing is wasted.
Fictional Character Development Template
(Originally Published in 2009 in How to Create Fictional Characters; Revised 2013)
Name
Is the character’s name significant?
What is its origin?
Who named the character?
Does the character like it or hate it?
Does the character also have any aliases or nicknames?
Birthday
Even if this never gets mentioned, this helps keep track of a character’s age over time and their age relative to other characters in the series.
Keep in mind different challenges for different age groups.
Sex/Gender
From a cultural standpoint, men and women often have different challenges.
Biological, social, and cultural factors all come into play.
Height/Weight/Body Type
This is important to remember in terms of physical challenges your characters might encounter.
For believability, not all of your characters have to be in shape.
Physical Health and Energy
Overall Rating Can Be Hyper, Normal, Fatigued
How’s your character’s posture? (A lot can be said in a slump or standing tall.)
Keep in mind other body gestures such as handshake, eye contact, and distance of personal space for your character.
Does your character have a mannerism when they are upset or nervous?
Does your character feel their life is busy, not busy enough, or just right?
Does he/she tend to be accident prone or not?
Hair Type and Color
Short/long, straight/curly, etc.
This can be used as an indicator of personality—whether it’s messy or neatly styled.
Eye Color
Does the character wear glasses or contacts?
Is there anything unique about their eyesight?
Skin
What is the character’s complexion?
Does the character have any tattoos?
Are there any physical scars that are significant?
Nails
Dirty or manicured nails can indicate some job positions.
Does your character pick at them when nervous?
Family
Include basic information on parents, siblings, spouses, and children (which may have their own separate profiles if they’re main characters).
According to what you need, you may need to sketch out a rough family tree and a few background paragraphs about the family’s heritage.
Childhood
What is your character’s birth order and did their birth order impact him or her?
What are the statuses of the character’s relationships with each family member? Is there calm or conflict?
Briefly describe the character’s childhood and important events that may impact your story (include both good and bad memories).
Relationships
How does your character view authority figures?
Does your character generally trust people?
How good of a listener is your character?
How does the character show love and affection?
How does your character react to people he/she dislikes?
Does your character prefer lots of friends on a surface level or fewer friends at a deeper level?
Who has influence over your character? Who doesn’t?
How easy is the character to approach? Why?
Does the character have any enemies? How were they gained? Is the character aware they exist?
How does your character react when someone disagrees strongly with his/her ideas or opinions?
Does the character get jealous easily or not? Why?
What secret would embarrass your character if it was released? Who knows this secret?
Honesty Level
Is your character honest overall or does he/she tend to lie? Why?
Does your character have a hard time saying “no” to other people? Why or why not?
Education
Did your character enjoy school or not?
What were their strongest and weakest subjects?
What would your character’s old teachers say about him/her at a parent/teacher conference?
Does your character speak more than one language?
Is your character mechanically or technically skilled and in what way(s)?
Speech
Take a look at your character’s speech pattern.
Does the character have a regional accent?
Does the character talk fast or slow?
What kind of tone does he/she use? Is he/she monotone or does his or her speech have an up and down melody?
How can you convey this indirectly?
Goals, Ambitions, and Attitude
What does your character want out of life?
How important is accomplishment to your character?
Does your character adapt well to change or interruptions to goals? Why or why not?
If your character could change one thing about the environment around him or her, what would it be?
; How competitive is your character?
What does your character expect his or her future to be like in 10 years?
In regards to your character’s attitude about life, does he or she live in the past, the present, or toward the future?
Religion, Spirituality, and Core Beliefs
Has your character been impacted by a religious/spiritual background?
What are your character’s core values?
Skills, Talents, and Abilities
Can include artistic, musical, physical/sports-related, adaptability to change, intellect, social skills, creativity, problem-solving, leadership, technical skill, photographic memory, observation, quick-thinker, diplomatic/peace-maker, and financial/business savvy.
Flaws and Weaknesses
What flaws or shortcomings does your character have? How does your character feel about them? Is your character aware they exist?
What character flaw (or perceived flaw) does your character want to change? What are the sources of these flaws?
What obstacles hinder your character from changing?
How forgiving/unforgiving is your character when wronged by another person?
Sometimes a flaw can also come from what normally would be a strength, only it’s stretched too far (the line between confidence/arrogance, for example).
Profession
If you’re not familiar with your character’s career, spend some time online to get comfortable with the basics of it—learn some professional jargon, but use it sparingly in the actual story.
Series Craft 101 Page 1