Quick Tips for Writing a Book Series

This week is all about the book series. How do you plan your writing to build an expansive world? What are the kinds of series you can choose from? (Psst: there's more than one!)

Tip #1: Think big, even if you have a small town.

Tip #2: Identify the type of series that's best for your story.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Welcome to the Author Wheel podcast. I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy author of the Signore Chronicles and the Rise of Lilith series.

Speaker 2: 0:45

And I'm Greta Boras, USA Today bestselling author of the Mortician Murders and the soon-to-be-released Almost True Crime series. Together, we are the Author Wheel. Our goal is to help you overcome your writing roadblocks so you can keep your stories rolling. This week, we are talking about planning a series and building a world that lasts.

Speaker 1: 1:09

Yes, yes, and this is so key If you're writing any kind of genre fiction, and especially if you're indie writing. Series is so important for long-term marketing benefits and all sorts of other reasons, but it's not always obvious how to do that right. Your story might not automatically lend itself to being written into a series, so we're going to walk you through our favorite tips for how to write series and what that looks like. But the first tip is to think big. Even if you have a small town and I know that seems kind of weird, because last week we talked about world building and you know how you need to make it feel real but sometimes that small town setting can actually be a great starting off point for a much bigger series. The key here, though, is that your world has to be able to support a large cast of characters with different stories, different careers, different backgrounds, things to keep it interesting for your reader.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Some of the most successful authors we know have actually written multiple series all in the same or adjacent slightly different, but the same world. So you can kind of think of it like the Marvel movies, where even the Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor franchises can ultimately be linked back to the Avengers and even Spider man right, they all kind of tie in together. And going back to another quick tip episode from a few weeks ago, easter eggs it's a great way to just tie things all together is just to have a little, a little hint of something in the story that relates to other series. In our interview last October we talked with hugely successful author Pamela Fagan Hutchins about how all of her books across all of her series are really in the same world and that's tied in her readers and brought them through series to series to series. They're all interconnected and you can listen to that conversation.

Speaker 1: 3:09

It's season four, episode five, from October 9, 2023. So when you're planning your series or multiple series, consider the ways to tie them together, to expand those worlds, to make them broader than just your initial idea. You can use side character spinoffs, you can use prequels or you can use future worlds. There's all sorts of different ways to do it. But open up your mind and think through how that small world can be made even bigger.

Speaker 2: 3:41

That is great advice, but tip number two is what kind of series might work for your story. There is more than one type of series, and often we don't think of that. We think of the type of series that we read the most, like it's the only kind, but there are many kinds and they work differently, and so they work better to support different kinds of stories. So the four that we like to talk about that I actually learned in a online course many moons ago is the first is the big book, and it's one continuing story, like Lord of the Rings, and it has to be kind of divvied up into a trilogy or whatever, or it would break your arm trying to carry it around. It just would be way too many pages. So a big book, and for many of us that's the kind of thing we think of as a series. But there are more. The second type is the linked sequential. In a linked sequential, each book is a complete story, but you really do need to read them in order or you're going to miss some of the key details and you'll be a little lost. Family sagas are famous for linked sequentials, but many other types of series are as well. So my Mortician series and Megan's Signore Chronicles are both link, sequential, so within each book there is a complete, satisfying wrap up of a story. It opens and all of that, but there is an overarching character arc that grows from story to story to stories. If you want to understand that character's romance, for instance, or how they're developing as a person or whatever, you need to read the stories in order.

Speaker 2: 5:31

The next type is called linked standalones and by the title you can tell that they are obviously linked but they're completely standalone. So they're really common in mysteries and so each book usually has the same main character, but you don't have to read the stories in order. That main character will not have much of an arc, of a personality arc or anything like that. So it's fine. So a real obvious example is Sherlock Holmes, also Jack Reacher in that hard adventure type thriller. They can often be linked standalones, those kind of books. And then the fourth type are loosely connected standalones and these are more common in romance for instance, because you can't have the same characters, you know falling in love and having a happily ever after Well, a happily ever after would be awkward.

Speaker 2: 6:30

You know, first book they have happily ever. After second book she gets divorced and does it all over again. I don't know, not working. So in romance you would have different protagonists but what connects them is the world, or the job place or their family or some other element. So and each say, say, I know somebody had one that was set in a bar and all the bar employees got their own romance, you know, so it was shifting.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Just couldn't think of a primary character that was a strong enough character to carry off seven stories. Plus, I wanted them to be, you know, psychological suspense, which is usually surrounding a normal everyday person a real estate broker, a interior designer, a chef, whatever. Those kind of people do not bump into dead bodies every day of the week and it would be really odd if they did. Yeah, yeah, so I. So I use a different main character, but the Almost True Crime series, as they're being rewritten, is interesting because they're a little less loosely connected now, because I have created a character who's kind of narrating all their stories. So she shows up in every book. So we'll have to talk about that in the future, yeah, but anyway, those are the different types of series, so you can see that most stories can fit into one of those type of series. You can develop a series around almost every kind of book.

Speaker 1: 8:13

Yeah, yeah, absolutely All right. Well, if you are enjoying this podcast, please consider supporting the show. At the bottom of each episode's show notes is a link where you can throw us just a couple bucks to help us cover the costs of hosting and editing and all our other expenses that are critical to the creation of the podcast. Plus, you'll get a shout out on the show and, you know, be kind of semi-writer famous. So there you go.

Speaker 2: 8:38

Yeah, always good 15 seconds of fame, yeah not 15 minutes 15 seconds.

Speaker 1: 8:44

I like it, yeah, but if that's not possible right now, you can also support the show by subscribing, leaving us a five-star review or sharing your favorite episode with a writer friend. But until next time, keep your stories rolling.