Which is a fancy way of saying that when you’re writing a series—standalone stories starring the same group of characters in the same world or one long story told in installments—don’t even try it without doing some serious planning in advance. When you’re stringing those individual books together like beads on a string to make a necklace, the beads need to look polished, the colours need to complement each other and they need to help each other shine and sparkle. Chips, dents and hastily-tied knots to cover an unexpected break in the string all spoil the look of the thing. Believe me.

I’m writing two series, both very different. The Taking Shield series of five books is military sci-fi, telling a big political/military/interstellar war story as the backdrop to the love affair between my two MCs, Bennet and Flynn. It was always planned as a long haul where the books need to be read in order as they’re installments in the story arc. But I hadn’t realised until I was writing it that my steampunk novel, The Gilded Scarab, was to be the first in a series too. And believe me, that caused some issues later.

With Shield, I planned from well before day one; for months before day one. My on-line background folder takes up a sizeable amount of PC memory, and the printed bible is a 3 inch deep lever-arch file. I have notes on everything from Bennet’s eye colour, to where he went to school, to Flynn’s favourite dessert (a sort of tiramisu, if you’re dying to know), and I have a lot of lists: uniforms, ranks, military medals, the spaceships making up the nine Fleet flotillas. I have notes on the shift sequencing for the fighter spacecraft, an organisation chart for the squadrons on the Gyrfalcon and a more general one for the entire military set up… you name it, I’ve got it somewhere. The list of secondary characters is coming up on six pages long. I’d lose track of who they all are otherwise. I have a perpetual calendar and it has a timeline, set out on an Excel spreadsheet—and oh, is that my absolute tool for keeping everything shipshape! Without that timeline, I’d really be struggling to keep continuity of a story that stretches over five years, to know how long it’s been since Flynn and Bennet last met, or how long the events of one instalment story took to play out.

I wasn’t quite in that position with The Gilded Scarab. I thought I had a single story to tell, but around 50k words in, I realised that there was no way I could fit in all Rafe wanted to tell me. I took a decision to cut the book into two, to focus in the first book on events in Londinium. Taking Rafe and his Aegyptologist to Abydos would have to wait for book two, but luckily I realised in time and was able to set out little breadcrumbs for the second book, tiny little seeds that help maintain continuity. The bible is smaller than that of Shield, but it’s filling up nicely with notes on archaeological finds, Cairo society at the turn of the 20^th century, the Second Olympiad held in Paris and how to make a jackal-head mask—among many other things—and the timeline is growing. I came late to creating it, but it’s already proving its worth.

So, advice. That’s the point of this post, right? Pearls of wisdom to string alongside those pretty beads. So, here you go.

• It doesn’t matter how many books are in the series. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking one overall story arc or a collection of inter-related stories. All that does matter? Planning as early as possible.

• Write it all down for future reference. Create that bible with its timeline, lists and background notes, because, believe me, you’ll be referring to this stuff so often you’ll end up dreaming about it. It will keep you from some silly mistakes.

• At the same time, don’t think your plans are set in stone. Even if you’re writing an overarching story with installments, then some of the finer details will be refined as you write the books. It might be that as you write book two, for example, you’ll have to refine some of the plot points for book four. Doesn’t matter, as long as everything stays consistent and you amend your bible accordingly, so you don’t lose track of changes. So, plot out the major issues and conflicts for the entire arc, but allow yourself some wriggle room for character growth and change. It’s a support tool, not a ruddy straight-jacket.

• If you didn’t deliberately start out to write a series but it just sort of happens, make the decision before you finish book one. It will make your life simpler if you can weave in threads and breadcrumbs to feed into the narrative of subsequent books. You can do that relatively easily before book one is published. It’s a bit harder afterwards.

• Yes, this is a lot of work. No, none of it is wasted. If you’re a writer, you’ll have a website where readers can find out more about your books. Devouring some of this background work is just jam for a lot of readers. They lap it up, and it adds to their enjoyment of the world you created.

Writing a series can a lot of work, but with a little planning, you can make it a whole lot easier and a whole lot less stressful. In fact, it becomes fun. Don’t know about you, but I don’t ask more of writing than that.

Anna

About Anna

Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments on everything from organizing conferences for 10,000 civil servants to running an internal TV service. These days, though, she is writing full time, mainly old-school science fiction and steampunk. She lives deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside with her husband and the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo.

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