The Robin Hood Diaries (24) - Planning a Series
This post is sponsored by Scandal gifs. Scandal is one thing that hugely inspired and motivated me while I was writing Everything I Do, so now you all get to suffer along with me.
I have a book coming out in about 15 days. It’s a reimagining of Robin Hood’s story titled Everything I Do. Everything I Do is perfect for fans of Robin Hood, female assassins, girls masquerading as boys, strong friendships, groups of boys and slow burn romance. Also, it’s the first book in a series.
This is only the second time I write or rather split a huge story into a serial format of series, because I have written and outlined many series, but each book had its own story, and they all followed a bigger one. But Everything I Do is the first part of a bigger story. The next book will follow the same characters as they continue on their journey to stay alive, conquer their enemies and hopefully kiss a few times in between? One can only hope.
The only other books I’ve written in this format is the No Ordinary Star series (No Ordinary Star, No Plain Rebel, No Vain Loss) about a fire-hot romance among the stars in a frozen world with no Christmas.
Here is how out of a single idea for a single book (more on that later), I created an entire series. (I say “created” because the books have already been written, but not edited yet).
I had the whole entire story in my head before I started writing the first book. I don’t know if other authors do it differently, but that’s the only way I can do series.
I outline the whole series but roughly. The first book or two in great detail, the rest just in scenes and characters. This will become my series bible.
Just like they taught us in science lab, I dissect the plot and discover what the true story is. I fix it so that it flows nicely, and then I find the main turning points/events of the bigger plot. If you are like me, you might want to stop them at a point that’s half closure, half cliffhanger, which means you reveal something big that creates more questions, so that readers are hungry for the next installment.
My Robin Hood series, Outlaws:
Book 1: Stops at the discovery of the first big secret.
Book 2: Stops right after a tragic event.
Book 3: Stops at the resolution of a major conflict.
Book 4: Stops at the reveal of the final big secret.
Book 5: Stops at the resolution of the bigger and final conflict of the entire story.
These might change as I edit them, and I’m sorry that they’re vague, but they might give you an idea of how to split the big plot into books.
Then I start outlining each book in detail. If you want, you can only outline one book, but if you’re like me and you can’t escape the outpour of ideas, it saves time to outline all the books as they come to you, so that you can write them one after the other.
Then I write. I write the books continuously, as one story, and then separate them into smaller installments. The reason I do that is that after I separate them, I need to add chapters at the beginning and end. Little chapter at the end: helping the reader have closure, although the story is not ended. Little chapter at the beginning: reminding the reader of the happenings of the previous book, in case it’s been months since its release.
The series bible has to contain everything and has to be consulted constantly: world-building, names, families, character history, character traits, titles (if you’re writing historical or fantasy), period details and so on. I also keep track of what secrets are out and what the characters aren’t supposed to know yet. And of course I keep track of their memories because I love my flashbacks, especially when they’re torturing my heroes (and the readers, of course).
So as I said, this story was already written, and I only now rewrote it.
How and why was it written already, M? you might ask.
Here’s a little secret: I am republishing Everything I Do. This is not the first time it’s been published. I published it a few years ago, and it stayed live for less than 2 months. And here is why I unpublished it back then:
1. It wasn’t ready for the world. It simply didn’t meet the high standards I wanted to present to my readers, and below are the reasons why.
2. I had written it while my family and I were going through the ordeal of hospitals and treatments and the lot, because my dad was sick, and I completed it right after I lost him. It was the thing that kept me sane during that hellish time, and I literally only kept going because I had this dream of putting it out there into the world (I had researched self-publishing and traditional publishing beforehand and made my decision, otherwise I might have doubted whether my judgement there was at fault too). Anyway, to put it mildly, I wasn’t at my best, I was really stressed, depressed and every other –essed in the book, and nor was I thinking straight during those months/years. When the fog cleared out, I realized that neither my book nor I were ready for the world, so I took it down and waited a year until I felt better.
3. My mental health (as one might expect after reading the above) was at an all-time low. Again, I didn’t have the energy or judgement to do the book or the marketing plan that should have accompanied it justice. *You will see from what I wrote above that writing literally saved my life. And I’m glad I took that giant step of faith and published when I did, because I learned a LOT of things which I wouldn’t have learned if I hadn’t done it, but it wasn’t time. Not yet.
4. I didn’t have any beta readers at the time. I had no idea how to find them, and if I had known then what I know now (that you just go up to people online and ask them to read your book) I would have crawled into a hole and died. I wasn’t in a place where I could talk to anyone, online or otherwise. The pain was too raw. (It still is, but I’ve learned to handle it. Most days. – read Conversations With an Empty Chair if you want to get seriously bummed out.)
5. This is the most important one: I changed the characters a LOT and added a TON more plot. The book used to be a huge book, that compressed/summarized the whole story, but didn’t do it justice. It glossed over some facts, and stopped far too abruptly. It also gave zero backstory. It wasn’t what I had wanted to do, but back then it had seemed to me impossible that I would be able to publish one book, let alone many, as in a series. I wasn’t satisfied with it, but I thought it was the only way. Now, after years of experience, I am taking the time to explore my characters and their development, to savor the story and add a ton of romance (yay), and thus I rewrote the book at my leisure. As I was writing, it came out even bigger (I added characters and so many more scenes) and so I have split it into 5 parts so far. More might be coming!
6. My editor sucked. I’m so sorry, but it was true. I lacked the experience and the strength to let them go and look for another, but I knew as I was working on the previous version, that I had no help from them. And that’s ok, it happens. BUT it’s not ok if you don’t fix it. If you don’t fire the wrong person and look for the right. I learned that the hard way.
After all that, I’m sure that instead of wondering why I unpublished it, you must be wondering why I republished it. Well, I didn’t. I rewrote it. From scratch. It took me a few years, and more than 10 drafts. Why?
I just loved it so much, I had to give it another go.
I had learned so much and put it to good use during the releases of my other books, that I felt not only ready to recreate and rerelease the most important book of my life into the world, but to also help other authors by sharing what I’d learned. That’s why I created the Author-Reader Connection The Book Robin Hoods, and that’s why I gave it this name.
So that I could celebrate this industry, the self-publishing industry, for what it is for many of us: A place of second chances.
And by second chances I don’t just mean the gift to be able to reupload the interior file of your book after fixing a minor typo that slipped through, because you are the publisher and the books are printed on demand. I don’t just mean the huge opportunity I got, to unpublish my book with all its mistakes, to unpublish the version of my book I wasn’t proud of, and have all the time I wanted to rewrite it. Those are huge blessings in themselves, but we’re still not into the biggest one of self-publishing.
It’s not a forgiving industry, and I expect to pay for my mistake in uploading this book for those two months when it wasn’t ready dearly. It’s a cut-throat industry, make no mistake about it. People have committed suicide because of failure and massive bullying, people (including myself) have been plagiarized, sued, and all that fun stuff. People, writers, authors, have fallen through the cracks, unnoticed. BUT.
Self-publishing gave us a chance. A second chance, or, as in my case, our only chance. That’s why I felt I owed it to both myself and my readers to get back up and try my hand at this wonderful story I carried in my head once more. Even if people judge me. Even if no one cares. Even if it turns out to be a horrible book again (which I don’t think it is, based on my betas’ and reviewers’ opinions anyway). Even if… a thousand ifs.
Here is what inspired Everything I Do:
My own mental health struggle and the urge to share it with others
My beloved, tortured country that suffers under the thumb of corrupt and ruthless rulers
The redeeming grace of second chances
Also, cats and Scandal and Kdrama.
Life doesn’t always give us second chances. In fact, they are rare and few in-between. But when we have one, we should be thankful and gather our strength to do our best one more time. “Fail again, fail better.” And who knows? You might not fail at all!
I am so grateful to be given a second chance with my Robin Hood book. I’m planning a tell-all blog post, so that I can share my whole story, but this is the most important thing: The ancient Greek poets said that Opportunity was a woman who had hair only in the front of her face. You should grab her as she’s coming, or the minute she’s gone you have no way of catching her.
That’s what I’m doing. Thank God for second chances and mercy. The rest is in His hands.
Want to check out Everything I Do?
Read all the Robin Hood WIP diaries
Read all my Robin Hood WIP snippets
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