#plot tag: series

[brynwrites]

Hi! I'm writing a larger fiction that takes place over a year, but when I think about all the plot points I need to include, this book sounds like it should be spread over two books. But, I've realized that I don't have enough ideas to make it two books nor am I interested in splitting the story up because, to me, the story appears stronger as one. Is it better to write a long book than write two books that I'm not particularly interested in?

Hey! I want to say yes, but also it depends.

Writing something you’re not interested in can be a pain. But genres do have word limits (for debut authors in particular). So the question then becomes:

1. What are you going to do with this book? 

If you’re just posting it online or self-publishing it, then by all means, go nuts. Readers will read long books. There’s no question about that. Having books with more than one distinct ‘part’ is occasionally used in quite a few genres. It’s not the favored plot structure of some readers, but as long as your pacing is still giving you a consistent rise in tension throughout the entire book, there’s no reason most readers will have any problem with it. 

But if you’re planning to publish traditionally, then onward to:

2. What genre is this? Will it be your debut novel? 

Fantasy and sci fi genres allow much longer novel lengths in general but may not want to take on a long book (over ~120k) unless they know it will sell, because printing more pages costs money. In other genres, and younger leaning YA, you can often get away with having incredibly short books (~50k), and might find you can split your book into two novels without adding much to the plot points you already have, so long as you don’t do any underwriting.

Sometimes though, the best thing to do is just to see where the rough draft takes you. My first two novels ended up being 40k words longer than I thought they would (160k and 80k), and then my last one (a novella) was exactly 40k words, as I had predicted at the start. Sometimes you just don’t know how many words you’ll need to tell a story until after it’s finished, and stressing over it before that point can end up hurting your ability to write.

[brynwrites]

why is so normal for sequels to not be as good as the first one?

These are just my own wild theories, but:

1. The writer spent three, five, maybe ten years perfecting the first book so a publisher would pick it up, and then they didn’t care enough (or weren’t given the time) to dedicate that much effort to the second book.

2. The writer played all their best cards in the first book and then didn’t have any more cool ideas/revelations/etc to pull the next one through.

(2 ½. Number two, except specifically with climaxes, because each climax in the series absolutely must emotionally invest the reader more than the last one.)

3. The writer didn’t plan out the second book while they were writing the first one and only realized after the first book was finalized that they didn’t give themselves a strong enough plot (or character) foundation to work with.

4. The first book had the basic plot of a trial, initiation, or otherwise systematic series of tests, and the writer relied on the easily programmable foundation these sorts of plots offer, only to realize that the Real World the second book takes place in is much wider and harder to write a plot for.

(I’m actually really salty about number four, and I won’t trust that an author can write a good plot until I’ve seen them write outside this schematic.)

5. The writer just plain got bored of the story, but the publisher wants to sell more books.

Idk, add your own I guess?

[brynwrites]

Do you have any tips for breaking up a story? Like I have a general idea but it's super long so I want to make it into several stories, but im unsure of the best places to split it up.

Splitting up stories into a series. 

When cutting up an overarching story into several shorter stories, the key is to maintain the structure of the overall story through the whole series, while still having each individual, smaller story possess all the necessary parts of your most basic story structure.

What does each individual story require? (I.e. what are the basic building blocks of all non-experimental stories?)

1. A plot. This includes:

An ‘inciting event’ in the opening of that individual story where the reader gets a look at what the protagonist’s current goals are and has enough information to at least speculate at what the final climax might entail. (For more about first chapters, go here.)

A unique plot or a portion of the overarching plot which can be presented and wrapped up over the course of the story. (More about plots, go here.)

2. A character arc for the protagonist (and all other recurring PoV characters), containing some type of negative or positive growth. 

For stories in a series, you can have the character’s total development take place over the entire length of the series, but each book should show some distinct piece of the development. Characters can have both negative and positive development over the course of the series, and an area where the character failed to grow in (or backslide in) through one book can be turned into positive development in a later book.

(More about that here.)

3. A climax. This includes:

The highest point of tension within the story, in which the characters deal with the most prominent and immediate issue they’re facing, which can (as least through hindsight) be tracked back to the inciting event in some way.

The point in the protagonist’s arc in which they make the final and most consequential choice over whether to develop or return to their old way of acting. 

What does an overarching series require?

Only two thing: A series of character developments which build on each other, and a final climax, more tense and consequential than the previous climaxes. 

You have a lot more freedom with this. Some stories build a massive interconnected plot throughout the entire series where everything connects, while others are basically standalone stories that only carry over the character development from the previous story.

How do you cut overarching story in order to create good individual stories?

The easiest way to go about this is to look for areas within your overarching story where the tension is highest and the characters need to make huge decisions, and turn those into climaxes.

Even if you find great places to cut your overarching story though, you will likely need to rearrange and adjust things within each individual story to set up a more story-like structure. If you take a long, fully formed story, and you cut it up, you’ll rarely get perfect little smaller stories right off the bat.