The best of intentions

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. All month long, we’ve been going over the ins and outs of writing your very own novel series. But not just any series. No, we’ve been discussing book series’ comprised of standalone novels, like what I’ve done with my druid series. We’ve talked about your motives behind writing a series like this, and we’ve gone over some of the traps and pitfalls associated with writing standalones within a series as a whole—and today, I want to talk to you a little more about you and your motives.

See, your series is a part of you. It was born from you, regurgitated from your soul onto the page, and so I know this part matters a lot to you.

I know, because it mattered a lot to me, too. And because of that, I’m going to approach it from a different angle.

Release Times

I know, I know, I said I was going to talk about you and your motives—and I am!—but you’ll have to bear with me. Remember, a couple sentences ago? We’re taking a unique angle here.

There are two kinds of writers, when it comes to those who release series’ comprised of standalones. There are those who want to get the whole thing written before they start releasing the books and there are those who will get a basic outline done and just start releasing as the books are ready to go.

You know which one I am.

But which one are you?

It’s an important question, and one I challenge you to answer before you get too far into your series. I want you to know your intentions, with your story. I want you to know what you’re anticipating from this, what you’re hoping for, what you expect when it comes to releases. I want you to know how much effort you plan on putting into each book prior to release, and how much attention you can give your series before the books start releasing.

I want you to know this, because your readers need to know this.

From the time the first book comes out, especially if it’s not the chronological first in the series, everyone who picks up your book will be asking when the next one comes out. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We all do it. If we pick up a book in a series, we just want to know when the next one will be out. We want to know that we’re covered, in case we really like this one and just can’t seem to put it down.

And you, dear writer, need to know (and be okay with the fact) that some readers won’t pick up your book, simply because it’s part of a series.

At the same time, others will, because it’s a series.

And at the very same time as those, still others will love the fact that it’s a standalone novel that’s still part of a series, so they can just read this one book, but know they can come back for more if they want to.

You need to be okay with all of those, and you need to know which one you’re targeting.

See how this is all about you, now?

The release is all about you, all about figuring out what you want from your series, what you expect from it, who you intend to reach with it.

I want you to think long and hard about these things, before you start publishing.

Why? Because I didn’t do that, and I really wish I had. There’s a part of me that wishes I’d waited just one more year before I started releasing the Druid Novels, just so I’d have more time to make things line up properly. They’re fine, I know. Everything’s working, there are no major errors anywhere. But there are little ones that I’ll be fixing in the second print runs, and I wish it hadn’t come to that. I really do.

So I want you to think all of this through, before you start publishing. I want you to think everything through, know what you want, and know what you expect. I want you to have the story at least mostly figured out, before you start releasing.

And I want you to have fun with it—because it is fun. But it’s also one of the greatest challenges your writer brain will ever experience, I swear.

Be sure to pop back in next month, to find out what our April theme will be!

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Leave it open

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m glad you stopped by. If you’ve picked up your copy of Anialych, I really hope you’re enjoying it—and if you haven’t, then I’ll pester you yet again and tell you to head over to www.rad-writing.com/store to order yours! You can also get it in digital on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo… but you’re better off getting it from RAD. Honestly. I’m not just saying that because I work there. If you get the digital copy at RAD, you’re getting a much better deal.

I’ve digressed.

All month long, we’ve been talking about writing a series of standalone novels. It’s a process, and a long and hard one. It’s not generally written (or released, for that matter) in chronological order—which makes it even more difficult to keep everything straight. Which is why I wanted to take a month to talk about it.

If you haven’t been around this month, I’d highly recommend scrolling through the posts from March and seeing everything we’ve discussed thus far. For the rest of you, let’s get right into it.

Don’t “finish” every story

Really, this is a pretty good general rule of thumb, no matter what kind of story you’re writing. Why? Because if you tie a neat little bow on the end of your story, you’ve prevented your reader from imagining how they think the story ends. Reading is about experiencing through imagination, so it’s best to allow your readers that chance at imagination—but that’s really not what we’re talking about today.

No, see, I want you to leave some loose ends in your books so they can be tied up in other books in the series.

Not big loose ends, mind you. Just little ones, questions that your readers might be wondering about along the way. Little things that maybe don’t quite make sense, additional characters who feel like they don’t need to be there (but will maybe play a larger role in another book down the line, perhaps).

These are all things that you, as a writer, should be thinking about in any case. You should be thinking of ways to connect your stories to one another. Endings are a great way to do that. Leave a little loose end in book one, and have the answer revealed offhandedly in book four. I’ve actually done this with a few things in the Druid Novels, many of them so subtle that casual readers might miss them, but I inserted them for the avid readers, those who like to piece everything together.

And that’s who I want you to cater for, when you do this.

It’s about the little things, the itty-bitty details that only your avid fans will really see. It’s about finding a way to connect those fans with the story as a whole. Give them little words and phrases here and there that connect the stories and tie up loose ends from other books. Mention what happened to characters in book two, with the characters in book five.

My one warning, when you’re doing this? Don’t do it in pure exposition. It can be a character thinking, or two characters talking, but if you're in book seven and you insert in pure exposition what really happened to Franklin at the end of book four in your series, you’re just coddling your audience. It’s okay to make them work for it, to let them use their imagination.

Besides, if it’s your characters tying those loose ends, it comes out much more naturally, from a reader’s perspective. 

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Proceed with caution

Hey everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. If you’ve already started reading your copy of Anialych, I hope you’re enjoying it—it was really fun to write, even if it did take me a while longer than I’m used to. ;-)

All month long, as you know, we’re talking about what it takes to write a series of standalone novels. We’ve been discussing everything from your motivations behind writing a series of this nature to the reasons why we need to understand the ins and outs of the whole world before we get too deep into book two, and today, I have another fun topic for you.

Crossovers: Silent but Deadly

I cannot stress this enough, in writing your series of standalones. Use crossovers with caution, if you use them at all.

Why? Because it’s hard to keep your timeline perfectly straight, if you have a character who keeps popping up from book to book. Sure, we’ve talked about those big characters who get name-dropped from time to time in books they don’t belong in, but that’s not a full-fledged crossover. A crossover is where you’ll take a character from one book and insert them into another.

It’s only been done a few times in the Druid Novels, and the times you’ve seen so far are so small that they couldn’t do much damage.

See, crossovers are one of those things that innately draw attention to themselves. If a reader knows your story at all, they’ll be looking closely for those crossovers, to make sure everything lines up right. And it’s hard to get things perfect. It’s really hard to get things perfect.

Why? Because it’s nearly impossible to remember every single thing you’ve ever written, no matter how long you’ve been writing, no matter how many things you’ve written. Once those words go on the page, they leave your head. You probably won’t remember every one of them. and that’s what makes it really hard to make sure your crossovers actually work.

In the Druid Novels, my crossovers have only happened (to this point in releases, anyway) in epilogues and small non-pivotal scenes. They’ve been tiny scenes that won’t really make much bearing on the story as a whole, but simply inform other stories around them. Oh yeah, and I think most of them are contained within Cedwig, because Cedwig and Mynidd take place so close to one another, geographically.

Crossovers, because they innately draw so much attention to themselves, will also draw readers to any errors you have inside them. And I do mean any errors. You’ve got to get them perfect, or it just won’t work at all.

So before you write in a crossover, before you slide a character from book two into book five, ask yourself whether it’s entirely necessary. Ask yourself if you’re just getting fancy, and if this character really needs to be here. If the answer is yes, then proceed with caution. If the answer is no, then maybe just write the scene for yourself, knowing full well that it’ll never make it into the published version of the book.

Whatever you do… just proceed with caution. Trust me.

[love]

{Rani Divine}