Which is the Trickiest Book in a Trilogy?

Which is the trickiest book in a trilogy to write?

Probably the second book. During the first book, you’re still on that adrenaline rush. The third book (if you’ve planned your ending at least) is the big climax, so it’s just a small matter (ha ha ha ha) of tying of loose strings.

But, oh, that second book. That dread middle!

Elana Johnson has a great post on this:

I think Book Two is the hardest. Let’s just get that out in the open up front. The author has the challenge of living up to Book One, and the characters aren’t new. The world isn’t new. The problems aren’t new. We got to see all of those things in the first book, so Book Two usually suffers from Little Sister Syndrome. In fact, in my exploration of trilogies, I read many (MANY) a second book that I felt was exactly like the first. I felt like I’d read the same book twice.

If your first book has already been published and found some fans, you’re problem is worse. Now you have the added pressure of pleasing your fans as you sit and write. Argh. This can feel like you have a crowd peering over you shoulder as you type, and there’s no faster way to hit writer’s block. Mike Mullin discusses this in an interview with Lissa Price:

LISSA PRICE: Mike, your first book, ASHFALL, had tremendous awards and honors. You were one of NPR’s top 5 YA novels, and Kirkus had you on a Best Teen Book List as well as a starred review. There were many more honors. How did any of this affect you as you wrote the sequel, ASHEN WINTER? 

MIKE MULLIN: It has certainly increased my writerly anxiety. The question is always hovering just out of sight behind my left shoulder: Can I write anything as good as the first book? Answering that question will be up to my readers, of course. I’m not the only one who thinks so either.

A trilogy is the three act structure divided into novels. The second act is like the second line of a joke…the repetition of a pattern that will finally be broken in the third act. There is some repetition, therefore, inherent in the structure. While you don’t want to simply repeat everything that happened in
Book 1, you have to repeat some elements. How can you maintain this balance?

Here’s a quick and dirty list of seven tricks to get through the second book. Not all are necessary, of course (except the first, higher stakes–stakes should rise continually throughout a series).

1. The stakes are higher.
2. The protagonist is more powerful now than in the first book.
3. The protagonist loses a major ally.
4. The protagonist must make an unexpected alliance.
5. The love interest loses out (temporarily) to a rival.
6. A (false) victory for the hero. The reader knows it’s not over, but not the hero.
7. A (false) victory for the villain–a dark night of the soul–in which the villain seemingly prevails.

WiP Wendesday – Excerpt from Blood

They swam away too quickly for her to follow.

Why Do Authors Make Readers Wait?

One of the rules–proved upon the soiled reputations of authors who have dared break it–is that authors should never respond to reviews. This is good advice, and I’ve never strayed.

Until now.

In an Amazon review, one person commented:

The only thing I hate about this series is that since they have all already “been written” according to the author, why am I waiting? I think that is nothing but cruelty.

Ouch.

If there are readers out there who indeed imagine that I have the entire series, perfect and polished, lurking on my hard-drive, and that I have been withholding this product from readers for no reason except to toy with my fans, as some sort of cruel fae might … I feel obligated to demure. The opposite is true. I bring you the books as fast as I can; indeed, given that I rush my editor and typos slip through, perhaps faster than I should.

I am of course to blame for the delay, but this is a fault in my abilities, not in my intentions.

I have a terrible tendency to see a thing as complete once it is complete in my mind. I do have a “finished” draft of the entire story arc…with just a few blank spots…and the end more or less complete…. And so I naively thought it would not take me more than a month or two to trim the sails on each of the twelve volumes and send them sailing into the ocean of readers. And then I foolishly compounded the error by boasting about it, because I thought, well, then I’ll have to keep my word or be most embarrassed.

And here I am, most embarrassed.

Here’s what happened. As I took the draft of the first book, Initiate, I changed a few things from the draft. Not a lot, just improved it in some ways in response to comments by beta readers, and so on. Then in Book 2, Taboo, I had to change a few more things to keep it consistent with Initiate, and then in Book 3, Sacrifice, even more changes were needed to be consistent with the first three books… And Book 4, Root, had even more changes required, and things were getting more complicated, and then I came to Wing, and so many things needed to be changed, and the whole rest of the series drafts, as I had written them ages ago, were now out of date, that I felt as though everything was falling apart.

I had to go back to the outlining stage. It’s counter-intuitive, but fixing a faulty draft is harder than outlining an unwritten book from scratch. If you have a draft, there are many scenes and plot-lines that you struggle to save, even though it might be easier to just toss them away. For instance, I knew for a long time that Umbral would kidnap Dindi, but when exactly did this occur?

When I write, I feel more like a detective than a puppeteer. I don’t want to pull strings and yank my characters around. I want to discover what “really” happened. It’s particularly tricky in Faearth, since everyone sees the world in different colors. When someone knows something is as important as what they know. The past erupts constantly into the present in Visions, but these Visions are always incomplete, and what import they carry is often changed by who sees them, and what else has happened since.

I admit a particular fondness for Wing. Maybe I lingered over it because I enjoyed writing it so much. But also, I simply couldn’t bear it to be less than perfect. I can’t tell you how many times I rewrote scenes, changed the order of things, wrestled with timelines, looking for the perfect “reveal.”

And then there were the weeks when I despaired of making it right, and I fell into a despond, and wrote nothing day after day, and my unopened laptop followed me around the house like a accusation.

The day came when I opened the laptop again. I started writing again. I kept the scenes I loved most, and tossed out the scenes which had been dragging the book down. I re-wrote from scratch what needed re-writing and I finished a “rich outline” of both Book 5 and Book 6. (About 30,000 words for each book). Then I worked as fast as I could, to make up for all those months, to bring you Wing.

But I also promised myself that I would only release Wing once it was as good as I could make it. Even if I missed another deadline, even it took another year, another ten years. The hardest part after that was to be honest with myself, to admit when I had reached the limit of my ability, and the book was done.

Here is the truth about writers: we teeter between the burning drive to finish this work and the freezing despair that this work falls short. There’s a part of me that would still be working on Wing right now, if I could, because it still needs improving in a thousand ways, and yet I know that it’s as good as I can make it. That’s the terrible thing, that a book can be as good as you (talentless wretch) can make it, but not as good as it should be.

There is one consolation. That is the next book. Ooooh, I am having such fun with Blood! It’s 50,000 words complete, but I expect it to be at least twice that wordcount by the end–we shall see. But, oh, what fun. New villains rear up (well, they were always in the background before, but now they are right there, menacing Dindi in person), old friends return (but I won’t say who!), Finnadro and Umbral get better acquainted, there’s the small matter of saving the world, and we finally find out the answer to the question… is Kavio dead?

And I promise you, I will get Blood to you as soon as I can once it s as good as I can make it.

3 Clever Ways To Use Metastory

Metastory is a story about story.

How To Write A Series – 03 – Expanse

A story requires a certain heft or breath or extension to justify a series — what I’ll call expanse. But it also needs a degree of cohesion to link the volumes of the series. This tension between expanse and cohesion is what makes for a good series.

Expanse can apply to one or more categories:

1. Length

Length is the first obvious test of a series. Some series are essentially one long story, split into separate volumes mostly for convenience. Possibly, as digital books replace paper books, the rational behind splitting the books up will not be a strong. We might see some authors publishing 500,000 or 1,000,000 word “novels.” But I suspect even in that case, the story would be subdivided into sections of some sort. The cohesion of a long story is easy to see if it has the same protagonists, antagonists, theme and story arc.

2. Cast 

Cast is the number of major players involved in the story. The basic rule of thumb is that the more major characters there are — usually this means they are PoV characters at some point — the longer the story needs to be. Add enough characters and you almost have to have a series to do them all justice. The obvious question to ask is whether these characters’ stories connect enough to justify inclusion in the same series. Perhaps their stories would be better told separately. The stories of the various characters must interact and influence each other enough to cohere as a series. In certain kinds of series, the link may indeed be tenuous. It’s possible follow the successive stories of seven princes, three brothers, or successive generations, or employees at the same shadowy paranormal agency.

3. Duration

The duration of time covered in the story also impacts whether it makes sense as a series. If you’re following a child through several years of school (Harry Potter) or a naval officer through his career (Horatio Hornblower), this expanse of time is well suited to a series. The cohesion comes from following the same character despite the long period of time covered.

4. Cases

Any story that follows a protagonist or multi-player cast through repeated episodes, incidents or cases of a similar type is well-suited to a series. This is why almost all detective and police procedural stories are natural series. The police or detectives take case after case, a new one (or more than one) in each book (or television episode). The same principle applies to any repeated case. Doctor / nurse / hospital stories easily fall into this pattern, as do spy stories. Buffy the Vampire Slayer weekly battled vamps and other demonic foes in Sunnydale. Tarzan repeatedly stumbled across blonde queens ruling lost cities in the middle of Africa. A key to a cohesive series is that the cases are all of a type. It wouldn’t make sense, usually, to have a murder investigation in one episode, cure a sick man in another, and find a lost city in the third — unless there was some other obvious connection (and these storylines were subplots). On the sf series Stargate, for instance, the team might do all of those things in different episodes, but all within the frame of visiting a new world through the Stargate.

5. Space

Finally, some worlds are so large that they need exploring. The journey or journeys to cross the world and explore the many nooks and crannies or subcultures requires a series. The space may be a cultural space: the subterranean criminal culture of gangsters (Sopranos) or prison inmates (The Wire) or 60s advertisement writers (Mad Men). It could be a world war or a civil war. Much epic fantasy not only has a large cast and long story arc, it also  showcases a unique magical world with its own distinct rules and cultures. The same is true for much space opera. Cohesion in such stories is provided by the protagonist/s as they traverse the various climes and demesnes of the world.

In general, the greater the expanse included in the story, the more likely it requires a series to explore fully. There is, however, a caveat; this must never be at the cost of the cohesion of the story. James Michener’s novel The Source uses the frame of an archeological dig to glimpse into separate stories that cover thousands of years. The linking motif comes from objects dug up by the archeologists. These disparate stories, so far apart in time and cast, are joined into a believable unity by Michener’s clever frame and by the fact that they all occur over the length of one novel. If Michener had tried to write a separate book for each time period, it would have been much harder to keep the story cohesive.

Awesome Shows With Paranormal / Dystopian Hotties

Have you seen the hotties on the new slew of paranormal and dystopian shows? Yuuuuummy. I salute my new faves. SPOILERS ALERT!!!

Revolution:

Genre: Dystopia

Premise: Despite the fact that nation states long preceded electricity, enduring thousands of years in much the same borders, and often with much the same form of governance, a sudden lack of iPhones able to play Angry Birds leads to the instant destruction of the United States. Everyone resorts to crossbows and thuggery.

Hotties To Watch Out For: Charlie is a badass heroine, who goes looking for her uncle–who turns out to be pretty badass himself. But the romance to keep your eye on is between Charlie and arrow-wielding Nate, who turns up to rescue her from some thugs and accompanies her on her journey.

What Keeps Them Apart: [SPOILER!] Nate works for the Bad Guy…he’s been spying on the heroine the whole journey. Youch!

Tracy Spiridakos as Charlie Matheson flourishes her crossbow in “Revolution.”

In the future, there’s no guilt about taking freeways–they’re strictly green.

Without cell phones, George Washington would not have been able to enforce the Constitution either.

JD Pardo as Nate. He made those arrows himself, sucka. And wove that skintight microfiber shirt on a hand-loom.

Arrow:

Genre: Super Hero

Premise: Billionaire hottie and good-time boy Oliver Queen was stranded on island for five years, all alone except for the martial arts school stranded with him.

Hotties To Watch Out For: [SPOILER!] Green Arrow is smokin’. With a name like Oliver Queen, and the nickname “Ollie,” you can bet he got into a LOT of fights during his prep school days to prove his manhood. And it shows. But don’t brush off his love interest. She might have some super chops of her own…

What Keeps Them Apart: [SPOILER!] Ollie’s loyal, good-time boy bff… is the unexpected isosceles of this love triangle. I was hoping for Batman, but ok.

Fortunately, I never get tired of a man with a bow. Yummmmmm.

Awwww. None of these colors appears in the actual palette of the show.

Stephen Amell as the abs…I mean, Green Arrow. Hell yeah!

Beauty and the Beast:

Genre: Urban Paranormal Police Procedural

Premise: [SPOILER!] Law-Student-turned-Kickass-Cop-Detective heroine Cat is stalked by a mysterious rescuer, Doctor-turned-War Hero-turned-Presumed Dead Vet-Monster. Sadly, he’s not a strange leonine magical were-beast but just a government-super-soldier from a project that lost funding (yawn). Also, his monster make-up is as weak as that premise. However, his winsome, heart-felt looks make up for everything.

Hotties To Watch Out For: Cat and Vince. Oh, the longing. Oh, the sexual tension. This is gonna be fun.

What Keeps Them Apart: [Don’t worry, so predictable, not at all a spoiler.] Paraphrasing: “I’m a monster! I don’t want to hurt you.”

Brooding. Check.

Jay Ryan (“Terra Nova”) now back from fighting dinosaurs.

Catherine “Cat” Chandler (Kristin Kreuk) dines with monster Vincent Keller (Jay Ryan). “So… Do you want to eat me?”