Haven’t you noticed how sometimes, especially in a long series, some of the middle novels end up falling flat? Here are the three biggest ways I’ve seen series fall on their face in later novels:

When the middle novel/s seem like mostly “filler,” the problem is that the characters are basically treading water in terms of plot. Sometimes, the characters literally spend whole chapters stuck in some place in the world, uncertain what to do… it’s the author who actually has no idea what to do, but the characters are made to suffer for it. Sure, there are times characters mope for years, or centuries, depending on their lifespan, whinging they don’t know what to do, but we don’t really need to see this. I love how the Twilight series handled Bella’s three months of moping. Each chapter had the name of a month as a heading…and nothing else. Three months in a row, three pages. It conveyed her devastation and detachment perfectly, without making us suffer through it too.

Another failing of poorly-thought out middle books is that they become sloppy retellings of the earlier books. The characters go through the same motions again against a new villain, or new characters replay the same basic storyline as earlier characters.

Sometimes, an author uses repetition advisedly. Maybe a character is facing the same kind of problem because she didn’t really grow as completely as she needed to when she faced it the last time, or maybe another character is having the same problem because that person needs to have a common cause with the hero. But this kind of deliberate echo usually resonates in a way that unthinking repetition does not. Most importantly, it advances the story in a way that mere repetition does not.

Sometimes, writers who try too hard to avoid the first two problems veer off in such a different direction that what you love about the story is destroyed in the process. I actually find this worse than the first two. I’d rather race through a filler novel, where the heroine slays Son of First Book’s Demon than have half the main characters killed off. (Unless you have already established from the start that Major Likable Characters Will Die, Suckers! *cough* G.R.R. Martin *cough*). The most important thing is to be true to the story: true to the characters, true to the world, true to the theme. Maybe I’m old fashioned but I believe an author should leave the dance with the Main Character she brought to the party.

My goal is to make every book in the series shine. Each one is a critical piece of Dindi and Kavio’s story, none is filler. So I will be outlining the next six books exhaustively before I even begin the revisions on my trunk draft of Mask (Book 7). I now this will frustrate some readers in the short run, and maybe I’ll even lose the impatient ones, but in the long run, the series will be stronger, better, and longer-lasting for it.

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Excerpt

He jerked his chin toward the basket at Rue’s feet. ‘That’s my payment?”

“Yes, all hazelnuts.”

He stepped over the nurl and approached, tall and broad as he came near. Rue spotted another scar as he picked up the basket, a faded one concealed between the tendons of his hands.

“And,” Rue said.

Air rushed under Felixi’s hackling feathers. Looking to Rue with a hard-line mouth, he listened.

“I’d like to arrange another catch.”

“For your new arrivals? Can’t they catch their own damned meat?”

“I doubt it. Should I tell you the whole story? I won’t ask anything for the telling, either. I’m not a bard.”

She didn’t expect it to work, a bare bribe against someone cannier than her. But Felixi stared for a hard moment and then barked a ragged sound — Rue barely recognized it as a laugh. A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.

“Fine, Rue,” he said. “Tell me your tale of Aloftway’s need.”

“Long ago,” Rue obliged. And then she shook her head, feeling radiantly absurd. “I’m not actually telling this like a legend. The village only goes back three years and four months.”

Felixi stared. His laughter had long since died — so much for lightening the air between them. Rue ought to get to the point.

“Anypace … We began this village on hopes and prayers, really. We haven’t got connections like well-known old villages, and Aloftway’s two korvi friends are too valuable to go off building renown. My father left to find allies but right now, we haven’t a notion of where he is. We’ve just been working on the beginning basics of trade — growing a surplus of crops, that sort of thing — but it’s been slow work, and now, some days ago a village fellow was killed by wolves.”

Felixi still had no comment. He stood fixed on her; Rue sensed a shift of his jaw muscles, a marginal rise in his feathered back or maybe it had never settled.

Rue went on, “It … It came right out of the yellow. We hadn’t thought wolves would mistake peoplekind for prey so easily. The fellow was only off foraging for tree bark, maybe a furlong from the edge of town. And we found a second fellow— “

As though anyone but Rue had found that fellow and guarded the secret.

“—He was the same way, hunted and torn apart by wolves. We can see the pawprints, we hear their howling on the wind… Everyone has been scared since then. No one wants to be the next friend circled and torn apart next.”

“So you’re feeding some creatures in exchange for protection,” Felixi asked.

“Dogs, I’m told. Some fellow or other breeds pups and he owes Aloftway a favour … They’ll need to be fed.”

“And you haven’t got a scrap of meat to share, so you’re asking me to fetch it each day.”

“Not every day,” Rue blurted. “I don’t think so, anypace. That’d be stupid, taking on so many dogs that we all starve.”

And with a raise of his brow, Felixi shifted — changing all over, his feathers finally settling. “Good to know that you have that much sense. Hmf. I’ll catch one more large creature for you. A deer this time, for a half-bushel of nuts or something like them. I’ll be three days.” He paused like his own bristly words stuck in his throat. “I don’t make long-term arrangements, Rue, so tell your mages to scrape out a better plan.”

“We will. I’ll make sure we find a solution.”

He made a low, flat sound, and turned away. Yellow plumage fanned between them, his wings spreading like the closing of a door curtain.

“Felixi? There’s a parchment pouch, tucked down the side. I salt-roasted a few of the nuts, they make a fine snack — it’s Aloftway’s thanks for your trouble.”

The look he shot Rue was different somehow — lighter, more bitter, and with an odd twist of a smile. In this gemstone moment, Rue was looking at his features in profile, his unstyled shock of mane feathers and the shallow curve of his nose. Felixi’s face was younger than she had thought. No lines from smiling. No grey feathers where his hide and plumage met. Just his mouth set like carved stone and the razor thought in his eyes.

“I’ll leave your basket in this field when I’m finished with it,” was all he said.

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