how to write a really long series

Reader AP emails to ask about writing a long series. Since FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE hit #31 on the Kindle US store yesterday, this seems like a really good time to answer his questions:

First of all, I absolutely love your writing style and your books in general. I was curious as to how you come up with a series plot. Do you first for example make a map of the land where the action is? And then come up with all the different plot twists etc. Or you have a rough idea of what you want to put in at start and it is developing as you go through? Because I was thinking about the technical aspects of coming up with so many great books within such a short period of time. Keep up the awesome work!

Thanks for the kind words! Now to answer your questions.

First of all, I absolutely hate drawing maps. I refused to do it for years, and finally yielded to popular demand. So I definitely do not write a long series with a map in mind! The map tends to come later after enough people ask for it.

Instead, what I do for a long series is a lot of outlining and planning.

First, I figure out the overall arc for the entire series. What is the central conflict and the main antagonist? Then I decided on the main characters and their specific character arcs.

By that point, this is usually enough to work out a synopsis of the entire series. Then it’s time to divide the synopsis into individual books. It’s important to have an antagonist and a fully formed plot for each individual book. Otherwise you fall prey to one of the weaknesses of long-running fantasy series, where there’s an entire 800 page book where the characters do nothing but walk around the woods or spend like a million chapters sailing down a river or something.

When I write a synopsis of an individual book, I start by writing a list of the really significant or spectacular scenes I want in it, and then I sketch out the rest of the scenes to connect the big scenes. Then I chop the synopsis up into individual chapters and start writing.

It’s good to have both external and internal conflicts for your characters. In FROSTBORN, Ridmark’s external conflict is stopping the return of the Frostborn, but his internal conflict is the fact that he never dealt with his wife’s death and is very bad at processing grief in general. In GHOST EXILE, Caina’s external conflict is fighting Grand Master Callatas and solving the mystery of the wraithblood, but her internal conflict is dealing with her death wish. In CLOAK GAMES, Nadia’s external conflict is carrying out Lord Morvilind’s missions and trying to save her brother’s life, but her internal conflict is her struggle to keep those missions from twisting her into a monster.  In SILENT ORDER, March’s external conflict is carrying out his missions for the Silent Order, but his internal conflict is that he refuses to have anything more than superficial human connections because he hates both what he used to be and the Machinists. (In DEMONSOULED, Mazael’s external and internal conflicts usually wind up overlapping.)

You can also get a lot of plot mileage when the internal conflict bubbles over into the external one.

Best to avoid cliffhangers. People really hate those. It’s good to have a complete story in each book. I will only do a proper cliffhanger in the second-to-last book of a series. (I think GHOST IN THE PACT was the most cliffhangery thing I’ve ever written.)

I do improvise a bit while writing. Like, in the original outline for the FROSTBORN series, the Anathgrimm, the Traveler, Nightmane Forest, and Third weren’t in the story at all. Mara was in the outline, but she was just Jager’s slightly air-headed girlfriend. Except when I got to Mara’s first scene in FROSTBORN: THE MASTER THIEF, I was bored with her character, so I made the change that she was half dark elven and used to work for the Red Family. The Anathgrimm, the Traveler, and Third all sprang from the logical consequences of that change to her character.

And when in doubt about what to do next, have a man with a gun come through the door. Or a sword, if it’s a fantasy novel. 🙂

-JM