Querying on a Series

[Jo Zebedee]

Actually, its one of the things which irks me about GRRM, too. He does this fantastic cliff hanger that doesn't really answer the question posed, and then hey-ho you're into the next book. It's a great sales lifter, but leaves me, the reader, feeling manipulated.

I much prefer something like discworld where each can be read alone, but some of which are still like popping on an old coat and meeting some familiar characters. Or in the case of Nanny Ogg, popping in the earplugs first....

As for the idea of an overarching plot, this has just been introed to me. I'm not sure if it's as prevalent in sci fi as fantasy, but I can see where it has happened. It's pretty well convinced me not to do a trilogy with the first books as the answers are given in the second. (Unless of course they turn into the Harry potter of the sci fi world, and I get asked to write loads more and make mega bucks. the window is always open. )

 

[Peter Graham]

Let's not run before we can walk.

New beekeepers frequently get so overexcited about queen rearing, finding the (non swarmy but also probably non-existent) English black bee, furtling about with moving bees to heather or drowning them in oxalic acid that they forget about the basics - get a colony through its first winter and learn how to read a frame of brood.

Same goes for us wannabe writers. Great, epic visions are all well and good, but all a publisher or agent wants is a story they can sell. If you hold any gold back from your book because you want to use it in a later book, you are simply weakening your debut and lessening your chances of getting it picked up. Good, self contained stories is what we should be producing. Clear beginnings, middles and ends.

Of course, publishers and agents also want to keep milking the cash cow. So if you get picked up, you will need other ideas and there's no reason why you shouldn't link them all as a series. But trust the new ides to come in time. Don't take the ideas for book one and deliberately spread them over three books like too little jam over too much bread.

Regards,

Peter

 

[Mouse]

Mine's a stand alone. But the ending will be open enough to write more if anybody ever wants it. Personally, I think that's probably the best way to go.

 

[Esfires]

I agree with Peter, here. Don't worry about a series for now, just write a single good book. Take everything you have and put it into that work, holding nothing back. Once you're a more experienced writer, then you can worry about creating an epic, overarching story. Right now you just need to focus on writing a good story.

My own WIP is a standalone. It has no chance for a sequel, the story having about as much finality as you can get, but there's plenty of room for a possible prequel.

And don't give a thought to publishers being more receptive to a series, that tends to be way more over-hyped than is born out in reality.

 

[RcGrant]

Let's not run before we can walk.

New beekeepers frequently get so overexcited about queen rearing, finding the (non swarmy but also probably non-existent) English black bee, furtling about with moving bees to heather or drowning them in oxalic acid that they forget about the basics - get a colony through its first winter and learn how to read a frame of brood.

Same goes for us wannabe writers. Great, epic visions are all well and good, but all a publisher or agent wants is a story they can sell. If you hold any gold back from your book because you want to use it in a later book, you are simply weakening your debut and lessening your chances of getting it picked up. Good, self contained stories is what we should be producing. Clear beginnings, middles and ends.

Of course, publishers and agents also want to keep milking the cash cow. So if you get picked up, you will need other ideas and there's no reason why you shouldn't link them all as a series. But trust the new ides to come in time. Don't take the ideas for book one and deliberately spread them over three books like too little jam over too much bread.

Regards,

Peter

I agree. In theory. I would never set out to write like this. I was coming from my current position, which is where a plot idea has got too big for one book. I'm not a new writer, I'm not at the start of my book either. I wanted to see where people felt the line was between "standalone" and "series", in terms of story. What I have gathered from this thread is that while the definition of each seems to be the same, the goalposts are in different places for different people, which is interesting.

I'm going to finish what I started, regardless, and pitch it, and see what happens. No bites? That's fine. I have plenty more bait.

 

[Cynric]

If you hold any gold back from your book because you want to use it in a later book, you are simply weakening your debut and lessening your chances of getting it picked up.

This was really important realization for me. My current WIP is a distillation of the first three books in my (imagined) epic series. It suddenly dawned on me that the odds of getting that first deal were vastly improved by taking all the best ideas of the saga and putting them in one book. As you say: trust that more ideas will come; don't short change the reader in the first episode.

My only worry now is that I am *really* tempted to retain material that slows the pace of book 1, because I want to sew the seeds for future books.

 

[Cynric]

On the other hand I bought Peter F. Hamilton's The Reality Dysfunction not aware that it was part of a trilogy and it soon became clear that it was pretty much a big story cut into three books. I eventually got round to the other two for completeness, but partly because of this (feeling a little cheated!)* I haven't read anything of his since.

*and feeling a little stupid that I didn't thoroughly check the book for 'part 1' or suchlike, but it did not mention anything that said it was a series on the outside cover, back or front.

I know what you mean. I bought Hyperion by Dan Simmons, without realizing it was the first of a two-parter (and later series).

As the pages in my right hand started to thin alarmingly without any sign of the plot resolving, I started to get a terrible sinking feeling.

It's a good job that they are two of the best sci-fi books I've ever read, or I would have been very cross.

 

[Brev]

Right now you just need to focus on writing a good story.
.

And what if that good story comes in at 220,000 words?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I've heard the opposite advice, in the particular case of fantasy (I think from John Jarrold, who posted here once upon a time, amongst others).

I remember that John Jerrold said this, too.

Write the best book you can, always, but if the story you are telling happens to have the potential for sequels or spin-offs, you'll have a better chance of selling it.

 

[Glitch]

if the story you are telling happens to have the potential for sequels or spin-offs, you'll have a better chance of selling it.

This is the point I was trying to make. As always, Teresa says it better

 

[Esfires]

And what if that good story comes in at 220,000 words?

Edit it down into an even better 120k word story.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It depends on the story. If you edit out 100,000 words, you might end up with a very detailed outline, instead of a book.

 

[Warren_Paul]

There is no possible way the plot arc revolving around my current protagonist could be finished in one book. I'm writing YA, so have an even smaller word limit to work with. I had no choice but to make it a cliffhanger. I don't believe there is anything wrong with the way the book ends, the story will be resolved in the second book, and then the third will follow the story of another character.

Word count easily gets out of control. I realised as much when I started writing my first draft and hit 100k, yet had only got quarter the way through my originally planned synopsis.

 

[Peter Graham]

And what if that good story comes in at 220,000 words?

As Es suggests, the first question would be whether some editing was appropriate.

Of course, there are stories so vast and complex that anything less than 220,000 words would not do justice to them. But very many stories are not so complex - or, at least, lose nothing by being told more simply. To my mind, there is a certain beauty in simplicity.

It's also important not to confuse story and plot. There can't be many plots that would genuinely require such a huge wordcount. Take JK Rowling. The plot is simple and none the worse for being used many times before - against all odds, boy saves world from evil. Now, what JKR does across the seven books is engineer the boy saving the world (or, at least, an important aspect of it) on a number of different occasions. She could just as easily have condensed her story into one book. But as it happened, she was a very talented writer who was able to take in many recognisable elements from our language, history and myth and to serve them up in a new and innovative way*. I think that was probably her hook. She was therefore able to paint her world first and foremost and then set up a simple plot in that world which recurred over the seven books.

The massive difference between JKR and the rest of us is that she could build convincing worlds whereas most of us cannot. Not really. Most (fantasy) worldbuilding is a fairly tepid reheat of Disneyfied cod-medieval crossed with an early D&D module. And if we don't have JKR's skills at worldbuilding, it may well play to our strengths to focus on character and plot. A well-built world can help lift a work and give it undoubted series potential, but unless we can be sure that our worlds genuinely are engaging, credible and deep, we run the risk of producing a poorly built world. And poorly built almost inevitably worlds lead to rambling, low quality books.

Regards,

Peter

* Her names are a triumph. They all have a certain familiarity - and with good reason. Many of them are existing words which have fallen out of fashion - Mundungus, muggle, Dumbledore etc. Many of the rest are the names of obscure little English villages - including Dursley and Flitwick.