The Holy Grail for many authors is to write a popular book series. In a popular series, the vast majority of readers who read book one go on to read book two and so on. Writing a popular book series also means you have many marketing advantages, namely that your advertising is far more profitable.
Readers who loved your first two books often only need a single mention of book three to prompt them to buy it. Simply let them know it exists, and they’ll go buy it.
But writing a series is also risky. Generally, you can only sell subsequent books to folks who purchased, read, and enjoyed the first book in the series.
If sales for book one are poor, or if people don’t finish reading it, the lackluster sales and reader disinterest will hurt the rest of the books in your series, regardless of how well they are written. Without a black swan event, book two will never outsell book one. Therein lies the risk. However, a series also offers the possibility of a high reward.
We can’t say the same for standalone books. Your second standalone book can outsell your debut novel. In fact, it’s very common. For example, everyone who read The Hobbit went on to read Lord of the Rings, but many people who read The Fellowship of the Ring never read The Hobbit.
For some authors, writing books in a series has shackled their otherwise good books to a relatively unappealing freshman effort.
Writing books in a series is not always the answer. Authors of popular series might be saying, “Everyone needs to do this!” But just because it was right for them doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.
So, how do you know if your book is a good fit for a series? How do you handle marketing a book series in a way that helps you sell more books?
I spoke with Kristina Stanley, best-selling, award-winning author and the founder of Fictionary.co, a tool that helps you structure, outline, and improve your story to make it easier to sell and more fun to read.
On the Novel Marketing podcast, we have talked about Literary Universe Marketing, where stories share the same story world. For example, maybe characters from your book one romance show up in another romance. But we’ve never really talked about series on this podcast before.
If you want to write a series, the first book must be good.
I realized how crucial a first book is while working with an author on his marketing strategy. He didn’t do a great job marketing his first book, but he significantly improved his efforts when it came to his second book. He had a better marketing plan and a launch team, and everything seemed to be going right. But the second book barely sold any copies. He was puzzled and couldn’t figure out why his improved marketing wasn’t leading to better sales.
I bought his first book and quickly realized the problem: it was awful. The readers who purchased the first book hadn’t even finished it. The writing felt more like an annotated outline than a fully developed story. It seemed like it needed several more revisions. I couldn’t even get through the first chapter. It was simply not ready for publication and desperately needed one or more good editors.
As a marketing guy, it’s not my place to say, “Hey, your book isn’t well-written.” But I do think it explains the marketing problem.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to write a great first book and they’re wondering whether it could be a series?
Kristina: Writers who want to write a series must ask themselves before they start writing, what type of series they’re writing. The type of series will impact the whole structure of the series.
They also need to know whether their idea will support a series. Writing one novel is a huge task. The job gets bigger if you want to write three, five, seven, or twenty.
First, you must decide whether you want to write an open or closed series.
What is an open series?
An open series is like the Jack Reacher series. Every book features the same main character but each book is a different story. Bridgerton features different protagonists but the same setting. The author has eight books for eight siblings, but the number of books could be extended to the cousins, aunts, and uncles with the same romance structure in there. An open series has the potential for unlimited books, but one uniting factor holds it together.
What is a closed series?
Examples of a closed series would be Fourth Wing, Hunger Games, and Twilight, where each series has a specific number of books, and the series tells one story across those three (or five or seven) books.
The story arc begins in book one and continues through the end of book three. However, each book also has its own story arc so that each one can stand alone. That said, there must be a hook to get readers from one standalone book to the next book in the series, but the hook can’t be so big that it frustrates readers.
When you know ahead of time that you’re writing an open series, you can structure the series appropriately.
For example, Bridgerton is always about a Bridgerton sibling having a love interest that, for some reason, they can’t be with. That’s the story in every single book, and people love them. Whether that’s your genre or not, it doesn’t matter. You can’t argue with its commercial success. It’s successful because each story has the same structure.
In a closed series, the reader is looking for something different. If you, as the author, know what you’re doing ahead of time, you can structure that first book to fit the type of series you intend to write, and then you’ve got a starting point.
Without knowing what type of series you intend to write, it’s hard to know if you have enough to sustain a series.
Thomas: An open series is actually easier for a reader to start at book three because it’s a standalone story. There’s less of that long plot that stretches from book to book.
All of Tom Clancy’s books featured Jack Reacher, but you never felt obligated to go back and read the first book and work your way through in order. You could if you wanted to, but each book stood on its own feet. Each book was its own invitation for readers to enter the Jack Reacher world.
By contrast, if you’re reading Lord of the Rings and start with The Two Towers, you’re wondering, “Who’s Frodo, and why is this ring so important?”
The advantage of a closed series is that it pressures the reader to read book two. Hopefully, you wrote a satisfying conclusion at the end of book one, but the true satisfying conclusion doesn’t come until the very end of the final book.
Whereas with an open series, readers can read one book without feeling compelled to read another. They might wonder, “Why do I need to read another Bridgerton story? I’m sure the next sister will get married.”
Kristina: Romance readers want a happily-ever-after ending, so that structure works great in that genre. The stories are similar but different. Many detective stories feature the same detective in different scenarios, where the detective is the common factor in every book.
There are many ways to do an open series, but the trick for either is the ending and the beginning in between books. You must address the beginning of book two differently than book one because the backstory is different.
In a closed series, you assume the reader has read the first book, but you don’t know for sure, so you have to include enough backstory that the story makes sense, but not so much that readers who read the first book will be bored.
In an open series, you need to do that same thing in a different way. A detective on the first murder case of their career is different than the person they become at the beginning of the second book. So, you need to include enough backstory to understand what that means.
Consider book two in the Divergent series. The backstory is that she has killed her friend, and she’s been shot. That’s all the information you get, but it’s enough. If you read that book first, you’d understand her mental state. You don’t really need to know how or why. And if you’ve read the previous book, it’s a reminder, “Oh yeah, she shot her friend, and then she got shot.” So, there’s a trick to ending and starting each book in a series.
How do you know if your book has what it takes to lead to the next book in the series?
Thomas: So how do you know if your book has what it takes to lead to the next book?
Closed Series Story Structure
Kristina: For a closed series, I recommend creating a high-level outline for the series story. For example, a high-level outline in Hunger Games might highlight that Katniss must take over, win the rebellion, and take out the Capitol to free all her people.
The inciting incident for the series is the thing that shakes up the protagonist’s world. If you don’t have an inciting incident, it means nothing changed, and that’s boring. In the series, there’s a first plot point, just like in a standalone novel, where the protagonist accepts the story goal. If they don’t accept the story goal, there’s no story.
At the middle plot point, the protagonist goes from reactive to proactive. And I want to be careful here because when you go from plot point one to the middle plot point, they’re reactive, but in an action sort of way. They’re not doing nothing. But at the middle plot point, they have to be doing more than reacting to what’s happened. As an author, you have to flip that, or your protagonist isn’t going to drive the story, and they won’t get their goal. Your protagonist has to be driving the action rather than reacting at this point.
At the second plot point, your character is at their lowest point in the story, but the real trick about this second plot point is that they get the final piece of information they need to succeed in the climax. If they never get that final piece of information, they can’t succeed, and the story never ends.
Finally, there’s a climax where they do or don’t get their goal. So, in a story arc for your trilogy, your middle plot point will be somewhere in the middle of book two.
Then, you outline the next level and create a story arc for books one, two, and three. That’s enough to know whether you’ve got a story. Those two outlines will tell you what’s happening or how your protagonist or magic system needs to grow.
Open Series Story Structure
For an open series, you have the same kind of story in every book, but each story must be different. Stephanie Plum is super famous example. She’s a bounty hunter. Somebody runs away, and she’s got to catch them, or she loses her job, has no money, and has nowhere to live. That’s the story in every single book, but people love it.
To find out if you have multiple books for an open series, we recommend that you come up with three blurbs for three different books. You’ll decide what type of criminal is running away and how it will happen, and then develop your story arc scenes for that book. If you can do that for three books, you know you have enough to keep writing your open series.
In every subsequent book, someone will run away, and the protagonist will have to go get them. Every open series follows a pattern.
Thomas: I recommend keeping this outline to yourself and not using it in your marketing, especially if you’ve only written one book, particularly in genres like fantasy and sci-fi (though this applies to other genres, too). There are two reasons for this: first, your book needs to stand on its own and be valuable by itself. Second, when selling a book, you should focus on that single book rather than saying, “It’ll be a satisfying story after I’ve written two or three more.” That makes it much harder to sell. This is especially true in sci-fi and fantasy, where readers often suffer from “battered reader syndrome.”
What is battered reader syndrome?
“Battered reader syndrome” is when readers lose confidence that an author will finish their series. This has happened with authors like George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss. Robert Jordan passed away before completing his series, though fortunately, Brandon Sanderson stepped in to finish it. As a result, fantasy readers have become wary. Sci-fi and fantasy readers are cautious, and you need to assure them that the book you’ve written will provide a satisfying read and won’t leave them hanging. In fact, many readers won’t even start a series until it’s fully completed.
But this creates a catch-22: You’ll know you can write book two in the series when book one sells really well.
While you have hopes and dreams and outlines for your second and third books, you should be laser-focused on writing such a satisfying ending for the first book that people can’t help but tell their friends about it. In fact, it’s so satisfying that it could be successful even if you don’t write those other books. The original Star Wars movie worked as a standalone film, and there wasn’t really anything alluding to a sequel. It was a medium-budget sci-fi film, and I don’t think anybody working on it expected it to be successful. Nobody was a star, and it was filmed on a sound stage in the UK. Then it became a smash hit, and they followed exactly your model.
What knowledge does the protagonist get that helps him in the climax? Luke Skywalker learns how to use the force. In the second act of that film, he uses the force to try to redeem his father in the third.
Kristina: As you outline, you can do any level of outlining you want. You can create a minimal outline that’s just the story arc scenes, or you can include every single scene. Every artist is different. The key is to outline in a way that makes you happy and creative.
But it’s important to remember two things about your outline. First, your basic outline is yours to hold on to. Nobody else has to see it if you don’t want to share it. Second, you will continue to update it until that story is written.
Every time you go through your outline, you’ll add something that will require you to change something else. Don’t feel like you have to perfect it before you’ve written your book. That’s hard to do because creativity takes over when you’re writing. Hold it loosely and keep it private.
Sometimes, I write a scene that’s just fun to write. Maybe it doesn’t belong in the story, but I liked writing it, so I can just set it aside. Your outline will help you stay focused in that regard.
Thomas: Readers also influence your story to some extent. Often, you’ll find that a side character really resonates with them. For example, everyone might say, “Oh my gosh, I love the sister! She’s such a cool character. Why does she only have three or four scenes? Every scene she’s in is amazing!” Meanwhile, they might feel less enthusiastic about the brother, saying, “Oh, he’s such a bore.”
When you get that kind of feedback, you can start to think, “Hmm, I’ve included a lot of scenes with the brother. Are there any scenes I can shift to the sister without losing the story’s impact?” Rewriting according to reader feedback can make your second book more engaging because you adjust the story accordingly.
Kristina: However, you should be careful about switching point-of-view characters. If you write book one from one point-of-view character and then add others in book two, it’s difficult for the reader.
Somewhere along the line in the Divergent series, the author decided to tell the story from a different character’s point of view. The first two books in the series are written from a single point of view, but the third book has two point-of-view characters. It’s a bit disturbing to the readers.
You can do it, but be careful. If your readers love your first book and the single point of view, they will be jolted by the multiple point-of-view characters in your second book. They won’t like it simply because it’s different.
You have to be careful that you are leaning the reader into those changes. When your series gets successful and you start thinking of a sequel, prequel, or spin-off, you’ll need to figure out how to do it.
Thomas: Changing the point of view is one of the trickiest adjustments to make. I was referring to giving likable characters a larger role in the plot. Shifting to their perspective might be a good idea, but it’s risky, depending on how your story is structured.
For example, Brandon Sanderson includes a dozen point-of-view characters in every book, so adding two or three more isn’t a big deal for him. However, if your book is written in the first person, it’s risky to suddenly introduce third-person scenes from another character. The first book in a series makes a promise to the reader that the following books will follow the same structure and style as the first.
I think it was very classy of Tolkien to start The Lord of the Rings as a new series, rather than making it a direct sequel to The Hobbit. The tone is so much different between the two. Even though The Fellowship of the Ring shares the same world and characters, the shift in tone and stakes is significant.
The Hobbit is a joyful book with relatively low stakes. It’s mainly about whether the dwarves will get their money and survive the journey. In contrast, the stakes in The Lord of the Rings are much higher, involving the fate of the world and the future of the free peoples of Middle-earth. It’s a different level of seriousness.
You have to be careful about how much you diverge from the first book.
Now, if you’re traditionally published and you’ve sold a million copies, your publisher might say, “I know your outline called for three books, but can you add two more books? We’ll pay you $2 million.” Suddenly, you’ll realize your outline is quite flexible.
The rules shift when you’re successful, but you have to earn it.
How do you launch book one with a bang that eventually leads readers to book two?
Thomas: You’ll never have a series if you don’t have solid sales of book one. How do we launch book one in a way that sets up that series for success?
Kristina: Much of it comes down to your book description. When people read your book, they go into it knowing there will be another book. But it must be written in a way that doesn’t give away the ending. That requires a huge skill set, and it’s extremely difficult to get it right.
The first book is the start of a story, and that needs to be clear. Most of the blurb is centered around the story for book one, and the blurb will have some type of stakes statement like “the protagonist must do this or she’s going to die.” That problem has to be solved in book one.
In Hunger Games, Katniss has to survive the Hunger Games. That’s all book one is. The Capitol and the districts living in misery and the rebellion all come later.
Thomas: And Hunger Games works as a standalone book.
Kristina: The book’s ending is very interesting because it holds plot point one for the series. At the end of the book, Katniss and Peeta have won. They’re alive. Then the Capitol declares, “Now, one of you must kill the other.” Instead of complying, they decide to eat the poison berries they have in their pockets, intending to die together. Since this is being televised live, the Capitol backs down, allowing them to survive. They return to District 12, but the hook for the next book lies in their strained relationship. Although they’ve been love interests throughout the story, now they want nothing to do with each other. They were once poor, but now they have plenty of food. What will happen next?
The key plot point, where Katniss unknowingly accepts the story’s larger goal of taking down the Capitol, is when they decide to eat the berries. Though she doesn’t realize it, by defying the Capitol on live television, she has set herself up as a symbol of rebellion. From that moment, everyone around her starts pushing her toward leading the revolution, even though she’s unaware that she has already taken on that role.
Thomas: The reader of book one doesn’t know that these seeds are being planted for future books. We just think she has berries in her pockets. We don’t realize it’s a revolutionary act.
Kristina: That’s why foreshadowing is so good. It makes the event that happens in the future believable. When it happens, you get it. When book two’s supporting characters are trying to keep her alive, you understand why.
One of the tricks to ending book one is to write it so that a reader can finish it and be totally happy. But when the reader reads book two, they’re reminded of previous events, and they put the pieces together.
Thomas: You can have a double foreshadowing. You can include an action that makes sense in the context of book one but also has additional meaning for the next book.
You can see this use of double foreshadowing in the Bible. In the book of Isaiah, God told the king to ask him for a sign confirming the prophecy. But the king refused to ask, and God, through Isaiah, gave him a sign anyway, saying, “And this will be the sign, a virgin will give birth, and this child will be born.”
In the Bible, the word “virgin” can mean virgin, or it can also mean a young woman. So, the sign had two meanings. One sign was that the princess of the kingdom would give birth, which was the immediate fulfillment of the sign. But there was also a future fulfillment in the next book, also known as The New Testament, where the child Jesus was born to an actual virgin.
You can use that same technique in your fiction, and it will pull people in. Isaiah is a satisfying book, but the New Testament book of Matthew is made richer by alluding back to Isaiah.
We’re talking about planting seeds for book two into book one, but we also need book one to sell well. In the context of a series, my biggest tip is to leave all or most of the “series” branding out, especially if you’ve only have book one written.
How do you fight battered readers syndrome?
Thomas: How do you fight that “battered reader syndrome” where readers hesitate to commit to your characters and story world because they don’t know if you’ll finish the series?
Mailing List
Kristina: If you’ve built a mailing list, that’s a great way to keep readers informed about your writing and the progress of your book. When readers see you’re actively engaged in the process, they’ll trust that another book is on the way. But if you go completely silent, they may doubt whether a second book is coming.
It’s crucial to have a strong first book that makes readers eager for the next one. Once the first book is out, start talking about the second—if you’re confident you’ll write it. You don’t need to give away plot details, but you can share updates on your writing process, how releasing a book is affecting your time, and how you’re balancing it all. These insights show readers you’re committed and actively working on the next book.
Serialization
Thomas: Another option is to write it as a serial story on Royal Road, Substack, or Patreon. Lit RPG is one of the hottest genres right now, especially in audiobooks, and almost all lit RPGs are released serially on Royal Road before they’re published as books. Readers can sense the serialized nature of the storytelling, and you can demonstrate that “Yes, I’m writing this ten-book series, but every week or month, I’m adding a new installment.”
Publishing Cadence
Another powerful strategy is to choose a publishing cadence. Scott Sigler has published a book on the first day of April every year for the last 15 years or so. His readers know April Fool’s Day is a new Scott Sigler book day, which allows him to commit to a long series.
Because of his consistency, he can point to his history as proof that he’ll finish. That steady cadence allows him to build credibility.
If you’re writing romance, maybe you’ll release a book every year on Valentine’s Day. Eventually, you’ll come to own that day. Commit to it and fulfill your commitment. If you “don’t feel like it” one year and fail to publish on that date, it will all blow up in your face, and you’ll lose credibility with your readers.
What about releasing the first two books in the same year?
Kristina: In a series, do you think it’s better to release book two six months after book one to keep readers engaged and then switch to an annual release schedule? Or is sticking to a consistent yearly cadence from the start the better approach?
Thomas: I recorded an episode called The Tortoise Release Method, which calls for a one-year writing cadence. The episode is my rebuttal to rapid release. Rapid release works for authors who are already successful and already have a vibrant following that will read as many books as the author can write.
But rapid release takes away the ability to do a proper launch. The downside of releasing book two too soon after book one is that you lose the opportunity to take advantage of pricing tactics.
With a series, you typically launch book one at full price. Then, a few months before book two comes out, you start doing price promotions.
You’ll run a BookBub featured deal for $0.99 and a Kindle countdown deal for the same price. Check out the following episodes to learn more about price promotions:
- How to Price Your Book Using Marketing Psychology
- How to Use Price Pulsing to Supercharge Your Backlist Sales
- Book Marketing 101: How to Price Your Ebook
Each promotion helps juice sales for book one, which gets readers excited for book two.
You need the time to run a proper launch before all your price promotion because you don’t want to launch a book as a discount product. You don’t want to be a discount author because once you’re a discount author, you can never be a premium author in the eyes of the readers. If you’re a premium author, you can still become a discount author.
It takes an awful lot of work to write a good book. It’s a difficult task. I think a writer should price their first book comparatively with other traditionally published books in the genre because it shows you’re valuing your work.
Kristina: You’re saying, “My book is good and worth its price.” If readers see your first book priced at $0.99 or $1.99, they might think, “Hmm, maybe the author doesn’t believe it’s a high-quality book and is only targeting people willing to pay a very low price.” I believe debut authors should value their work more highly, but that’s just my opinion, and it’s not based on data.
Thomas: The other advantage of launching a full-priced book is that when you do a short-term discount on BookBub, readers see it as a bargain.
If the full price is $4.99, then a discount of one dollar isn’t very motivating. That low anchor price kills the opportunity.
You need to allow time for that first book to sell at full price before you start running price promotions.
After that, I recommend running price promotions on book one before every subsequent book release. Before you release books two, three, and four, you’ll discount book one to bring people into your series and get them excited for the next books.
That’s why it’s critical for book one to be extremely well-written and satisfying. If book one isn’t resonating with readers seven years from now, it’s really hard to sell book seven.
Kristina: That brings up an interesting point. When I’m browsing for a new series on Netflix, I often think, “Oh, this looks interesting, but it came out in 2012 and only had one season. Maybe it wasn’t good enough for anyone to continue.” On the other hand, if I see that it came out in 2012 and has had a season every year since, I think, “I’d better watch this. It must be good!”
I wonder if the same applies to books when a series reaches its seventh, eighth, or ninth book. People who love that genre are always looking for a new series to dive into. When they discover a well-established series, they’re likely to go back to the first book and start from there. So, it’s interesting to consider promoting book one when subsequent books are released. I like that idea.
Thomas: You’ll still do a proper launch for book seven (and following), but the more books you have in your series, the earlier you’ll start your price promotions before your book launch. Do the math based on how long your typical reader takes to read a book. If you’reyour typical reader takes two weeks to read a book, then schedule your price promotion so readers can finish the prior books and still have time to anticipate and wait for your new book. Anticipation is so powerful from a marketing perspective. Waiting amplifies their excitement and enjoyment, so don’t rob your readers of that.
Once you have 12 books in your series, you’ll run price promotions on that first book every month. By then, you’re not worried about timing because you’ve got enough additional books that people can read at full price.
After you’ve finished publishing your series, a magical thing happens: the bettered readers come out of the woodwork. They see the finished series and permit themselves to read it. At that point, I would do a big marketing campaign saying, “Series complete!” and you’ll get a nice sales bump.
Should authors create a box set when the series is finished?
Thomas: When the series is complete, authors are tempted to immediately put the books into a box set, but I recommend waiting. Let your completed series bask in its completeness for at least a year.
Eventually, your series will start to feel old. Sales are typically high right after release and then trail off over time. Introducing a box set can be a great strategy for marketing a book series and can rejuvenate sales.
I got suckered into a Sean Oswald series. It was a lit RPG series about a family that’s taken to this fantasy world. There was a box set on Audible for books one, two, and three, and I thought, “Okay, one credit for 30 hours sounds like a bargain.” I was instantly hooked. By the time I bought book four, I went ahead and bought book five at the same time. I was fully committed to the series. He’s juggling a dozen different series at once, and I wanted him to stop writing the others and keep writing more in the one I was enjoying.
Normally, box sets don’t work on me, but as an audiobook listener, I know audiobooks can be pricier, so getting the box set made it feel safer to try the series, and it totally pulled me in.
Kristina: What about doing a three-book box set of a seven-book series and not including all the books in the series?
Thomas: That’s what he did. He had a box set for the first three books, and I paid full price for books four and five. I think that’s a good approach, especially for ebooks and audiobooks. Don’t sell the whole series for cheap. You don’t want to devalue yourself, but there is a time for a strategically priced box set.
It’s like the price pulsing on book one we discussed before, only in this instance it’s extended into that trilogy.
What tools help us outline and write satisfying and enticing endings?
Thomas: When planning for the long haul of writing and marketing a series, we’ve talked about how powerful a strong outline can be for structuring a story.
You have a piece of software, Fictionary. that helps people write those satisfying and enticing endings. How can writers use it?
Kristina: You can outline from scratch in our software or import a novel and edit it from a story structure perspective. Everything in Fictionary is about story structure. We don’t do copy editing or prose. We look at the structure of your story.
Our different automated outlines show you all the reader-expected scenes for a fantasy novel, a romance novel, an open series, or a closed series. Once you know what you need, you can quickly pull out your story arc structure by knowing your protagonist, the story goal, and the stakes.
Inside the software, we draw the story arc for you. We draw the word count per scene, characters per scene, and scenes per character. We will draw a whole outline for you, where the story arc scenes are marked so you can see everything there. Then you’ll know you have all the scenes you need that a reader expects in the genre you’re writing in.
We’re all about commercial genre fiction, and the software is designed to speed you up and keep you focused.
We also have a community of over 3,000 members who are professional editors and writers, so we have a ton of discussions about stories and story structure.
Thomas: Many writers see outlining and discovery writing as being at odds, but an outline doesn’t keep you from doing discovery writing. You’re still discovering the scene as you’re writing it, and you’re still discovering the outline as you’re writing it, so you change it as you go. The outline isn’t meant to constrain you.
When you watch a painter work, they often start with a pencil and do a rough sketch before applying any paint. But they’re not constrained by that sketch. If they decide to go in a different direction, they can easily paint over it. That’s the kind of freedom you have, and that sketch keeps you from running out of canvas.
Discovery writers who have no outline often end up writing a 250,000-word novel, which isn’t commercially viable. It requires too many pages to be profitable with print-on-demand. That author usually hasn’t planned to spend $10,000 for offset printing. If the author had run those 250,000 words through an outline, it could have been structured into multiple books, which would have sold for a lot more money and would have had better pacing.
I’m a big fan of outlining. Successful discovery writers tend to have read so many books on craft that they’ve internalized the outline and don’t need the software because it’s already running in their heads.
That’s what Jerry Jenkins does. After you’ve written 100 books, you can do that, too.
Kristina: An outline helps me clarify what my story is about. As I plan my next plot point, I come up with all kinds of ideas because I know the general direction it needs to take. Then I think about the possibilities that would get me there.
I prefer a loose outline, where I know the next key point I need to reach but still have the flexibility to explore different ideas. This approach makes it much easier for me to develop ideas that fit the story and align with what I’m trying to convey.
Thomas: Kristina has written a book called Secrets to Outlining a Novel, and you owe it to yourself to read it. I think everyone should write at least one short story from an outline. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
I think all authors should try discovery writing as well as outlining. Almost everyone lands somewhere in the middle, but once you’ve tried the extremes, you’ll know where you fall. A tool like Fictionary is really helpful. You can get the software with education and coaching from Kristina and her experts, so check out the following links.
Featured Patrons
J.A. Webb, author of The Seekers Series Book 1: Fragments
Father Curtis, priest of the Order, seeks solace in his secluded parish, sheltered from the oppressive regime. But then, unjustly branded a heretic, he embarks on a harrowing journey for survival.
Related Episodes
