Forgotten Realms Novel Set (Yahoo Image Search)
The collection above is not of a single series. Those are multiple series that take place in the same world, which is also part of the Dungeons & Dragons games. Each series can stand alone, but connects through a world that grows with every installment. Some show the Forgotten Realms to its core while others are more local. So, how easy is it to do something of this scale?
First of all, I’ll say it’s much easier to do this with movies/comics (Marvel) and TV shows (Star Trek, Law & Order). Novels on the other hand are a more challenging medium, especially if it’s one author going alone. You have multiple authors in the collection above, which means each one works off the same world notes and adds their own touch. This can still be risky because you could undo another author’s work or step on the feet of a story that has yet to be released. Communication must be key to something like this if you have tons of cooks in the kitchen. Perhaps it’s easier to do it as a solo act.
Think again and I’m saying this from experience. Here are some things I’ve learned as a person who is creating a multi-series epic:
- Most people won’t recognize what you’re doing. This comes in many forms. One is that readers treat all of your stories as isolated pieces, which causes confusion during parts where they cross over. Others think it’s all the same characters, but with a different series title. For example, I mention Windemere vampires as a future series and I get responses that include complaints about me turning Nyx into a vampire and questions about which part of the USA it’ll take place in. Finally, there are those who simply won’t let an author step out of the first series. Yes, I’ve been told that I can’t retire the Legends cast and have to stick with them until my dying day.
- An author who takes on this challenge needs to be patient and focused. Continuity gets harder to maintain with every book in a series, so imagine what it’s like when you have a ton of tales in the pot. Sometimes you have to think about what will happen in the future and even put some foreshadowing to help things along. It’s a mental trick to remember the past, focus on the present, and consider the future all within the same storyline. That brings me to #3.
- TAKE NOTES! Never be afraid to jot something down in a notebook if you think it could come up later. This is World Building 101 in a way. It’s a pain to scan through older books to see if you already created or named a certain location. Many times you may forget especially when years become decades. For example, I nearly forgot that I created a Tree of Knowledge in Legends of Windemere. This is a thing that comes up in other series, but I put this in one location and made it the only one. I have to make a note of this in order to avoid having multiple Trees of Knowledge and each one deems itself the only one. There’s a story in there, but it’d mostly be how the gods aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing.
- Do not get frustrated when people fail to understand what you’re doing. This type of project is of a scale that can cause confusion. The moment you say ‘Yes, but in this other series’, you flawlessly jump to another track while your audience kind of trips over the third rail. Doesn’t happen a lot, but I’ve find that it’s rare when somebody understands what I’m talking about when I go into the full Windemere explanation. I take it as an occupational hazard at this point. Especially if you try to share online without revealing too much.
- Sometimes it pays to stop a current series for a bit to tinker with another. This is where foreshadowing and useful overlaps can appear. For example, I took a break from Legends to work on Darwin’s outlines. This led to me coming up with a way to do a vague hint of his inevitable appearance. Just a few lines in a dialogue that a person might not think about as anything more than a casual conversation. These parts are fun to do and make the web of tales tighter.
Kenshin Himura (How I feel)
The above is how you will feel when taking on this challenge. A lot goes on your shoulders and you may find yourself feeling isolated. How do you get feedback for one idea without suggestions damaging another? How could that person recommend that plot twist when it undoes the ending of this other series that would take more time to explain? You do become trapped in your own world that is always growing and evolving. Every book, every outline, every character, every monster, every location, every series, every thought adds up to forge a world that you want to be seen as alive. A goal here is to make it so that the readers know that the world doesn’t revolve around a solitary event or small group of characters. One adventure might, but like reality, there are many adventures going on within the same lands.
Is the confusion, isolation, mental gymnastics, and all other challenges worth it? I can only speak for myself and say, “Yes. Yes they are.”
Legends of Windemere 
That’s awesome, and if anyone can pull it off you can.
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Thanks. I’ll definitely give it my best shot. Though having a week of no sales doesn’t fill me with confidence.
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Happens to me all the time. No stopping me though. Summer was pretty bad.
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I know. Terrifying bad. Never saw anything like it.
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“I’ve been told that I can’t retire the Legends cast and have to stick with them until my dying day”
I bet it was comments like that that made Agatha Christie kill off Poirot…
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Wouldn’t be surprised. It’s amazing how people want a character to keep going beyond their adventure. Some of those readers are also the first to complain when a character grows stale. Just can’t win.
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I seem to remember that Steven King wrote Misery to address the issue of fans. It’s funny because his hero claimed that the book he wrote under duress was the best one so far.
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I always wondered what that meant. Possibly that writing from experience or with laser like focus works best? Though the way how got those things was a nightmare.
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Probably a tongue-in-cheek metaphor about artists working under pressure.
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That sounds like the best explanation.
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Well, J. K. Rowling moved on. . . .
Great tips though. I can’t help thinking of Discworld and how it’s made up of miniseries. It’s great that you have so many characters and series within your series.
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Discworld is a good example. As for Rowling, I thought she tried to get out of the Potter stuff and now she’s kind of returned. I’ve head different stories and been too busy and forgetful to see what happened.
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She’s writing an adult mystery series, but under a different name. I’m glad she’ll write some HP though.
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Guessing she had to go back at some point. You can’t make that big a world and leave it alone for long. Too many stories untold.
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Wow, that’s a lot of books
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Yeah. I only have a few of them too. Probably take years to find the whole collection.
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Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
In case you ever wondered… 🐵
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Thanks for the reblog. 🙂
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Very welcome Charles- Great post 👍😃
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You never fail to amaze me with you attention to the details. As for those who try to tell you how to do things they can STFU. (as in “how would you like a big cup of STFU”)
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I should buy some bulk STFU, so I don’t run out when I need it. Get some of those big, red cups too because I don’t want to lose the good mugs.
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Ha ha ha.
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If other authors were to get involved with my own, they’d have to be taught how to write in it. Huge list of words that cannot be used + grammatical styling that is signature to the tone this world gives. Thus, I don’t ever really plan to permit such a thing.
In regards to the 5 categories you’ve posted, here’s my own data.
1. Yes, this already happens though I’m not published yet (only going for the traditional route, not indie, as that has always been the target). The way I’ve designed my world is to have multiple series, short stories, and stand-alones in it written at my discretion. This alone confuses people, as when they think of series, they think go 5-10 books or more. I define a series as 2-3, and a series itself as a fragment of a larger story in the background. I am perfectly comfortable writing in this world, but it won’t always involve the same characters or time periods. The entire work I call a project. Often I’m asked if anything’s online to read; the answer is no due to the first sentence in this paragraph.
2. Connecting with #1, patience and focus is why there’s nothing available yet. It’s taken me 18 years to form everything in World Building, and concepts for stories come as a result of that world building instead of the other way around. It isn’t hard for me to remember most details, however…
3. …this is why I’m making (this will continue for sure) an encyclopedia of reference for everything. One story, although isolated, may have wordings in its narrative that can easily tie to about 8-12 other potential stories, in the most minute way. Also a reason I will push for an inspection on any publishing contract about editing clauses, which ties into…
4. …what confuses people being the amount of thoroughness. This is a project in which I’ve had to create everything from nothing. There’s a tremendous list of forbidden words other writers have the liberty of using because their use would make no sense in this project, some of them so every day most people wouldn’t even think about them. By default my own practice is: if it isn’t on Earth and unless there’s a good explanation, one should never have a plant named St. John’s Wort if there’s no viable reason for the name ‘John’ existing there, or the word ‘saint’ as they may have another word for a saint. ‘Wort’ however is passable due to it being an infusion of malt during the process of brewing alcohol. It’s small stuff like this I find most people don’t understand–when you start with something that basic, suddenly they look at everything else that now becomes forbidden and their heads explode because they realize it means the writer has to create surrogates for them. This is why many words that have too much imagery behind them, like ‘saint’ are always replaced by constructed language terms, which makes introducing them at times difficult. It’s pure strategy getting people familiar with thinking in that world’s lexicon to such an extent. For example, I can use the word ‘tree’, but I can’t use ‘pine’ or ‘ash’ or ‘oak’ or ‘palm’ ‘acacia’ as those trees wouldn’t exist there, but a surrogate with properties similar and also different will.
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Oh and #5. Every time I do that, it circles back into this project–thus adding to ti.
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*It.
\
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Tends to happen with me too, but I’ve been laser-focused on Legends the last few years. Only breaks have been to set up more vampire stuff since they appear in Book 9 and the side projects to give me a break.
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The style would be the issue, which is probably why it doesn’t happen very often. I can see it being really tough if you put word and grammar restrictions on there.
1. I always thought of trilogies as a type of series, so it is weird that people think otherwise. Everyone seems to have a different definition, so I just go with the flow.
2. 18 years is impressive. How long do you think it will be before you start submitting to publishers?
3. I used to have an encyclopedia when I only had 5 series to keep track of. Then I reached 30 and my computer crashed while the encyclopedia disc was in it. Not a fun Tuesday.
4. That is a tough trick to pull off. I’ve read books where real world stuff has been replaced with fictional words and it’s failed more times than succeeded. Many authors forget context or simply slap the new word in the paragraph with no explanation. For example, the tree in question could be an oak and the author refuses to use the word. They call it something else, but the reader doesn’t have any way to visualize or connect to it. One book I read had a glossary for the language, which I repeatedly flipped to and it kept drawing me out of the story. So it’s definitely something that requires a lot of careful usage.
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2. I estimate within the next 1-2 years. The biggest challenge was figuring out what story should be first and best to introduce with. I found that about 3 years ago and am now working on the nearly final drafts.
3. I think I remember this being mentioned somewhere. I got into the habit of printing everything very early as I’ve never entirely trusted electronics.
4. In the early days this gave me a lot of trouble, but now I’m so used to it that I have a good idea of how to introduce something new. For a world like this, the first story should be as minimal as possible, meaning it can’t start in a location that will have a lot of interaction, like a major city or a major war front. Putting it out in the rural or remote, sparsely populated areas works to an advantage, so everything that does contain the rest builds on what is established. I also don’t rely on dialogue, but instead sight, smell, sound, and touch as the inhabitants of my project are not human. They use speech when it’s necessary. Doing it this way also provides an advantage in narrative, giving more room for details that are often left out. The trick is balancing it into the narrative in a way that doesn’t clog everything down. And on minimal dialogue, the main character in the story I’m working does not utter a single word until around 40,000 words in (of a projected 110,000), and when she does it’s also in her own native tongue.
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Interesting method. So is communication of emotion done more with gestures and facial expressions?
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Combination of that, yes. There are times where dialogue is considerable between characters, but it’s tightly controlled. Sometimes the communication can be in how foods are made, what their ingredients are, in addition to being with objects left places, or fragrances chosen for occasions. Details people who hate details love to skip are typically vital in various circumstances. A good example is pepper being a spice in food. Pepper, chiefly black pepper, is one of the plants I do carry over since it is like salt in being an ingredient (but paprika, basil, oregano are no-no) “Dude, it’s food!” vs. “The fact pepper is in this food means the host either thinks highly of me/willing to make a high paying contract with me/is of considerable wealth/is trying to purposefully numb my senses.” All of which are a possibility pending the circumstance. This applies to every ingredient in a dish.
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I have some of those books in the photo! When I attended GenCon many years ago, I submitted the opening to my book to TSR editors there to critique. They had good things to say, and one of them actually asked me if I’d ever considered writing series books like theirs. After I’d picked my chin up off the floor, I told him I wanted to pursue writing my own stories. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d taken him up on his offer. I don’t know if I could have done it, though. I think that many books in the same world would be too complicated for me.
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That’s awesome. People have suggested that I try to write in a pre-existing world, but I don’t have it in me. Mostly I’d be afraid of altering something or getting it wrong. There’s a lot of pressure when playing in somebody else’s sandbox.
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Absolutely. I completely agree.
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The detail in these stories blow me away. When I am reading fantasy on my Kindle, I highlight the different characters, etc. so I can follow the chain of events. You are an amazing writer!
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Thanks. I keep forgetting that the Kindle has a highlight function. Ever find yourself highlighting paragraphs?
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I do! LOL!
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Great post. If I ever attempt to write down the stories I’ve gotten tucked away in notebooks here I’m using this guide to keep everything straight.
As for retirement of characters, I always thought Jennifer Roberson pulled that off better than anyone I’ve ever seen in her Chronicles of Cheysuli series. There she’d have a book with a main character or two, and in the next book they would appear here or there, but slowly slip out of the spotlight for the new person to shine. It was masterfully done.
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Glad to be of help. So is the notebook pile ankle, knee, or thigh high? 😉
That’s a nice way to do a character retirement. Feels more respectful that way. I never read the series, so did the overarching story include everyone?
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Thigh high. ; )
It was a generational series. One book representing one generation. Characters died along the way, but those still living would make cameo-type appearances appearances.
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Very cool. For some reason I keep thinking of the Belmonts and how every generation has to go on an adventure.
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Great tips, Charles; especially about the notes. I’m not as organised as you are, but I have a copious amount of notes when it comes to keeping track of things and people I’ve mentioned in either a series or a short story. It’s an exciting venture, and your enthusiasm makes me believe I can run two different series side by side, which form part of the same world. I’ll take into account your advice – thanks for sharing 😀
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I do have to get better at taking notes while writing. Adding stuff spontaneously causes some continuity issues. For example, one character gets a set of magic rings that I totally forgot about until I did an editing run. So I had to check the other books to find places to fit the minor items into.
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I’m totally with you there, and it makes me feel better that I’m not the only one this happens to! I started writing bullet points after each story with major changes/additions, and still I missed things. But I guess that’s what the editing round is for, and hopefully it’s something Beta readers pick up! 😀
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I’m not sure if Beta readers would catch it with ease. At least if there is a great length of time between the books. Mistakes in descriptions and forgotten minor items could be overlooked. One example is that my wife has read the first 3 books multiple times and didn’t realize that Luke’s eye color kept switching from green to blue. Another supporting character in the second book ended up switching skin color because I mixed him up with someone from another series in my notes. So this is where the author reading through can come in handy.
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I agree, and the eye colour/physical appearance issue is a problem, especially if it’s been a while since the character made an appearance. I have pictures all over my wall. I might not be particularly organised, but I can be creative! I made templates and drew in the physical attributes of each character so I can study them before I use them in a scene. That said, these things can still happen – if it’s a weakness I know to look out for it.
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The eye color thing became an issue because I changed it a few times before actually writing. Luke being blonde tends to make the eyes blue automatically in my head. I made them green to go away from that combo and being in a writing focus tended to forget that. Been a lot more careful now.
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I guess that’s the thing – we are continuously learning and adapting our process. It’s what makes it fun (mostly!) 😀
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Reblogged this on Princess of the Light: Books, Writing and Inspiring Others and commented:
An excellent analysis of whether a multiple series in the same world is possible. Authors pay attention.
MRS N
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Thanks for the reblog. 🙂
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You’re welcome. 🙂
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Great tips, Charles. I don’t know if I could do that many series in one world. I think I’d get bored with it. I like creating new worlds. 🙂
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Thanks. The trick is to keep introducing new areas and cities. So the world becomes the only ‘character’ to be in every series and keep evolving.
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My plan is that all my novels will be connected (not the same world, but a series of interconnecting worlds) with some of those moments where a reader of them all will catch certain things that someone reading it as a one-off might not (but hopefully not to the detriment of the story in other way). Ambitious, yes, but I love when I find works that the author has managed to do just that – it makes it really fun for me, as a reader, and makes me want to find MORE that take place in those worlds.
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I was trying for interconnected worlds early on. The issue I ran into stemmed from my vampires. I couldn’t keep making different species and it was getting ridiculous explaining how the one type spread across the worlds, but nobody really knew about the situation. So I just merged them. Good luck with that challenge. 🙂
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Really interesting article, keeping track of the plot in one book is hard enough. I must check out the first book in your series soon.
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Hope you enjoy it. You’re right that keeping track of even one book is tough. Seems upping the ante brings a new assortment of headaches.
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Wow… that’s a lot of books for one world, impressive. I guess the goal is to create a world that can inspire so much.
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That is one of the big goals. Have a world with such variety in stories and characters that it draws a lot of people in. Be an interesting legacy to leave behind too. Might sound weird, but I spend so much time putting destiny vs free will stuff in my books that I tend to wonder about my own.
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