The novel being constructed.

Here I go again, getting all organized about things. Writing things, that is. But even for you organizational skeptics, you must admit that to write a series, you gotta keep track of stuff.

During the writing of my first series, The Entire and The Rose, I found that no matter how blindingly clear story elements were as I wrote, I got fuzzy on, or outright forgot many of them while writing subsequent books. With my next series, The Dark Talents novels, I was forewarned. I employed some tracking tools that I had used on stand-alone novels, but which proved to be even more critical with a series.

When I recommend these tools to my writing students, sometimes they give me pitying looks, as if to say, Really? If we did this stuff, we’d never get any work done!

But I maintain you’ll save a ton of time if you keep track of your series with a few handy documents. For instance, you won’t go chasing through your document trying to find a term or place name, a character’s name, and expressions. Read More…

A novel is complex, if only because it’s so long. It can so easily wander off course, fall into episodic events and feel scattered.

To maintain unity in a story, create or discover the novel’s dramatic purpose, whether it’s the human value at stake or the theme related to a human value. To write at our best, the challenge is to know in the simplest terms, what larger issue the story is about.

This dramatic purpose can shape our decisions about what events to portray and which to leave out. Making it more likely that readers will experience a cohesive, fulfilling story.

Getting to Meaning

Examples of human values explored in novels: The Kite Runner: atonement; The Titanic (film): to be loved for oneself; The End of the World Running Club: spiritual renewal; A Discovery of Witches: self-knowledge. These are universal human issues. In these best-selling stories, fictional events and characters are chosen to dramatize these human issues. Read More…

Can you describe your character’s essence or their raison d’etre, in a short phrase? How about Sam Gamgee’s “Some things are worth fighting for.” Or Scarlett O’Hara’s “I’ll never be hungry again!”

Our major characters are usually so deep we need a whole novel to flesh them out. But haven’t we chosen a character because she or he embodies a specific dramatic purpose? If this is true, we should know what that is. We should know it so well, we can say it in a phrase.

Sounds hard, but bear with me. Ask yourself what does my character want or believe in their very core? Read More…