Question on Plotting out epic scale book series

[kingaling]

This may be a bit harder to tackle than. "How does one write a story from the perspective of a walrus tooth." or something like that, but not by much.


I am busy scraping together huge chunks of information, as well as tiny ones that have a ripple effect throughout the series. I plan on it being 7 massive books long. This is really epic scale stuff. I don't want to give away too much information suffice it to say it involves an angel of death, a nazi turned demon and a fallen angel who's the reincarnation of the son of Cthulhu.

I've uncovered incredibly cool things for them and about them and each step is just awesome.


BUT I'm still finding it difficult just plotting it out. Trying to find a simpler way of compiling the information to stretch ACROSS the 7 stories. Does anyone have any advice, or perhaps a mutated version of the usual plotting norms? I have 8 files on my computer with about 20 files each, and each of those are filled to the brim. Had to upgrade to a bigger external hard drive even. (not kidding)

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks ahead of time!

- Kingaling

[belial.1980]

I'm faced with a somewhat similar situation. About a year ago I started out with a simple story premise. Then it somehow ended up exploding into an epic world with a history that spans 2000 years and covers seven incarnations of the main character. Whoops. As much as I'd like to follow the K.I.S.S. principle, I'm just unable to.

But enough about me.

Let's get back to your question. One has to remember that Rome wasn't built in a day. I think an important thing to look at is your writing experience up till this point. Have you ever published a novel?


If the answer is "yes" then you're about a thousand steps ahead of me. Most of the people on this board are aspiring writers with drafts, ideas, or piles of notes that they hope to turn into something wonderful some day. I'm in this same boat and I'm going to go out on a limb and assume for a moment that you are too. (Please feel free to use hot pokers if I'm wrong.)

I'd recommend that you don't worry too much about an epic plot at this point. Focus on writing the best book you can. Give the readers a glimpse of your epic scale and whet their appetites for more. Resolve the plot at the end so as not to dissappoint the readers but leave them drooling for a sequel. And as difficult as it is, I'd try to be brisk. With such a rich world you'll probably be tempted to write an 800 page monster (or more likely feel compelled to). However, if you're a beginning writer then it's unlikely that a publisher will be willing to pick up a manuscript that long. Of course there're always exceptions and every publishing house has its own guidelines.

Now chances are you have an idea for where the storyline's going to end up. That's good. Keep a rough idea, but allow it to be malleable because your vision might change in the years down the road and I think a lot readers feel cheated by retcons. (I know I do!) Now is the time to open doors rather than lock them up.

But for now I'd focus on just writing the best d@mn book that you can. Completing that will be a huge accomplishment in its own right and once you've done that you'll have a lot better feel for the shape of your story. Good luck!

[kingaling]

HAHA. No, I have not been published before. I'm compelled to write epic stories because I feel those are the only ones worth doing. Smaller stories just aren't my style, and I can't focus on a small enough scale to do it anyway. My imaginations way too big (for my own good.)

The first 3 stories are actually individual back stories for the 3 main characters starting with the demon, then the angel, then the angel of death. Each story ends with their perspective of meeting the other 2.

Then the fourth book leads them on a journey of self discovery and companionship and understanding of one another and acceptance of past wrongs they unintentionally did to eachother.

The fifth book involves them in Asgard, and a whole bunch of awesome Ragnarok stuff I shall not mention yet.

The Sixth book leads them into heaven, and to search for more goodies and answers to long and large questions to god.

The seventh book is every conceiveable armageddon rolled into one.


There's a whole lot more to each of them, but the scales for each story are literally too big to dumb down. I'm not crushing under the pressure, was just wondering if anyone knew of a way to plot out over a long series.

And believe it or not, these 7 books are just the beginning to something even larger. Good thing i'm co-writing.

[KarlTenBrew]

One thing I've found out (it works for me) is: start small and Q/A yourself about the story constantly.  Starting big has certain advantages, but has the tradeoff of constraint.  You constrain yourself in [main] characters [mostly] and timeline...you've pre-planned deaths or living, which can make it harder to give a suspense feeling.  As a fledgling, I've started small whenever I try to write a story, even if it's just an exercise.  Anything that's gone beyond an exercise has followed the process: 1) Ask a question  2) Answer it  3) repeat ad infinitum

I started with a simple MMORPG character [twice], and in each case ended up in mini-universe territory before considering the actual setting and characters inherent to it.  Allies, enemies, family/friends, motivations, threats, life-changing events all evolved from asking 'Why this?  How that?  When/Who/Where/What?' naturally. 

Then I took an amitious self project to altiverse Marvel but start small and contained.  I focused on the Fantastic Four without villains, Doctor Doom, Captain America, and Nick Fury.  Now I can't quite figure out how to continue the mega-exercise because things kept evolving.  Add a character.  Throw in a sub-plot.  Enemy organization, enemy leader.  Intro new heroes.  Intro new villains.  Flesh out origins for all. @_@ 

Now I'm working on a variety of book ideas to actually pursue serious work/publishing, and nothing stays at 'one book'.  After creating two to five short concept but fleshed out chapters, I've got more meta-plot than will fit in one book.  One that quickly got a bullet to the brain encompased a pre-planned quartet as the basis for a mega-series (if I'm that good, I'll find out later!  no need to crash and burn epicly from day 1).  My point is, keep asking and answering questions and you'll get plenty of epic.  Belial has the right idea on limiting the scope/scale of each [especially the first] book.  The rest should come with the territory.

[kingaling]

Interesting enough, we had already planned it to where the stories get increasingly more epic.

The first story, which takes the point of view of a priest turned Nazi turned demon and his escapades in hell are the most subdued fo the story.

The next story involves his Guardian Angel, who has a larger view of what's going on, and the literal temptations that he simply cannot subude.

The story after that from the angel of deaths point of view has an even bigger working of where things have gone, what deaths incured what debts and so on.

The next four stories get bigger as the mystery unravels.

[meg_evonne]

Some really great suggestions here and i agree with all of them.  My question might be to ask about your reader contract, or what you are promising the reader in your first book.  Is it similar to Book II, III, etc? How are you going to handle the POV? 

But here's another one.  You've got massive stuff here already, is it time to start writing?  I'd break off a chunk that you especially like and start living in the world.  I'll be excited to hear how you decide to move forward.  I understand that JB knows where his series is going and what happens, but not necessarily how he's going to get Harry out of his various conflicts.  LOL  As you work with the characters, you might find that not all the characters need to have their back story told.  You might find that for some you can use mini-flash backs etc. 

It sounds like your world is set... time to play, huh?  Enjoy the ride!  It sounds like a fun one!

[kingaling]

Some really great suggestions here and i agree with all of them.  My question might be to ask about your reader contract, or what you are promising the reader in your first book.  Is it similar to Book II, III, etc? How are you going to handle the POV? 

But here's another one.  You've got massive stuff here already, is it time to start writing?  I'd break off a chunk that you especially like and start living in the world.  I'll be excited to hear how you decide to move forward.  I understand that JB knows where his series is going and what happens, but not necessarily how he's going to get Harry out of his various conflicts.  LOL  As you work with the characters, you might find that not all the characters need to have their back story told.  You might find that for some you can use mini-flash backs etc. 

It sounds like your world is set... time to play, huh?  Enjoy the ride!  It sounds like a fun one!

The POV for the first three stories will be third person. They are each very similar in terms of storytelling and style and only differentiating in scale (IE getting bigger and bigger).

The 4 books after that is a very unique POV that we've devloped called First Person Third Person Omniscient (FPTPO) in short, the stories being told from someone elses point of view (someone who can see all and knows more than them) but it's so focused on them that sometimes it's like the narrator isn't a real person. We can hear inside their individual heads, or their collective mind that they eventually develop.

IT IS nearing the writing stage, we just need a few more extreme details before we get to writing. But we were hoping to have ALL the information on them before we get to writing, as everything has to have a reason and purpose and can't just be half assed and awesome for no reason. LITERALLY everything they do, every movement they make HAS an effect on something later. It's huge.

Interestingly enough the backstories have such a profound rippling effect on the entire series that to not tell it first would be irresponsible. Within their stories there will be flashbacks to past events, past lives etc. (none of the characters are on their first life)

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

BUT I'm still finding it difficult just plotting it out. Trying to find a simpler way of compiling the information to stretch ACROSS the 7 stories. Does anyone have any advice, or perhaps a mutated version of the usual plotting norms?

If you could make it work, it would be excellent.

My thoughts here, as someone most of the way through something 500kwords long myself, is a variant on Jim's notion of Big Middle, which to my mind makes sense for a book the length of Storm Front.  Identify your key points, your big scenes that represent major plot turning points; in a seven-large-book story I think you want two or three per book.  Figure out what they are and how they relate to and echo off each other.  Figure out what the movements between them are and how they echo off each other. (In the sense that, say, Harry defending Molly in PG echoes off his experience of his own trial at age siixteen,  or that Harry being the intolerant Warden and prejudiced against Helen Beckitt in WN echoes against Morgan being the intolerant Warden and prejudiced against Harry in SF, or how Harry getting to Elaine in time to warn her about the Skavis echoes off how Harry feels about not having been able to save Elaine when he was sixteen).  The clearer you get the internal connections and the more soild they are, the better the book will hold together.

The other thought I would offer is; don't lose control.  Don't wander off down side stories and details about insignificant characters; be clear on where your point of focus is and stick with it.

[meg_evonne]

If you could make it work, it would be excellent.

My thoughts here, as someone most of the way through something 500kwords long myself, is a variant on Jim's notion of Big Middle, which to my mind makes sense for a book the length of Storm Front.  Identify your key points, your big scenes that represent major plot turning points; in a seven-large-book story I think you want two or three per book.  Figure out what they are and how they relate to and echo off each other.  Figure out what the movements between them are and how they echo off each other. (In the sense that, say, Harry defending Molly in PG echoes off his experience of his own trial at age siixteen,  or that Harry being the intolerant Warden and prejudiced against Helen Beckitt in WN echoes against Morgan being the intolerant Warden and prejudiced against Harry in SF, or how Harry getting to Elaine in time to warn her about the Skavis echoes off how Harry feels about not having been able to save Elaine when he was sixteen).  The clearer you get the internal connections and the more soild they are, the better the book will hold together.

The other thought I would offer is; don't lose control.  Don't wander off down side stories and details about insignificant characters; be clear on where your point of focus is and stick with it.

Thank you Neurovore for chiming in. I always find your suggestions not only useful, but as I work through things, I realize how crucial they are.  You helped me out with a really complicated POV once and sent me a long posting, which I printed (as I did this one!).

Interested in your First Person Third Person Omniscient and find it intriguing!  So one of my favorite books that is sort of similar to this is from Konisburg's "From the Mixed Up Files..." only there the narrator turns out to be a pivotal character in the final growth of the young protagonist.  I seriously want to takle a project that uses that approach so much, and considered it for the recent YA.  The idea was exciting to members of my class, but I couldn't get it to work, because the narrator was simply not that important to the over all series story arc.  So i kept mine to Intimate Third Person (Neurovore's suggestion).  Her suggestion was for a different work, but I finally got to use it in the YA. 

Question/Concern:  So the reader is enjoying your books in the first person POV, then does 'something' happen to cause the switch?  The impact of the plot must change right?  I suspect you have that one already grounded.

But here's a thought that I as a reader might find unsatisfying.... Won't I want to know who this narrator is?  You're going to have to give this reporting narrator a personality, won't you?  Should I be guessing who the narrator really is and how that narrator character gets involved or eventually interacts with the plot?  I think I might find that irritating-especially if the narrator isn't revealed ever or if it's in book 7 or something?

Maybe I mis-understood, maybe you just mean straight Omniscient who can slip into minds left and right without explaination?  But your First Person Third Person Omniscient felt more like a character with unusual abilities that can get into those minds.  I don't mean that the narrator is making comments on the other characters POV thoughts, but still First Person indicates to me some impact of some sort.

i don't think I'm explaining well at all what I'm asking.  Or maybe I am.  More please?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Thank you Neurovore for chiming in. I always find your suggestions not only useful, but as I work through things, I realize how crucial they are.  You helped me out with a really complicated POV once and sent me a long posting, which I printed (as I did this one!).

Honour to be of service, ma'am. *blushes*

But here's a thought that I as a reader might find unsatisfying.... Won't I want to know who this narrator is?  You're going to have to give this reporting narrator a personality, won't you?  Should I be guessing who the narrator really is and how that narrator character gets involved or eventually interacts with the plot?  I think I might find that irritating-especially if the narrator isn't revealed ever or if it's in book 7 or something?

I don't know that "character" is of necessity precisely the right word for what I am thinking here.

There is a form of narrative voice that's fairly standard in nineteenth-century fiction - Trollope, for example, and even more so in Dumas, where the narrative perspective is often translated as "we" either including or directly addressing the reader, stopping to explicitly tell the reader a bit of historical background and kind of self-aware about the location of a narrative camera, as it were.  This basically gets broken by Dickens and degenerates ultimately into the modern bestseller quasi-omni, which is not really an omniscient voice at all, just slopping in and out of everyone's heads with no discipline.

I think a narrative voice has character - certainly in Trollope, where it usually has inherent social assumptions that make me want to take it outside and slap it about - but that does not mean that it necessarily is a character, if that distinction is clear.

My experience of trying to do something like this is that it is incredibly damned hard,  though that could be because the voice in question is not the most sympathetic in the world, it's supercilious and a bit of a know-all and loves casually dropping bits of information that I then have to figure out context and implications for.

[kingaling]

Thank you Neurovore for chiming in. I always find your suggestions not only useful, but as I work through things, I realize how crucial they are.  You helped me out with a really complicated POV once and sent me a long posting, which I printed (as I did this one!).

Interested in your First Person Third Person Omniscient and find it intriguing!  So one of my favorite books that is sort of similar to this is from Konisburg's "From the Mixed Up Files..." only there the narrator turns out to be a pivotal character in the final growth of the young protagonist.  I seriously want to takle a project that uses that approach so much, and considered it for the recent YA.  The idea was exciting to members of my class, but I couldn't get it to work, because the narrator was simply not that important to the over all series story arc.  So i kept mine to Intimate Third Person (Neurovore's suggestion).  Her suggestion was for a different work, but I finally got to use it in the YA. 

Question/Concern:  So the reader is enjoying your books in the first person POV, then does 'something' happen to cause the switch?  The impact of the plot must change right?  I suspect you have that one already grounded.

But here's a thought that I as a reader might find unsatisfying.... Won't I want to know who this narrator is?  You're going to have to give this reporting narrator a personality, won't you?  Should I be guessing who the narrator really is and how that narrator character gets involved or eventually interacts with the plot?  I think I might find that irritating-especially if the narrator isn't revealed ever or if it's in book 7 or something?

Maybe I mis-understood, maybe you just mean straight Omniscient who can slip into minds left and right without explaination?  But your First Person Third Person Omniscient felt more like a character with unusual abilities that can get into those minds.  I don't mean that the narrator is making comments on the other characters POV thoughts, but still First Person indicates to me some impact of some sort.

i don't think I'm explaining well at all what I'm asking.  Or maybe I am.  More please?

Hehehe, im not going to reveal who the character is until the 6th book, and it won't seem like it's first person until that point. We read and read and read about what the main characters are doing and don't find it odd at all that we can hear their thoughts (and occasionally their singular conscience that they develop) but then all of a sudden they enter a room, and we find out that the story has been told in a flowing first person who can enter other peoples minds, see all, and yadda yadda.

I'd also note at this point that only an incredibly small part of the story takes place on earth, the rest takes place in what we've dubbed The Afterlands, where all religious mythology coexists across an enormous expanse.

Ah and THANK YOU Neurovore, that was an incredibly insightful piece of advice you gave me there.

The stories are driving me somewhat mad, as there are so many thoughts and themes that you literally cannot flow with ONE, so what you prescribed should fix that. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

BUT DON'T STOP THERE, any other advice would be awesome. but remember it has to be EPIC! :p

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Ah and THANK YOU Neurovore, that was an incredibly insightful piece of advice you gave me there.
The stories are driving me somewhat mad, as there are so many thoughts and themes that you literally cannot flow with ONE, so what you prescribed should fix that. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
BUT DON'T STOP THERE, any other advice would be awesome. but remember it has to be EPIC! :p

All I can say is, structure. Structure Structure Structure.  The more solid a structure you have, the more you get actual reasons for putting things in particular places, and the fewer decisions you have to make by yourself.

That said, my own experience with writing novels with a fair degree of structure is that something that's alive and working will pretty much always surprise you, at some point, by finding out something as you write it that you had not previously known; so trying to nail structure down too tightly and then finding it doesn't actually work when you get that far is to be avoided for me.

Useful advice from published authors here goes all sorts of ways.  Steven Brust has talked about his process being very much "write and see what happens", and if the plot gets stuck, have the characters bitch about it, go out for dinner, and bitch about it some more, keep doing this until he gets the next bit of plot, and then cut all the bitching and proceed from there.  Tim Powers, otoh, talks about planning entire books paragraph-by-paragraph on post-it notes on a big board on the wall to see how everything fits together before he starts writing anything.  Both of these methods demonstrably produce publishably good and occasionally brilliant books; my own method is somewhere in between and has not, yet.

I have a not very condensed feeling that making plot on this scale work is as different a thing from novel-length plotting as novel-length is from short-stories; I think examples of plot on this sort of scale that actually really work are easier to find in other media - multi-season TV series, or comics with arcs on the scale of Sandman or Preacher - than in novels, although those media do also have the need for single-episode/issue-scale hooks more than a novel does, IMO.  (I know there are people in the world who put a novel down in the middle if they don't like it; I do not understand that, and I read too damned fast for it anyway.  Putting a novel down in the middle is like looking at half a painting and deciding the balance doesn't work.)

[meg_evonne]

and I printed it again. 

Will be looking forward to hearing the reply from king.  It might be double or triple difficult if the reader is sailing along with three books of 1st with a sudden shift to this interesting POV.  Of course, if the narrative did have a fun and exciting character voice--it would be less jarring and maybe a bit easier. 

[kingaling]

The first three books are in third person. And once we get to the other four books it isn't going to be jarring because it isn't going to read like first person, it will still read very much like third person, but the third person turns out to be a character in the story is all.

Example: this may or may not be in the actual 6th book


       The trio rounded the corner and took the stairs lined on either side by intricate ebony pillars. Royiel tapped his double ended scythe at the top of the staircase and waited on Skot and Leikentin, who hurried past him, and burst through the door.

All of their weapons were now drawn, and their single energy and mind as one. They peered into the darkness of the room, Skot calling forth the primordial flame to his hands. And they looked upon someone they didn't expect to be there. Someone they hadn't thought they'd gotten to yet.
       They looked upon Me.



I actually like how that was written, hehe. SPOILER. :p

[Uilos]

I'm going through the same thing. My first Novel (which is three Novels in reality) is an epic. I've currently got it set up as a first person Narrative set in several different characters and with several papers and essays written by the characters to give a broader scope.

My way of writing this is that I want to overdo it. Write more than I need to, because I know I'm going/have to change or edit out stuff, so I lose nothing in the long run if I give myself some slack on the rope (which feels like it's around my neck most nights)