How To Plan And Write A Series \\ Video #1: Different Types of Series

hey guys welcome back heart breathing's I have been looking forward to this series of videos for a really long time and I hope you have too we are starting today an eight part series on how to write a series so I have an older series of videos on how to write a best-selling series but that one is really more about how to indie publish a best-selling series in this particular series of videos we are going to be discussing how to actually plan and write your series for publication so I am crazy excited about this series of videos it's a series series so you're gonna hear the word series a lot if you have been thinking about writing a series or you're currently writing or planning a series of your own I hope that you'll subscribe to this channel and stay tuned to hear all about how to write a series we're going to get started right now okay so let's go over the different things that we're going to be talking about in this series of videos so video number one which you're watching now we're going to talk about the a little bit about the pros and cons of writing a series we're going to touch on that and then we're going to talk about the different types of series because this terminology is not really consistent across things so I want to establish a terminology and make sure that you understand that there are many different types of series that you can write and often it depends on what genre you're writing in terms of which is the more acceptable or the more commonly seen types of series in next week's video we'll be talking about character arcs versus story arcs versus series arcs and how you handle that when you're planning your series then in the next video number three we'll be talking about planning your series this is going to be a whopper of a video and as I haven't recorded it yet as I'm recording this one I'm not sure if it's going to be a one part or a two part so that might extend us to nine videos total because planning your series is huge when we get to this video you're also going to have the opportunity to download a free series workbook that will help you plan your own series and I've been working on that for a while and I'm excited to share that with you in just a couple of weeks the fourth video is one that is one of the most requested things he on my channel which is how to create a series Bible I have a previous video where I talked about how to create a series Bible inside a wiki but I didn't go into all the nitty-gritty details of what you need to track how you can set it up a lot of different options so what we're gonna do in video number four is we're going to talk about why you want to create a series Bible and we're gonna dive into the serious details of every single thing you need to track in terms of all the things you plan to your world building your setting your characters your story threads how you can set up that series Bible I will show you examples and then I'll talk about several different places online or in your own home if you prefer to go the paper route that you can set up your own series Bible in video number five we're going to talk about tips for marketing and publishing your series like I said I've already covered some of this in a video series that I did early on on this channel called how to write a best-selling series but I'm going to actually update that and give you some up-to-date tips on best practices for marketing and publishing your series including how often should you publish how much should you write ahead of time before you start publishing and all of those good things number six is something that we don't see talked about often enough I think which is the emotional toll of writing a series so when you dedicate and you commit yourself to writing a series that you might be writing over the course of five to ten years or even two or three years you're really also dedicating yourself to an emotional journey of being with these characters writing this series the ups and downs of how a series naturally ebbs and flows in terms of sales so we're going to talk about the emotional aspects of writing a series and that's going to be one that really comes from the heart so I hope you'll stick around for that in video number seven I am going to share with you my personal worst mistakes that I've made as I have been writing multiple series so I've written more than five series here and there and I've actually just started a sixth series so I do have a lot of experience not only with finishing series but with writing different types of series and along the way over the last ten years I have actually made a lot of mistakes and things that I wish I could go back and change so I'm hoping that I can share that knowledge with you so that you don't make the same steak's I made and then finally video number eight will be a QA I haven't decided yet if I'm gonna do a live Q&A or if I will let you submit questions ahead of time but we will do an author Q&A specifically talking about writing series I hope that you're excited about this next adventure that we're going to go on together as it stands right now my plan is to put out one video a week for the next eight weeks in this series the videos will come out on Thursday and will be a company to buy a blog post as well as a newsletter out to my newsletter list now Sunday's I also hope to post more of like planning type stuff some of that is going to actually go nicely pair nicely with our series series some of it will just be fun stuff like setting up a planter cart but I do have a little one at home so you never know when that video might come out on Friday instead of Thursday so make sure that you're subscribed and turn those notifications on so that you'll get a notice whenever a new video comes out from me you also want to check down below and sign up for my newsletter list because when that series planner workbook comes out it will be exclusive for members of my newsletter list okay so let's get started on video number one one of the things that is so incredibly important to understand especially if you are hoping to make money writing what you love and really getting yourself out there particularly as an indie author but series are just as important for trad published authors is writing a series so writing a series is one of the most powerful things that you can do for your career why because it is just a staple of marketing that it is easier to keep a customer and keep them happy than it is to find new customers so you don't want to be grabbing new customers and then losing them and then having to find all new customers and then losing them the foundation of a successful writing career is picking up people along the way and then keeping those readers happy so you kind of have two jobs we talk about this a lot in my published and thrive course so if you want to hear more about this definitely stay tuned for when that course and enrollment opens in just a few weeks but it is so important for you as an author to not only be consistently bringing in new readers but also to hold on to the readers that you have and readers love series I know there's always gonna be somebody listening that says well I don't like series and I'm a reader okay I totally understand that but by and large most readers love to latch on to a character and follow that characters life or they want to get immersed in a certain town or a certain family and when you have something that links your books together readers are much more likely to follow on from book to book to book so for example if you have a single protagonist in an urban fantasy series and she is somebody your readers come to love then they're gonna want to know what she's up to next and how her story progresses same thing with a mystery series when you have a detective you may have separate cases that that detective is following but if they like the voice of that detective the they really relate to the backstory of that detective and they get really interested in that that detective is going to be someone they want to continue to follow so even if you're writing standalone mysteries you can increase your sales and your visibility with readers and your sell-through with readers if you connect that mystery series with some kind of connecting item like a town a type of mystery but frankly the most powerful way to do it is with a single detective that you follow throughout the story once your reader is hooked on your characters or your story world in some way keep them hooked and the way you do that is by continuing to write in that world or write that family or write whatever it is that's connecting that series together and you will just sell more books that way than if you wrote standalone books now I know there's gonna be some arguments and discussions about this in the comments so I'll just go ahead and say that of course there are authors who write standalone and there are on Rah's where stand-alones are more common like horror or sometimes in like psychological thrillers where you've got that twist at the end there's really no follow-on to that but there are still ways to connect your series and if you're interested in more about that definitely for my publish and thrive course but for the purposes of this particular series of videos we are going to focus on the fact that for the majority of indie authors as well as traditionally published authors the greatest way that you can build your career is to write a series it is super super valuable and it is a great way to not only bring in new readers but also to hold on to them for the long term there are lots of pros and cons to writing series as well one of which is the emotional toll a series can take so I hope that you'll stick with me through the end of this set of videos so that you'll take all of these things into consideration but in my opinion the pros far outweigh the cons in terms of financial gain but most importantly in terms of the community that can be built around your books and the amount of readers you can draw in and really build your career on in terms of loyal fan base and loyal readership so let's talk about the different types of series because understanding the different types of series that are out there and which type of series you in particular will be writing is key to understanding the rest of the videos in the sequence so different types of series I have asked around amongst my author friends and I have searched online and it doesn't seem that there is standard terminology around the different types of series so I will just give these different types of series a name and we will move on from there this may not be the name you're used to hearing it from and that's fine feel free to comment down below if you have heard these types of series called something else but we just have to give it a name so you know what I'm talking about so the first type of series that I'm going to talk about is what is sometimes called a dynamic series it is also sometimes called an ongoing series or a sequential series or a chronological series we for this purposes are going to use the term dynamic I came across a blog post by kristen keifer at well storied I will link her blog post for you down below and she called this a dynamic series and I really like that terminology I think I've also heard it called a continuing series usually when I talk about my series I just call it a continuing series but that doesn't totally work either so we're gonna call it a dynamic series and here's what it is a dynamic series is a series that is a continuing story arc that extends over multiple books so this is not a series that you could just jump in at book 3 and understand what's going on books do not stand alone so it is a continuing story arc that lasts across multiple volumes with a dynamic series you have to read these in order characters in a dynamic series evolve and grow pretty strongly throughout the course of this series so usually in a dynamic or ongoing series you are going to see massive character growth especially in your protagonist or whoever the main POV characters are so with a dynamic series each book has its own story question or its own contained plot beginning middle and end has some type of resolution however there is usually some type of overarching storyline or a big bad villain that is the point of the entire series so you may find out about it in book 1 or you may just find out the mystery in book 1 that gradually gets revealed throughout the story but each book has to build on the next so you have to read book one to understand book two and you have to read one and two to understand book three and so on and it is just like one long timeline of a story with each book having its own contained story question that is answered by the end of it you will often see in dynamic series that these books will end on not exactly a cliffhanger you can call it a cliffhanger if you want but usually there'll be some type of resolution and then there will be some type of cliffhanger or singer at the end that leads you into the next part of the story and this is the way that dynamic series tend to work some examples of dynamic series that you may know is Harry Potter for example the Wheel of Time a Song of Ice and Fire which of course is what Game of Thrones was built upon divergent for example in yaa or Twilight and for my own backlist my shadow demon saga is a dynamic or continuing series the genres that you'll often see dynamic series in are of course why a large portion of ye is this type of story where one build one book builds upon the next and it's one big story fantasy is often the same way most fantasy is written this way I would say science fiction can be this way as well and so is dystopian often written in this way the next type of series that we're going to talk about is a standalone interconnected or static series so this is a type of series where there is some type of unifying factor it could be a setting it could be a character it could be an object in some cases but this is a series of books that is self-contained these are self-contained stories that could be read independently so for example you could start technically on book seven of the series and still understand the mystery the characters and get the gist of what's going on these are standalone series in this type of series they can usually be read in any order to some degree now with these types of series I will say that sometimes and often you will get more out of the series and the character arcs if you follow them chronologically or if you read them in order however they don't have to be read in order because there will be an independent storyline happening in book six that doesn't necessarily rely on book 1 it's usually the character arc stuff that gets a little bit tricky these types of books will often share a setting or a cast of characters but they don't necessarily always have the same protagonist all the way through for the purposes of this particular series of videos we are going to call this type of series that does not have to be read in order a standalone series you may know it as a different name like interconnected or static but we're going to use the term standalone in standalone series the character arcs are either completely static where the character barely changes at all or they're very slow often like with a detective you might see some changes they get married they change this relationship in some way or they reach out to their parents or their subplots where the character sort of grows but it's not as massive of a character arc change generally as what you see in a dynamic series the exception to this however is romance in romance most of the series that you see are standalone series where each book could stand alone but they're set around a particular group of friends or a particular town or a family like Bella Andres the Sullivan series so there's something there that connects the people but each book is a different couples love story in that case the character arc is self-contained so each character the male and the female or the male and male female female whatever your couple is those two people will grow and change as much as they're basically going to grow and change within that book and their character arc is self-contained then when you move on to book 2 you will have a separate couple or even if you're doing menage a trio of people but whoever is part of that romance group they will have their character arc self-contained to that one novel some examples of a standalone series are Lee childs Jack Reacher series Bela Andres the Sullivans James Bond which started as a book series and then of course was made into movies as well James Bond is a great example of a standalone series in my particular backlist my Fairhope new adult romance series is also standalone that set of books it's a six book series is set in the small town of Fairhope so you have the town and the setting that is pulling people together but it's also set around a particular group of friends from high school and in book one Lee Anne who was gone to school in Boston has come home and that is the sort of inciting incident for the series but each book is a standalone with separate couples the exception there being the first couple is also the sixth couple so the same couple gets two books one and six but that is a standalone series and even though there are subplots that tie things together and you would get more out of that series if you read it in chronological order you could pick up book four and understand the romance between those two characters there may be some inside jokes or some other references to characters that you've met in the past that you might not understand but for the most part it is a complete standalone story in each individual book some common john Rosatti see writing sandal Cirie's are like I said of course romance another one that you see this often in is mysteries like detective mysteries and that sort of thing okay so there is actually I think a third designation of series and I would call this a hybrid series I sometimes also call this episodic so I think of this type of series a hybrid or episodic series is one in which you technically have such a self-contained storyline that you could pick it up anywhere in the middle and understand what's going on however there is so much going on with the interpersonal relationships and there actually is an overarching storyline that comes out throughout the story that you don't want to miss so in this instance we're talking about something like The Dresden Files so The Dresden Files is a very popular really like crazy popular urban fantasy series technically it's mystery series but it's urban fantasy mystery you could probably pick up like book 7 in the series and you would still understand the basic idea of the world you could understand the type of character that Harry Dresden is and you would understand the mystery of that particular story but you would miss out on so much of that story world because you've missed the previous six books and all of the interpersonal relationship and the character growth and the arc of Harry Dresden so I think that there is a difference between this type of series and you could call it either one you could call it a dynamic series and say absolutely you need to read that series in chronological order but you could also some people might have the opinion that it's a standalone series and you could pick it up any old place and enjoy the story we will call this type of series an episodic series for the purposes of these videos episodic series are often using a mystery format mystery maybe not the main genre so urban fantasy for example with The Dresden Files but it has a mystery story structure and a mystery pull to the story in this case of an episodic story like this or an episodic series usually the mystery itself the main mystery whodunit whatever it is is resolved by the end this story so you find out somebody died your investigator goes to investigate the problem and by the end of it they do discover that this is the person that killed them and that person is either defeated or sent to jail or whatever there's a resolution to that particular mystery in the story however with an episodic mystery you're looking at something where it's like that mystery then unlocks the door to an even greater mystery or a large organization or something there pulls you through the story where you can't really get the full story of what's going on unless you continue to read book two and three and four so with a standalone series you're gonna get a little bit of that of course because every good writer is going to give you a little bit about the next thing so like for example when you have illa Andres the Sullivan series you get to know that family so of course in book 1 you're gonna meet the sister and the brothers and everybody else and you're gonna want to know more about them so there are story threads that get carried through however those threads are not as strong as like a mystery thread or something that you just have to know and you won't fully get an idea of who this particular character is until you follow them through the next seven books so to me that's the distinction is yes you're going to have some interpersonal threads you're going to have some relationships and you're going to have some things that aren't quite fully resolved like hey my sister isn't married yet and I want to know if she gets together with her ex-boyfriend or not that's one question that can pull you through but really you don't have to read book two to understand what was going on with the couple that you're reading right now the difference with an episodic series is you are introduced to a detective or someone who like a set of brothers for example that you really need to know more about their relationship and they are the main characters and there's something about them that doesn't get carried through that that's a question that you still have about them going on so with an episodic series if you read them out of order you you could read them out of order but you're going to miss a lot of interpersonal relationships you're going to miss a lot of backstory you're going to miss a lot of character growth and potentially some of the story truths that were like breadcrumbs spread throughout the series so far often with an episodic series you will have standalone mysteries but there's an overarching mystery as well so you've got like maybe mini bosses that the character is fighting for the first six books but man book seven is the mega boss or the actual final boss and that's the way I would say episodic series are typically structured like I said a couple examples of these are the Dresden Files or yves dallas by Nora Roberts or a JD Raab you could read those out of order but would you really want to so with all of these I would say it works on a spectrum so you might have an episodic series that really is a little bit lends itself better to standalone than another episodic series you may have an episodic series that really is so heavily interconnected that it borders on being a dynamic series so there's not always going to be a set line between the three but hopefully you can through this information understand what type of series you're writing and where you're blurring the lines but the main distinction that I would like for you to understand as we move forward in this series series is that a dynamic series has to be read in order there's no other way to understand it rather than picking it up at book one and reading it all the way through to the end whereas an episodic series or a standalone series you could technically pick it up anywhere and enjoy the story for what it is at that point and you're going to get mostly a complete story so to pull from something that most of you have probably heard of or have some kind of relationship with let's put it in terms of TV shows so a dynamic television show would be something like Game of Thrones you can't really jump in on season 8 of Game of Thrones and understand what the heck is going on and who all these characters are likewise you can't jump into my shadow demon saga at book 7 and figure out what the heck is going on you have to have read book 1 and understand these characters and where they're coming from to understand the series that is a dynamic series Game of Thrones a standalone series is something more like law and order so law and order they get a case you may have the same detectives that are pulling you through depending on whether it's law and order criminal intent or just the regular law and order or law and order SVU it's the detectives and the types of cases that they get and how they solve them that can that connects the series but you could really jump in on episode 506 and still understand this mystery whodunit and it's a complete story and you're satisfied you don't have to go back all the way to Episode one to understand what's going on in law and order episodic however is something more like supernatural or the x-files so you do have standalone episodes where you could point to it and you could say oh that's the episode where they find the Drowned woman or that's the episode where such and such happens but there is so much interconnected or interpersonal relationship character growth character arcs between the brothers or between Scully and Mulder that you really need to understand then as you progress through those series there becomes an overarching storyline where a bigger villain that crosses multiple episodes or multiple seasons is revealed and so in that case I would call it episodic because I think you could step in on season four of the x-files and still watch an episode and understand what's going on but you're not going to get as much out of it as someone who had watched it from the beginning so those are kind of the way I would describe it in TV terms dynamic Game of Thrones standalone Law & Order episodic supernatural if you have other examples please feel free to add those in the comments below so another type of analogy that just popped into my head when I was outlining this video is think of a dynamic series like a Victorian house that you walk into it's a large beautiful house and it's just one single structure you walk into the house and in order to really understand what's going on in that house you have to explore it floor by floor you start in the basement and there's a complete story down there in the basement but you don't know the story of the whole house until you move up to the first floor and then once you've explored the first floor you have to move up to the second and then maybe the final boss that finally tells you what this whole house was about is up on the third floor but it's all contained in this one house that's the way a dynamic series is you have to explore it book by book in chronological order in order to understand the entire story because the story itself takes place across multiple volumes a standalone series however is like a neighborhood so when you drive into the neighborhood you see potentially dozens of houses there and each house is its own contained story but in order to understand the entire neighborhood and all of the things that interconnect it you have to go into each individual house but it doesn't really matter if you start at the first house or if you drive down and go down to the blue house on the cul-de-sac they're all interconnected and maybe sure you would get more pleasure out of starting with house number one and house number two because by the time you get to house number three there's a little family photo of their best friends that you wouldn't understand were their best friend's unless you had started in house number one and explored all of those photos but each individual house is its own complete story that you can watch read and joy but there are multiple houses all in one location connected by the town itself the setting or the people who live there in episodic series however is more like a sprawling estate so it doesn't necessarily have to be contained all in one house that you have to go to in order maybe you start in the garage and then you go to the pool house and then you go down to the lake by the where the boat is and you can explore all these different structures on all these different stories but really it's tied together all in one big estate and eventually it's going to probably lead you to one main big storied several storied house which is where the bigger like overarching series is contained so hopefully that makes sense to you it makes sense in my brain that a dynamic series is happening all in one house that is made up of multiple floors where you have to read them in order a standalone so your is more like a neighborhood full of houses that you can pick and choose which ones you want to read and then an episodic series is that big grand estate where you have multiple structures lots of different storylines that can stand alone but it comes together better as a whole and you see the big picture if you view it as an estate that all belongs together so this is where we start this is the foundation of understanding what type of series you are going to write and like I said once we get to the series planning which is going to come in a couple of videos you will actually get a workbook that will help you plan your own series and you're going to ask yourself some of these questions so it's important to understand the difference between these three types of series I also briefly wanted to touch on the fact that there is also something called a serial and this is a little bit different so if you would like a video on the difference between a serial and a series please go ahead and hit the like button down below and make a comment down below that you would like to see another video on the difference between a serial and a series because there are some big differences there some people would say that a dynamic series is a serial but there's actually story structure differences between a serial and a series and you can have a serial series so I know it gets a little bit confusing so if you'd like to see a video talking about that make sure you comment down below and don't forget to hit that thumbs up button alright you guys thank you so much for joining me on this first video in our how to write and plan your series series I am going to be with this for the next couple of months so make sure that you have subscribed to this channel hit that notification bell so that you'll be notified whenever new videos come up from me if you would like to check out some of my series a few of which are complete and a couple of which are still ongoing you can find that link down below and actually get the first three books of my shadow demon saga for free to check it out I'm also reading these books live over on my Sara Canon YouTube channel for fans I would love to have you join us there so you can find a link for that down below as well if you're more into reading and learning about a standalone series that has a really heavy tie with interpersonal relationships I love for you to also check out my Fairhope series which also starts with a free book called the trouble with goodbye I'll have all those links for you down below as well as a link to join my newsletter and don't forget that my self-publishing course publish and thrive is starting soon so make sure you're on that newsletter to be the first to get notified when enrollment opens alright you guys that's it for now I will see you Sunday in a video on my new planner cart and then next week we'll be talking about character arcs story arcs and series arcs I'll see you then bye [Music]

Channel: Heart Breathings

Views: 19,516

Rating: 4.9723372 out of 5

Keywords: how to plan and write a series, writing, writing tips, how to write a book, book, author, authortube, writing advice, how to, how to write a series, writer, novel, screenwriting, writing a series, write, how to write a novel, screenwriting advice, series, fiction, screenwriting tips, filmcourage, interview, writing tip, self publishing, how to write a book series, outlining, writing a book, books, tips for writers, self publishing advice, sarra cannon, how to write a series of books

Id: uAH8NoVfy0k

Length: 31min 58sec (1918 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020