I will preface this blog entry with the reminder that what works for me might not work for others. Writing is an ever-evolving craft wherein I learn something new with every single book. What follows are simply the steps that I’ve found work for me.
Maybe this will change in a year. Maybe my writing process will remain the beautiful chaos it is now until the day I pass on from this life. I honestly don’t know.
Let me also say that I never set out to write a SERIES.
I simply set out to tell a story. Sometimes that story winds up being far bigger than original anticipated, is all.
The Nora Grayson Series is by far my largest undertaking, and the possibilities for offshoots keep cropping up. Which is either super exciting or daunting, I can’t decide which. Regardless, the fact that it has grown so very large in my head means that I have had to take some serious steps to keep things in line.
I’ve mentioned the Story Bible before, which for me is a singular notebook that has the outlines, draft notes, and character notes of every book in the series in it. When I say it’s chaos, I mean that it is absolute chaos. There are different shades of ink, there are scribbled notes in the margins, there are highlighted bits and then question marks beside those highlighted bits and timelines and character questions everywhere.
I pity the man who picks it up and tries to make sense of it.
For me, however, it is my happy place.
It’s my Muse at her most free, dallying here and there with tantalizing possibilities. I have no rules for the Story Bible other than I’m concentrating on this one series and no other books. There are, however, what I call KEY pages.
For instance, I have one KEY page titled: SET IN STONE.
This seems self-explanatory, but these are the key elements of the story that have already been published. Details go in here that I often need to reference such as Nora’s home address. It is sectioned out between books, so for Werewolf Wedding I have a running list of names for those she met in that book and how they correspond to her and then any unresolved matters that did not get addressed in that particular novel.
With each new book, the SET IN STONE page grows. For obvious reasons.
Readers are smart, and I don’t want to upset one by assuming they aren’t going to notice that Delilah’s eyes changed from green to blue between Books One and Three. Or if they do change color, it better make sense in the story.
Which brings me to the most important part of writing a series…
Reading.
Or rather, re-reading. I’m working on these concurrently, so I have an audio version of Werewolf Wedding being narrated to me, am doing final pass edits on Duke of Autumn, am drafting Siren Song, and outlining Winter King. There’s a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of details I don’t want to miss.
If it looks overwhelming, don’t worry. The fact is, I’m having a blast. I love Nora and these stories and I cannot wait to share them with you. Truthfully, if I am ever not having fun, it normally means I’ve lost sight of the story and need to go back to the Story Bible and flip through it.
There are a ton more KEY pages in my Story Bible, such as the Compost Dump that I’ve mentioned before. (I still recommend Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass on Writing. You won’t regret it.) But I want to highlight one more before I run off for the day. This KEY page is titled: The Lies They Believe.
It’s a very evocative title, I know.
We’ll take Nora for example. MILD SPOILERS INBOUND.
Werewolf Wedding – The Lies Nora Believes – is that she is a low level empath whose only use is as a counselor. Further, she’s a burden to her Nana Bess and Uncle Martin – especially Uncle Martin. She believes Fairy is a place where criminals and reprobates thrive, that decent people never go there, because this is what Bess and Martin have told her. This lie is reinforced by the fact that her own parents abandoned Fairy before she was born, though they never told her precisely why.
Why is this page KEY?
Because by the end of Werewolf Wedding, Nora has to see through these lies, if not confront them.
Happy Writing!
Purchase Link – Nora and the Werewolf Wedding
Pre-Order Link – Nora and the Duke of Autumn
AJMaguire - Author 