Okay, your writers of epic series and continuing sagas that stretch across multiple books, let's pick your brains to see how to make that magic happen.
How much do you know going into a series, or does the bulk of the world and lore grow as you write it?
Bobby Nash: When I start a series, I have an idea of where the overall story is going. I usually have loose plots for at least two books when I start on book one. My series tend to be stand-alone A plots with subplots and character bits that move from book to book. I want readers to get a beginning, middle, and end in each book. Then, I tease the next one at the end and hope it brings them back for more.
Ef Deal: I began with characters and a setting. I had not planned a series; I just researched a rich vein of history, science, and music. As I researched, ideas for conflict/plot emerged, and I found myself with too much for one story. I mean, these women had lives to live, too much for a one and done. I’ve always believed that a story needs a future, so my characters conceivably could go on for another 70 years. Sadly, I may not be able to write it all.
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All worldbuilding always happens as part of the writing process. If I need to know something about the world, I make it up. I am basically discovering the universe at the same speed the reader will.
Rosemary Claire Smith: I thought I knew so much more than I actually did. Important characters walked onto the stage midway through. For some, their ultimate fate changed in small or large ways as I worked on it.
Dan Kemp: I did not know much, but since my thriller series (Athenaeum, Inc) happens in our 'real' world, I don't have to build much. Reality supplies the weirdness.
Jay Peterson: Only got the one series, but I knew it was going to be one the moment it started showing up.
Sara Hinson Bond: In order to keep everything straight across multiple books. I start a series Bible and the second lore gets added to a book I start expanding on it. I have notes on magic systems, character bios and political history, etc. I don't know all the details, though, and they come up as they are relevant to the story.
When I started the first book of my Iron and Earth series, I just had a vibe and a character. By the time I fished draft one I knew my entire story arc over five books. I had a mythos, a magic system, and a mystery to uncover over multiple books within a few pages, and by the end of the first book I knew exactly where it was taking me.
Sam Kelley: I learn as I outline and write and expand upon that info during rewrites & edits.
Julia Benson-Slaughter: When I started writing The Littleton Chronicles, I’d been collaborating with my writing partner on a series that he started several years ago. We’d spent two years expanding his beginning story bits and building the world for that series (Chronicles of the Covenant) when we each got the urge to venture off into a separate, but connected, universe. So there was a basic foundation in place for all three universes, dealing with their creation and early evolution. A big part of the story in all three is how they diverge into different worlds, but will, LONG into the future, all converge back to the same point.
With Littleton specifically, I went in just knowing two scenes, one early and one twenty years later. Those had been percolating in the back recesses of my head for, oh, thirty years or more. Once I realized how to fit the story into our multiverse, I started writing and the world and its lore started growing. I have joked before that Mike and I aren’t really “creating” these worlds as much as “excavating” them.
Mindi Carver: For me, every story starts with one scene or character concept. A "What if...?" moment. I've had enough of those over the years that most of them settle into one out of five worlds. Even if it starts out as "new", as it develops, the main genre or characters will determine where they fit. I have two "fantasy" worlds, one "historical fiction (Robin Hood)", an "urban fantasy", a "zombie apocalypse", and a "spicy' dystopian". If it's a kid's story, that's a whole different category, but everything else gets absorbed into one of those six worlds.
Kay Iscah: I'm at an early stage or prepublication with most of my series simply because there is a lot of planning and/or there are other people involved. But in my view, there are two basic types of series, planned and episodic. Wheel of Time was planned. Tek War is purely episodic. Babylon 5 was planned while Star Trek is mainly episodic. X-Files juggled both approaches.
My writing is constantly trying to play a game of catch up with my imagination. With Seven Night, I have eight to twelve books worth of stories in my head, but it's not an epic. It's episodic, continuing adventures, and once the Before the Fairytale set is out, I'm like to walk away from that world for a while to work on other stories, because I don't feel like I'd be leaving the readers in a bad spot by doing so. There's not another "the end" point I'm trying to reach, though I can see all these stories like movies in my head.
What's getting pushed in publishing right now is "standalone with series potential", which makes sense on a financial end. Long series are a big investment. But this would leave out a lot of epic fantasy like Lord of the Rings. Seven Night does fit that "standalone with series potential" model. It has a begin, middle, end, no cliff hanger, and going into it, I knew how well it sold would dictate if or how soon I brought the characters back with additional adventures.
The series I'm about to shift however as well as the one I'm currently pitching to agents are planned series. One is a proper epic. The other is a bit more episodic though I have a planned point I am working towards, with main character arcs mapped out. Both are franchise fiction, so I'm at the mercy of the IP holder to get it made or get the ending I'm setting up.
The story is the lore. The lore is the story. So the lore always expands as the story expands. Even if you go in with a detailed plan, there tends to be happy accidents in the writing process.
But again, I'm typically playing catch-up with my imagination. Usually by the time I'm writing, my mind has finished the story and moved on to sequels, etc. It can be more difficult for me not to do that.
Sheela Leyh: I'm still on my prepublication drafts. I tend to go into it with an idea and then let the bulk of the world and lore happen on its own. Taking that approach has freed up a lot of energy from preplanning into being able to write the drafts instead of getting stuck.
Robert Greenberger: The answer varies. When I was editing at DC, I insisted my writers flesh out their idea for characters, setting, and rough plots for the first year to ensure it had "legs".
Ron Thomas: Pretty much set and in a variety of forms (legal pad outlines in a folder, Word doc with the series broken up by trilogy, pages of story notes for each book). Had a series in mind all along but working it out with helpful editors and publishers clarified the game plan.
Terrance Layhew: I try to keep most of my writing open-ended enough to permit a series, but doesn’t require being one to enjoy. Which means, the initial project needs to be a large enough sandbox to play in.
Jeffery Pintabona: When I wrote The Killers From Yellow Rock, I intended it as a standalone, but over time I found myself worldbuilding and dropping hints of future events, which led to me developing a sequel and plans to do it as a trilogy.
Nancy Hansen: I know just enough to motivate me into to figuring the rest out. Most of my writing starts with some vague idea of what's going on, who's involved, and where and when it takes place. The rest comes as I get words on pages. I've learned to trust the muse—I'll figure something out.
Bill Craig: I am learning about the character at the same time as the reader is. I have a notion of who and what they are, but I expand on that by letting them grow as the series progresses.
Do you begin with the expectation of writing a series, or does a book grow to become and "need" to be a series as you are working on it? Give an example from your work, please.
Marie Vibbert: I always wanted Hellcats to be a series, so when the publisher asked for a sequel I was like "YES!!" then I was like "CRAP!" because I had never actually written a sequel before?
Dan Kemp: I did not know I was writing a series. I left the opening for a series, but the loop was mostly closed in Book 1's ending. The decision on sequels was partly going to be a business decision by my (small, indie) publisher.
Kevin McLaughlin: I do not begin writing a book unless I believe there's potential for a MINIMUM of six books in the series. Ever. Six books is where I can reliably begin doubling my money from ads, so six books is the minimum I aim for. I might cancel a series early, if it's tanking for some reason. But that's unusual. I'll almost always go to at least six books.
Of the two stand-alone novels I've written, one was a work-for-hire that paid me in cash (The Human Experiment), and the other (The Quantum Dragonslayer) was intended as a series; just haven't written the other books yet. Might still do, someday.
Bill Craig: If I like my character concept, I will plan for a number of titles featuring them, but I also give them a past they have to deal with. Eg: Yancy Barnes and the Heart of Creation introduces Barnes to the reader. It also deals with an ex-girlfriend who is a very able pilot and his reaction to having to deal with her. Stormy Savage returns to bedevil Barnes in Yancy Barnes and the Aztec Gold.
Jeffery Pintabona: When going INTO a series with intent to write as a series right from the start, I think it's wise to map out general outlines as to where the series will go. What is the storytelling engine that drives your series? Why should the reader get invested? Know the answers to those questions before you write the first book. My upcoming release is the first in a series and I had the general world, the main character, and various potential plots all written out before I put pen to page to write that first book.
Sheela Leyh: I let the story decide whether it becomes a series or a serial. In one of the stories I have, there's enough depth that my alpha readers were asking me to write a follow up after the story because they wanted to see how a few of the main characters survive past that story. So it's going to be its own series - I didn't expect my readers to bond that much to that set of characters from the beginning. A different one of a girl trying to save her people was planned to be a serial from the get-go until the story finishes and since each part is episodic, it made sense to have it be a serial anyways.
Kay Iscah: I usually know upfront if I'm working on a series or a standalone story. Seventh Night I went in mainly to write a movie that captured the feel of The Princess Bride and other movies I enjoyed, but I also knew it was a story I could expand upon with continuing adventures. Where I trip myself up is not always predicting length or time investment well. I started the Before the Fairytale prequels with the idea that they would be short stories that covered the younger years of the main characters. I thought it was a project I could write quickly. Heh.
Lot of what has slowed those books down had nothing to do with writing them but other life interruptions. I have finished writing them, and God willing they will have release dates this year. While most of these "short" stories clocked in at around 36,000 words, Horse Feathers is over 80,000 words, a bit longer than the novel it was supposed to be supporting.
I do have several truly standalone books in planning, and I want to get them written at some point. I suspect I will have to get them out before the epic series are able to come out, even though the series have been in planning much longer.
Mindi Carver: I rarely plan on making series. Zombies started life as a Walking Dead fanfic, but VERY quickly became it's own thing as the characters outgrew their inspirations and developed their own voices with big isht to say; and one of the fantasy stories was conceived as a place for my go-to D&D character to play in, outside of game play, and as my friend and I talked about it, it became not only a series, but a series of jokes.
The rest were always supposed to be stand-alones.
The "spicy dystopian" started out as an excuse to play with bdsm because I couldn't find kinky stories that had an actual story to them and what I was finding was either absurd fanfiction, or were SOOOO poorly written that they were genuinely turning me off, not on. But as the world developed, it got DEEP and I realized it was either going to be one huge book with two acts, or two distinct, smaller books.
The urban fantasy one though... That one started as a "what if I wrote a vampire YA story, BETTER than Myers', with a specific cast in mind?" but it kept morphing and changing, no longer YA, and sucking up other genres; collecting all the random, "modernly" set stories that I dabbled in over the years (cozy, coastal mystery; vampire-no-longer-YA; urban fae; shifters...).
So far, the other fantasy and the historically set ones have remained single books. *crosses fingers and prays to anyone who might be listening to keep them as stand-alones.
Jay Peterson: Again, only got the one series. But I definitely saw it coming. The core story is an aftermath of a tragedy, and one of the overarching themes is "magic is not a substitute." The characters were going to need time and effort to truly recover and get to a point where they could thrive.
Terrance Layhew: When I wrote the first Mitch Mayhew story, “Unwanted Passenger,” it was the first act for a larger novel I had been drafting. When it won the 2025 Men’s Adventure Fiction May competition, I realized it had legs to be a series and I could take the loose outline of the novel I had planned and turn it into a “season,” for a serial style story of three installments.
Julia Benson-Slaughter: I knew The Littleton Chronicles would be at least two books from the beginning, because I wrote much of what is now Homecoming (book 5) at the same time I wrote Awakening (book 1). Once I realized that just having flashbacks wasn’t going to work to cover the twenty-year gap, I started writing Journeys (book 2). As Journeys grew, it got too big to be a single book, so I picked a stopping point for it and started Battles (book 3). THEN things got interesting. Several of the characters that played a minor but significant role in Battles DEMANDED! DEMANDED, I TELL YOU! their own book to cover the time frame of Battles, but from their point of view. That became Shìzú (book 4). The first four are finished. Homecoming is on track to be done this summer, and pieces of a book 6 are already falling into place. So yeah, The Littleton Chronicles grew from two books to probably at least six, and I’ll see what happens from there.
Rosemary Claire Smith: Heck no! When I began, I thought it would be a 6,000-word story. Then a single novel. Now six!
Sara Hinson Bond: I had a set arc for the number of books. When I started the first book of my Iron and Earth series, I just had a vibe and a character. By the time I finished draft one I knew my entire story arc over five books.
Bobby Nash: It depends. My first novel, Evil Ways, was written as a standalone novel. I thought I might revisit the characters again in another story. The last thing I wrote in that novel is the opening chapter, which lays some groundwork for the sequel. I did not intend for eleven years to pass before doing the sequel, Evil Intent, though. A similar situation happened with my novels Deadly Games! and Deadly Deals! sequels that came from a desire to revisit the characters. Both, the Snow and Tom Myers novella series were created as a series, so I started looking at ongoing things to have running through them, setting up future stories, character development, etc.
What method do you use for keeping notes about the history of your world and characters so you don't lose it for future books? How do you keep that minor character or event from Book 1 from being forgotten when you get to Book 4?
Kay Iscah: I keep way too much in my head, but the bigger the story, the more note files I have. Every story looks different. I wrote a fanfiction set at a school and had class schedules worked out for every character, even the minor ones. For the Girl With No Name, I made a journey map (attached). The Hidden Prince and Seven and Thirteen (the last two books in the Before the Fairytale set) are both set in the same castle, and I made a very detailed castle map with a full staff list.
For the big epic fantasy I'm planning, I have full books worth of plot summaries, character profiles, maps, etc. But again, those are shared universe stories. It was a product of collaborative storytelling, so it's not just mine. The other would be set in an established universe that already has plenty of reference material, but I've started making files for more detailed notes in case the IP holders want to bring other writers into the series.
I also tend to reread my books if I've been away from the setting for a while. The Before the Fairytale set are parallel stories, but minor characters evolve from story to story. So I reread what I had already written to help keep things consistent. The search function in MS Word is very helpful for seeing what the character had done before.
Sheela Leyh: I tend to keep a more limited cast of characters, although I keep notes on a junior-sized legal pad & clipboard as I work. I don't tend to carry over the notes past the session since I do go back and re-read while I edit my work on a different session to keep the details straight. I tend to deal with logic holes as it comes up during the writing, instead of leaving it for later.
Now that I am living in their world for a longer stretch, I am taking notes to ensure I do not contradict what I have established about them and their whereabouts.
Sara Hinson Bond: My series bible is crucial. I can't remember details of anything that isn't directly relevant to the plot I have planned. And sometimes things evolve, so I have to find ways to make it all fit.
Dan Kemp: I trust my memory and frequently reread my own stuff.
Ron Thomas: Outlines and folders. I believe in reference materials, so I have maps,illustrations, articles, etc., bundled for each book. (I think I am going to need the equivalent of a crime analysis board … minus the yarn … so I can track each relationship and mark them “used” if that scene has been done.)
Terrance Layhew: I keep a character bible to keep track. For fun, I also started a wiki page for Mitch Mayhew to keep his biography straight.
Jeffery Pintabona: I strongly advise writing a series bible so you can indeed keep track of your series and it's various facets over time.
Nancy Hansen: Digital notes, pictures, and reference materials on hand. That's why I need a large hard drive and do plenty of backups. Each thing I write gets its own folder in my document files—even 1-off short stories. All other material that pertains to that file is nestled inside the main folder in sub-folders. With the series work, I have a folder with the series title that will have subfolders for each book while in progress/finished (I keep galleys and corrections too). That main file also has an 'info' folder for notes, outtakes I want to keep, and reference materials, plus another folder labeled 'pics' for visual reference material. I've been trying to work on character dossiers but haven't gotten that far because I'd rather write stories than make copious notes about who's who. At least with the previous material handy, I can just search through past book manuscripts to find a forgotten name, eye color, talent, or whatever details I need to reenter a former character. Oh yeah, I do that a lot!
Bill Craig: I do keep character notes for each book and refer to them often.
Jay Peterson: I take a page from the TV world and write a series bible. Gives an overview of the characters, worldbuilding, cultures, politics, magic systems, and suchlike. I also keep individual "character sheets" for people interacted with or mentioned as the series goes on.
Kevin McLaughlin: Mostly, I just remember critical info. If I don't recall the details, I still remember the scene in the book where it happened, so it's easy to go look it up. In some cases, I will create a page where I write notes. For example, I'm writing a LitRPG where I need to track the power/spell/stat growth for four different characters over time. That got its own sheet! I write in Ulysses, which is sort of like Scrivener Lite, and uses a sidebar with a block per chapter. I just make one chapter for "notes" and use that for anything critical to remember that I may struggle with, like all the names of non-POV bridge crew on a starship.
I have a good memory for plot, so remembering the course of events even in a book I wrote a decade ago isn't difficult. It's the tiny details like names of minor characters which tend to elude me.
Bobby Nash: I have a character data sheet that I drop into the bottom of my WIP. I write in Word so it’s always there at the bottom. As things happen or are revealed about the characters that are important traits that will most likely be mentioned again or are character-defining moments, I add them to the data file. Once the book is done, I save it and drop that updated character doc. Into my next WIP.
Sam Kelley: I write notes that pop into my head throughout the day into my phone notes app and transfer them to the notes I keep in each project’s Scrivener file.
Marie Vibbert: I had to make more decisions about the world writing book 2, and now I'm on book 3, and I have to make it consistent. My "world notes" for book one was a single page, in a Word document, and some of that were in list form. For the second book, I added two more pages. Book three is probably going to need at least two more!
Julia Benson-Slaughter: I don’t use any kind of writing program, just various and sundry Writer documents and spreadsheets. Partly because I’m a Linux user and most of the writing assistant programs don’t seem to work with it, and partly because of how I think. I have an overall timeline for the entire series to handle the chronology. There’s a character synopsis document that lists/describes each character in each book, with each book’s character list going into the back of the book as an appendix a la David Weber and his Honor Harrington series. Each book also contains additional appendix material such as a brief description of the entire Multiverse structure, a synopsis of the world mythology, notes on various aspects of the world’s magical structure, and a glossary of jargon and acronyms (necessary given the amount of military jargon that flows through).
Mike and I discuss our work primarily through an ongoing Facebook Messenger chat. From the beginning, I’ve extracted the parts where we discuss Littleton and put them into a Writer document pretty much as is. That document is up to 96 pages at this point!
So I have a document per book and make each chapter a new Tab or outline point to make it easier to search.
Each world/book has a separate doc for notes, again utilizing the Tabs to categorize the info (characters, places, story highlights and which books they go in...) to make searching them easier.
Rosemary Claire Smith: Timelines, maps, research notes, extensive character notes, and a 35,000-word outline—chapter by chapter—spanning all the books.
Finally, in what ways do you find writing a continuing saga preferable and more fulfilling to you as a writer than writing a stand-alone novel? (Or vice versa.)
Sara Hinson Bond: The hardest part of writing is my first draft as I'm learning the characters, finding their voices, getting settled into the world. With a series, I'm already familiar with all of that by the second book, so even a first draft feels like an easier second or third draft. I already have the momentum: the ball is rolling, and I'm just steering.
Finally, in what ways do you find writing a continuing saga preferable and more fulfilling to you as a writer than writing a stand-alone novel? (Or vice versa.)
Jay Peterson: Sagas let you go big. In a standalone, there's only so many pages you can devote, even if you're writing a doorstopper. In a series, you get to take more time and see more detail. And when readers fall in love with certain characters and want to know what happens to them next, you've got the ideas coming to you.
Rosemary Claire Smith: I can tackle a subject that intrigues me in more depth from more viewpoints. Also, I don’t have to say goodbye to these characters for a long time.
Kevin McLaughlin: I've always enjoyed hearing more about characters I love. As a result, I've mostly preferred watching good TV series to watching movies, because I get more time with the characters I like that way. Movies are cool, but like stand-alone books, I usually want to know *what happens next!*
So as a writer, I get to answer that question for myself. 🙂 I get to make up as many stories about these characters as I feel like. If I start getting tired of a series, then I know it's time to begin wrapping it up. That's one of the two signals I use, the other being when readers begin getting bored (as tracked by read-through - it read-through dips, ever, it's a good sign it's time to begin wrapping the series up).
But I would be remiss not to point out the other main reason I write in series: it pays more! Series books out-earn stand-alone books in almost every genre, but SF&F are especially series-focused genres. It's possible to write a standalone book that breaks out, in SF&F, but it's insanely rare. Almost all popular books in those genres are series. Series consistently earn more, and the longer the series, the better the income.
Dan Kemp: I think for me it's how happy people seem to be to get another episode in the series, and I marvel that they pay me for it.
Bill Craig: I prefer series writing to one-off books because I like to watch the growth and progress of the main characters, I like to build in flaws to make them more interesting and to see how they deal with those flaws and rise above them. Rick Marlow is a prime example. He was a 3-pack-a-day smoker who had lost a third of a lung in a murder attempt. Over the course of four or five books, he quit smoking. He also deals with alcoholism, and getting him to deal with that has been an ongoing theme in the Key West mysteries.
Nancy Hansen: I can write standalone tales, but series writing is something I really enjoy doing because I get to spend more time with a storyline I really enjoy working on. So if the setting and characters are all my own, I'll often go that way. It gives me time and space to develop a set of regular characters that feel real and to flesh out the world they live in—plus the ideas come easier that way. So it's comfortable writing for me. I've always enjoyed reading series so that's probably where I got a feel for writing that way.
Jeffery Pintabona: I like the concept of a series because it gives you a familiar world to play in and characters to explore over a great deal of time. I also like the old pulp serial stories and you can keep that spirit alive in a series unlike in a standalone. I have lots of stories planned that I will never write a sequel for because they are intended to stand on their own, but it's nice to have a series to fall back on and bring you back to the comfortable and familiar. As a writer I want to test myself and try different things, but sometimes it's good to be on familiar ground and to just let the words flow.
Terrance Layhew: Having an existing world to step into with characters you enjoy writing is like playing with your favorite action figures. They aren’t necessarily new, but they are familiar and you have a shared history with them.
Ron Thomas: I think I like both. The series is like a highway but, for refreshment, I can take a side trip into a one-off project. Of course, a couple of those could become series later.
Robert Greenberger: The answer varies. When I was editing at DC, I insisted my writers flesh out their idea for characters, setting, and rough plots for the first year to ensure it had "legs".
As a writer, I don't conceive of a series, but need to fall for my characters and decide I want to spend more time with them. For example, in Thrilling Adventure Yarns 2022, I created a pair of S&S figures and decided I liked them, and wrote a second story for TAY 2026. Now, a third story has occurred to me.
Now that I am living in their world for a longer stretch, I am taking notes to ensure I do not contradict what I have established about them and their whereabouts.
Kay Iscah: It's different. Not sure more fulfilling is how I would phrase it; some stories just need to be longer to tell the whole story.
Mindi Carver: I know how much work goes into a series and I fear getting trapped into a contract for x number of books, but then the story deciding it's done before I get that far and I'm stuck having to come up with stuff and the quality of writing takes a hit because of my mental/emotional state. So I rarely plan for a series, the stories just sort of grow until I don't have a choice.
Singles are better because there's a light at the end of the tunnel; vs Series, which are better because I get to have fun with my friends for much longer! Each comes with it's own pros/cons and issues, so neither is better, they just are.
Julia Benson-Slaughter: I’ve never written a standalone novel and really can’t imagine doing to. Once my brain moves into a world, there’s so much to discover and so many stories to be told!
Sam Kelley: I have only completed writing one series and one standalone, so I don’t have enough variable experience to know for sure. That said, I like to spend a lot of time with my characters, so I imagine series will be my preference.
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