#131: 5 Steps To Start Planning Your Book Series

Fiction Writing Made Easy

Savannah Gilbo

Education, Fiction, Writing Tips, Arts, Bestseller, Writing, How To, Author, Writing Community, Books, Novel, How To Write Fiction, Writing Fiction, Writer, How To Write A Book

4.9 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“The key to making books within a series work is to grow, escalate, and complicate the conflict and stakes from book to book.” - Savannah Gilbo

A good book series allows readers to immerse themselves in a world and stay there. But how do you write a series that works? To start, here are 5 steps to help you start planning your book series. Here’s a preview of what’s included:

[01:42] Savannah discusses the the three primary categories of book series—static, dynamic, and anthology.

[03:06] The 5 steps to start planning your book series.

[11:48] Analyzing a character's journey across the Hunger Games trilogy.

[14:50] Unpacking Voldemort's grand plot objective versus the specific goals within each book—and the strategic implications.

[21:35] A useful exercise to stimulate plot ideas for your series.

[29:03] A bonus tip for enriching the worldbuilding/setting of your book series.

[32:45] As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into planning a book series. Don’t expect to have everything figured out in one or two sittings. This is something you’ll need to start and add to over time, so please know that going into this process!

Links Mentioned In This Episode:

Interested in becoming a certified book coach who specializes in memoirs? Click here to check out Author Accelerator's memoir certification course and save $500 if you sign up before the end of February!

Support the show

If you enjoyed this episode of the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast, please rate, review, and follow this show!

Follow me on Instagram @savannah.gilbo

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Are you someone that has a passion for memoirs? If so, how would you like to become a book coach that's specifically trained in helping authors produce memoirs they're proud of?
0:08.4	If that sounds like a dream, I encourage you to sign up for author Accelerator's memoir certification course.
0:14.0	For the rest of February, they're offering $500 off the price of the program
0:18.0	so you won't want to miss this if you're interested in becoming a memoir coach.
0:21.6	To learn more, go to Savannah Gilboe.com
0:24.0	forward slash coach one more time that's Savannah Gilboo.com forward slash coach to learn more
0:29.0	about author accelerators memoir certification program the key to making books within a series work
0:34.8	is to grow escalate and complicate the conflict and stakes from book to book. It's not
0:40.7	mixing up the genres from book to book.
0:43.0	Okay, so escalating the conflict and stakes is going to pull readers
0:47.5	into your series while mixing up the genres from book to book
0:51.0	will push them away.
0:52.8	So just something to keep in mind determining the genre of your series and of each individual
0:57.5	book within your series as well.
1:02.0	Welcome to the Fiction writing made easy podcast. My name is Savannah Gilboo and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week I'll bring you a brand new episode
1:15.0	with simple, actionable, and step-by-step strategies
1:18.2	that you can implement in your writing right away.
1:20.7	So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to
1:24.0	improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started.
1:31.6	In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to start planning a book series.
1:36.0	And I'm so excited to talk about this topic because it's one that I get a lot of questions about.
1:41.0	So people will write into the show all the time and they'll ask me things like how do you even start planning out a book series? How do you keep conflicts and character arcs going over such a long period of time.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Savannah Gilbo, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Savannah Gilbo and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.