Note: This post was originally published on my Lucy Varna blog on 31 May 2014. I've moved it here because the review is geared toward writers, not readers.

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Writing the Fiction Series : The Complete Guide for Novels and Novellas by Karen S. Wiesner (Writer’s Digest Books, 2013).

I picked up Writing the Fiction Series because I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to improve my organization of the series I write. Authors are encouraged to write series for a variety of reasons (e.g. developing a strong fan base), and I hoped that WFS would meet this emphasis head on with some sound advice. Indeed, WFS contains some really good pointers for authors, but it also contains some tragically flawed advice and reasoning.

Wiesner has published numerous series through a variety of small presses, and has even published a few on her own (more about her attitude toward the publishing industry in a moment), so she’s certainly writing from a position of authority. A good portion of her examples are drawn from her own experience as a series writer, although she also includes examples, personal views, and experiences of other authors.

The book itself is organized into an introduction, six “meat” chapters, two appendixes, and a brief index. The chapters cover: series catalysts, definitions, and types [Chapter One]; finding the focus of a series [Chapter Two]; characters and consistency [Chapter Three]; series organization [Chapter Four]; series marketing [Chapter Five]; and preparing for the conclusion of a series [Chapter Six]. The first appendix includes a massive array of worksheets to help organize a series. (Some will find these useful. Others will find them constraining.) The second gives examples of series across six genre groupings and a discussion of the elements in each book of the Harry Potter series that pertain to the series arc, the individual story arc, and the “plant” arc (i.e. foreshadowing for later plot points and devices).

Overall, I found WFS to be fairly thorough in its treatment of series writing and organization. More experienced authors are bound to find gaps and/or problems other than the ones discussed below, but the coverage of each topic was generally more than adequate to help those new to series writing and organization, as long as one takes Wiesner’s rigid view of the topic with a grain of salt. In fact, that’s one of WFS’ serious flaws, so let’s take it first.

Problem 1: A Rigid Voice

As previously mentioned, Wiesner establishes her authority for WFS’ topic through her own deep experience as a series writer; however, her views are often so rigidly expressed that new authors may have trouble using her book if their writing process differs from Wiesner’s preferred approach. (Rigidity is one of the major drawbacks of books related to writing as a craft.)

For example, in Chapter Four, which covers series organization, Wiesner begins by describing the absolute necessity of writing series and story blurbs after the initial series conception but before the first word is written in any of the stories themselves. Knowing what’s going to happen in a series is important, particularly for finite (as opposed to open-ended) series, but writing a blurb at the outset would be incredibly problematic for some writers and it’s not necessary. In fact, in the next subsection, Wiesner mentions in passing that there are authors who don’t write blurbs before beginning to write, and yet these authors successfully publish series.

If you’re new to writing a series and not sure which path to take, focus first on making certain that the important details are written into the series bible, the creation of which is discussed in WFS in Chapter Four. Once those details are down, figure out the theme of the series. (I didn’t figure out that I needed a series theme/blurb until after writing the first draft of the third novel in my main series. Wish I’d written one in the beginning!) Blurbs themselves don’t have to be written until the book is finished or an author has a thorough understanding of exactly what’s going to happen in that story.

Of course, those writing open-ended series may need to know more or less information prior to actually sitting down to write, and pantsers will need to figure out a way to foreshadow events in future stories within the one being currently written. The most important points Wiesner makes on this subtopic is that the author needs to strive for consistency, discussed in detail in Chapter Three along with the problems that can crop up when authors aren’t diligent about consistency.

Problem 2: Gaps

At times, Wiesner is less than articulate in her discussions of important aspects of writing a series. Chapter One is broken down into “The Catalyst of Series,” “Definitions of Book Groupings” (book series; serials; prequels, sequels, and interquels; trilogies; and spin-offs), and “Types of Series Ties.” Nowhere does she separately discuss the two types of series (open-ended and finite), though in Chapter Two, she spends a considerable amount of time comparing open-ended series arcs to finite series arcs. A discussion of the difference between the finite and open-ended series would have been incredibly useful in Chapter One, though Wiesner does an adequate job of distinguishing between them in her discussion of arcs.

Another disconcerting gap came in Chapter Four in the discussion of creating the series bible, during which Wiesner says (p. 150): “The series bible can easily be compiled in a large binder with tabbed divider pages, in a file on your computer (and backed up on a disk or flash drive), or even in a three- to five-subject notebook with section dividers. You can also store the series bible in an index card file box with separate sections.” While these are all useful suggestions, a complete discussion of organization should have included at least a mention of software specifically designed for this purpose, such as OneNote (software set up like a tabbed notebook or binder), and the use of writing software (like Scrivener) as a series organizer.

Problem 3: Emphasis on Publishing through Houses/Presses

While Wiesner took an incredibly neutral tone the few times she mentioned self-publishing, she over-emphasized the more traditional path of publishing through publishing houses. (For ease of discussion, I’ll refer to this simply as “traditional publishing” or something similar.) Normally, this wouldn’t be such an issue. It’s nearly a given that traditionally published books on the writing craft will be heavily biased in that direction, so a lot of self-published authors learn to filter that out.

In this case, Wiesner discusses in depth (in pretty much every chapter) the problems an author will face when trying to publish a series traditionally, from selling a publisher on a series (they generally like them, though they may interfere with the series’ direction and details), to working on publisher-requested series, to having to re-sell a series when a publisher either drops it or closes. The latter seems to be a huge problem among traditionally published series, even those with a devoted readership. In light of that, one would expect Wiesner to more thoroughly explore the self-publishing option instead of consigning it to the category of “last resort” or referring to it euphemistically as “publishing e-books.” This is especially true considering that Wiesner has herself had to shop/move a published series over several different publishers because of the numerous problems she’s encountered. In one case, she self-published precisely for this reason.

While Wiesner mentioned the importance of cultivating readers in several spots, only twice did she actually give them a voice, first in Chapter Three in “Series Reader Tips” (pp. 108-110) and then in Chapter Five when discussing branding (p. 165). Clearly, though, readers are arguably either the first or second most important reason to write and/or continue a series, depending upon the importance an author assigns to the “need” to write. Publishers are just the middle man, something Wiesner, an experienced author with a deep backlist, should know. At the very least, self-publishing should have been presented as a viable and valid means of satisfying a fan base. Wiesner should also have drawn more opinions from readers than from other authors and publishers.

I was puzzled by Wiesner’s insistence upon clinging to the traditional method of publishing when she admitted that, as an author published primarily through small presses, she can’t afford “bells and whistles” on her author website (p. 172). It doesn’t take a lot of money to have a nice website. In fact, it can be done on the low end for $30-150 in upfront costs (if you do it yourself) and about $100-150 in annual costs. (If you have to hire someone, it will cost more, but nowadays, it’s very easy to set up and run a really nice “bells and whistles” website without outside professional help.) When a prolific published author doesn’t have that kind of money, there’s a problem. Since Wiesner specifically ties the lack of money to being published through a “small-press publishers,” the root cause of that lack is probably due to the small advance/royalties being earned off of each title. Going by examples discussed on kboards and elsewhere, self-published authors with huge backlists tend to make a lot of money, certainly enough to afford a decent website.

Additionally, self-publishers have a lot more control over the publishing process. One problem that obviously frustrated Wiesner was in getting a publisher to adequately and effectively brand and market a series. She mentioned, for example, having to repeatedly hound publishers to include a logo or some other identifier, including the name of the series (!), on the cover of each book in a series. This is never a problem with self-publishing, wherein tight control is retained over nearly every aspect of the publishing process, including marketing and branding.

With all the problems Wiesner has had with publishers, why does she cling to this route? She has a huge backlist, could likely get the rights back to most if not all of her books (so she could re-release them on her own and keep more of the profit), and has a ready-made fan base which, quite frankly, doesn’t care how she publishes, only that she does. Yes, she would have to pay for covers, editing, marketing, etc., out of her own pocket if she self-published, but she should still be able to make more money going that route than sticking with publishers. Yet, her emphasis on traditional publishing is nearly continual. By the time I hit the “bells and whistles” comment, I was ready to figuratively smack some sense into her. 

Conclusion

There were other problems in WFS (such as her criticism of J.K. Rowling’s decision to kill off beloved characters, which showed a complete lack of understanding of the series itself), but the three above flaws were, for me, the biggies. While I didn’t discuss the usefulness of this book in detail, it *is* overall an excellent resource, particularly for those who want to write a series but have no idea how to tackle one.