Book series are taking all over the place, whether filling the shelves at nearby libraries or inspiring movies at local cinemas. Many novelists are publishing their episodes to pull in readers who yearn to spend more time as the series progresses. They successfully generate a buzz around their work, generate impressive sales, and boost their author brand.
You can also do it by launching your book series and sustaining your readership. However, writing a sensational series is a big deal, and requires one to develop strong characters, pleasing settings, and interesting plots. Below, we have listed eight proven steps through which you can create an award-winning novel edition:
8 Proven Steps To Write A Sensational Novel Series
Choose A Genre For Your Series:
Choose the genre you would like to work on in this case, whether it is fantasy, science fiction, or mystery. Romance and commercial fiction also work well and have chances of gaining immense popularity. Many publishers prefer fantasy series over a single edition, as they tend to generate high sales.
Create A Writing Timeline:
Planning out the process will help you complete everything on time and maximize your productivity. So, create a timeline for each part, along with deadlines and due dates. Figure out how many hours per day or week you would dedicate to your writing process. Set up deadlines and ways to celebrate accomplishments once you complete a specific word count. It would let you feel encouragement throughout and publish your work on time.
As your audience would want to know what happens next, you will have to frequently get your work out. For this, you should hire a team who edit and create an eye-catching, yet consistent book cover design. You can also hand over publishing and promotional concerns related to your work so that you can write the next episode carefree. This way, you will maintain your recognition among your audience and boost your popularity.
Shape Your Main Characters:
Active characters generally create more hype and appear interesting, and relatable than the boring ones. Therefore, make your protagonist full of life and capable of making the right decision, when the times get worse. It will sustain your readership throughout your content and urge them to care about the protagonist. Shape your main characters in a way that your target audience can easily relate to them. It will result in their strong connection with your story, making them eagerly wait for your next series.
Develop Interesting Minor Characters:
Irrespective of whether you’re writing a fictional or non-fictional story, your protagonist will come across various characters. Develop each one of them strategically to make their personalities interesting and memorable. So their interaction with the protagonist creates a jaw-dropping scene. Also, you can enter comic personalities in your story to give a break to recurring serious scenes.
Keep A Bible Of Your Characters:
Maintaining consistency throughout your series is essential to make your content interesting and avoid any conflict. However, it can be difficult if you comprise several characters. To ease your burdens and effortlessly maintain consistency, keep a character bible. Note down basic and important details of each role, such as their age, birthday, physical characteristics, personality type, etc. You can also include the backstories of each character.
Remember the minor characters you include in the first book can have a strong role in the latter series. Keep that in mind while shaping their personality. For instance, the kids of the divorced father will have to play game-changing, strong roles in the future edition. Create family trees or a spreadsheet of characters to keep all their information in one place.
Think About The Entire Series While Writing The First Edition:
When you write your first-ever edition, think of where your characters are heading and what problems they will encounter in the future. That way, you can include teases and clues in the first one that will hook your target audience to find out what happens next.
You can develop those clues into a breathtaking story in your later editions to delight your readers. You can drop key points within each part that you can cover in detail during the writing process. If you’re writing a shorter series, such as a trilogy, determine the ultimate conclusion to drive your plot in that direction.
Establish A Setting Readers Will Desire To Revisit:
Whether it is green lush mountain valleys or a modern city, create a picturesque world for your characters. Choose a beautiful colour palette and attention-grabbing elements to draw your readership repeatedly toward your story. People love reading novels in which they can find themselves or their future selves. Therefore, whether the settings or characters within it, they should be highly relatable for your target audience.
If you want your manuscript to reach out to your target audience and gain maximum visibility, publish it on all self-publishing platforms. Hire online top-notch and reliable self publishing services UK to share your book across all channels and make high sales. Experts would leverage SEO and other marketing tactics to make your publication stand out on all top platforms.
Maintain Consistency Of Your Settings:
Similar to the character bible, you will also need to create one for key settings within your series. List down information on important buildings, streets, and other locations in your physical or digital diary. Plus, jot down distances between key landmarks, stores, marts, restaurants, and amusement places.
Moreover, describe the paint colour and furnishing style that features within the protagonist’s room. Maintaining a bibliography for the key settings will let you maintain the consistency of backgrounds within all novel editions.
What turns a book into a series?
A book series is a sequence of the same novel that is typically read in order by readers. All parts have a connection with one another through characters or settings but may depict a completely different tale.
How many parts should you write in a book series?
It is completely up to you how many parts you would like to create for your series. Some authors prefer four editions while others limit it to six. However, we suggest you wrap up your story on a high note to create an unforgettable ending, even if it means fewer instalments than you expected.
Should I outline the entire series or one book at a time?
The answer varies for every author but you should outline the entire series to get an idea about where to begin and stop. Provide at least some details for every part to streamline your writing process. If your novel has an episodic model, outlining every edition isn’t necessary.
Closing Up
Writing the bestselling book series is no small feat. It requires immense dedication, strategic planning, and persistent implementation to bring your ideas to life. However, you don’t need to do everything on your own to achieve your literary goal.
For you to transform your idea into a publication, you’ll have to walk through various steps, like writing, editing, publishing, and promotion. Feel free to hire professionals who can look after all these hectic hassles and speed up the process for you. It would help you publish frequently, keep your audience busy with your interesting work, and generate high sales.
