Naomi Dawn Musch

There's probably no more difficult aspect to writing any novel than capturing the right beginning. Les Edgerton, in his book Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers, says, "A good quality story beginning is a microcosm of the work entire. If you capture the right beginning, you've written a small version of the whole."

The same thing is true for the first book in a series. If Book One doesn't resonate with captivating characters and a gripping plot, then you won't get a following. We've probably all begun reading a series only to abandon it somewhere along the way. It could be that it was simply not in a genre to our taste. But woe to the author if it was in a favorite genre and yet lacked the ability to make us yearn for more.

See ya. Wouldn't wanna be ya.

It's thrilling to create an idea for a series, but if you don't put your all into book one without the distraction of those other books yet to be written, there's no point. First things first.Write book one. Develop a mind-blowing idea.

Of course, you may be thinking of your Big Idea as being the over-arching vision for the series. For instance, my current historical series is built around the Big Idea of the rise of the logging empire in the Wisconsin wilderness, and how it developed around the lives of one pioneer family over several generations.

But I didn't worry about any of those generations or even how the history evolved when I wrote Book One, The Green Veil. I focused solely on one single story, the tale of a young pioneer woman who loved a handsome woodsman but married a zealous land speculator. I didn't consider what the next book in the series would entail until I was nearly to the end of writing The Green Veil.

I recently played a story-building game with a group of 3rd graders. I set an award (the story goal) on a chair at the front of the room. Then I blind-folded one brave student (the protagonist). Another student gave him directions for retrieving his goal prize. But, I threw down a couple sheets of paper on the floor representing trouble he had to avoid. If he stepped on a sheet -- BOOM! -- the rest of the class responded to let him know. He got to his goal without too much trouble. Only one little explosion.

Then we tried it again, only this time we laced the floor with sheets of paper, all representing a host of problems he could encounter. Boom! Boom! BOOM! We learned that the more trouble our protagonist encountered on the way to his goal, the more adventure he had. Incidentally, his guide was a giggling direction-giver, and at times worked as a bit of an antagonist steering him directly into the paper-strewn path.

That's how gripping stories read.The action ramps up. The character has to face relational trouble, spiritual trouble, physical trouble. There has to be plenty of road blocks to them realizing their deepest desires. And if you want those characters to ring true and capture hearts, those desires have to be deep and universal as well as character specific.

So the first step to writing a series is to really focus on that first novel. Make it great! Write your heart out! Don't get mired down in planning a long chronicle of narratives before you've made a success of the first one. Once you have that first draft well in hand there'll be time to explore the possibilities for book two. Starting with book one, each story must be given your full focus, that "microcosm of the work entire".

Write on!

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