Pitching a Series
A reader asks an interesting question:
I have been working on this novel for a great number of years now. It appears that I have come close to the 70,000 word count boundary for a historical/sci-fi novel and my novel is almost done. I believe that there will either be a prequel or a series of prequels set before this very novel that I am writing now.
I guess my question is how I should set this up for publishing companies. Should I market this novel as a stand-alone? (I have kind of begun to roughly sketch the prequel, even a few pages of it too.) Or should I mention my idea for a series of prequels?
I've written a couple of series, but not on purpose.
My first novel, The Empire of Time, was strictly a stand-alone. But several years after it appeared, my editor at Del Rey suggested I turn it into a series. Rather than turn it into the first of a trilogy, I turned it into the last, and sold two prequels—The Fall of the Republic and Rogue Emperor. That actually worked out pretty well, and I was happy with the resulting stories.
A few years later the same editor suggested I try fantasy, and I sold him Greenmagic. A few years later, after that editor had left, I pitched Del Rey on a trilogy based on the world and characters of Greenmagic. They bought it, and I came up with Redmagic. Again I was fairly happy with the result.
But by then I knew I couldn't look another dragon in the face. Spells and enchantments had become as thrilling as explaining semicolons for 40 years. (I know, because I've explained semicolons for 40 years to generation after generation of business students. And I'm happy to say I'm now retiring from that noble but dull job.)
I begged off doing the third novel in my proposed trilogy, and Del Rey kindly let me off the hook.
The moral of the story? If you've got an idea with enough complexity in it, you can explore its implications through two or three or more novels. You'll challenge both yourself and your readers, who will look forward to each successive story.
The hazard is creating a world that lots of people enjoy hanging out in, regardless of the quality of the stories about it. If Frank Herbert had published Dune and gone on to something completely different, that novel would still loom as a classic. But turning it into a series diluted the impact of the first novel, and trained a generation of readers to settle for leftovers, endlessly warmed up.
The same is true of most mass-market fantasy and SF series. Just as toddlers love to hear the same bedtime story, over and over and over again, many readers want yet another visit to the world of Shannara or Asimov's Foundation. It's as comforting as sucking your thumb, but most of us should outgrow thumb-sucking.
SF and fantasy are, in theory, literatures of Big Ideas. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series needs three novels because he has very big ideas indeed, and he needs several universes' worth of space to dramatize them.
So if your novel involves comparably big ideas, by all means plan on a series, and on pitching the whole series. If anything, 70,000 words sounds a little short, especially for a story that will wrap up two or three prequels. Push the story to 85,000 or 90,000 words, and a trilogy would be close to 300,000—which would keep readers happy for a long time.
But bear in mind that the series will hold together better if the final volume contains more skill (and surprises) than the first. It might be worthwhile to finish the present draft and put it aside. Then get to work on the first prequel, which should be relatively easy since you know where it's going to go. And of course your current novel has taught you a lot that will make the first volume easier to produce in a short time.
With the first volume done, and the third volume in pretty good shape, you can then pitch publishers with more confidence. A contract will do wonders in improving your writing speed for the second volume, and you can then revise the third volume to make the whole series hang together.
This may sound like a terrible increase in the time and effort needed to break into print successfully. But publishing a novel is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. With any skill and energy, you can write a big fat novel in a year or two, as a sideline from your day job. If you're in your twenties or thirties, that means a hell of a lot of novels over the next three or four decades.
Invest your first few years wisely, and you'll be glad you did when your bibliography lists dozens or scores of titles.
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