Felicity Pulman

[Note from Felicity: This article, GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT SERIES, is based on a talk given at the Writing for Children festival at the Writers' Centre in July, 2006. Everything I said then is still relevant, but I have updated the article.]

There's no doubt in the world that series have always been popular with children.  I well remember the pleasure of curling up with Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree, Secret Seven and Famous Five series while a visit to any bookshop today still reveals long rows of series novels - everything from horses, fairies and princesses to Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, Artemis Fowl, Max Remy and Deltora Quest, as well as the more down-to-earth, funny and sometimes in-your-face series by Australian authors such as Andy Griffiths, Jeni Mawter and John Marsden.

A tip for new writers:  look around for publishers of series who accept mss from a variety of authors, eg Penguin's Aussie Nibbles, Bites and Chomps, the Quentaris series, Allan & Unwin's Girlfriend fiction, Scholastic's My Diary series, etc.)  Read the series, check the publisher's requirements and see if you can write something that 'fits'.  My first publishing breakthrough came when I wrote a teen romance for the Dolly fiction series back in 1992.

It's very tempting to check out what series are selling (eg Harry Potter or the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer) and sit down to write a look-alike, on the premise that the publishers are bound to want more of the same.  There are two good reasons why you shouldn't do this!  First up: it can take years to work on an idea, write the first novel in the series, and flog it around the publishers. And that's just the start; production and publication can take up to another year - and by then the chances are your series has long passed its use-by date and no-one will be interested.

The second reason for not trying to follow the trend is that, if you're going to write a series, it means you're committing a sizeable chunk of your life to one project - and why would you do that unless you have a story in mind and are desperate to write it down?  I think it's important to write what you're passionate about, because I see writing as a leap in the dark, an act of faith. There are no guarantees that anyone will share your vision, but you know you have to write it down anyway, to quieten those voices that wake you in the middle of the night, to pacify those characters in your head who are determined to make you record their plight.

My next piece of advice, which you ignore at your peril, is:  give enough thought to what your series is about, and how it will end.  I wish someone had told me that before I wrote the Shalott trilogy, which was really a lesson in how NOT to write a series!

The Shalott trilogy is a timeslip fantasy adventure based on the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, and the famous poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson.  (A further note of warning: unfortunately, I often have to explain the poet, the poem and sometimes even the legend when I talk about the trilogy in schools.  It seems that most Dead White Males are no longer being studied - so give careful consideration to the sources of your inspiration, and be prepared to write copious 'author notes' to go at the back of your novels if you use a DWM as your springboard!)

In the Shalott trilogy, five Australian teenagers try to rewrite the fate of the Lady of Shalott and also save Camelot by going back in time through the means of a virtual reality history programme.  At the beginning, I knew little beyond the basics of the legend, and nothing at all about life in medieval time, but the poem fascinated me, as did all the 'what if' questions it raised, and so I willingly embarked on all the research necessary to write the novel. The mistake I made was in thinking that Shalott, the first novel, was a one-off.  The teenagers go back in time, there is romance, danger, adventure and - more than anything - a change in their characters, brought about by the experiences they are sharing.  So - instead of changing the legend as they intended, they actually wind up rewriting their own lives as they bond together and find the courage to face what's happening to them, and deal with it.  After all their trials and tribulations, they come home safely to sort out their problems in real time, and that was the end of the story - or so I thought. 

But by then I'd become immersed in Arthurian legend, and particularly interested in the two women who always get such a bad press:  the wicked witch and the jealous bitch, Morgan le Fay and Guinevere.   And so Return to Shalott was born. I took my teenagers back in time to reverse a death, but instead they return to Camelot. This gave me the chance to explore the characters of Morgan and Guinevere and discover why they acted as they did.  Part of the explanation comes from an ancient Celtic legend from the Mabinogian, the story of Lleu Llaw Gyffes and Blodeuwedd, a lady made from flowers.

The research was interesting and I had great fun writing the novel, which I thought wrapped it all up - until I suddenly realised the real reason why Callie, my central character, had gone back to Camelot. It wasn't to empower herself to withstand the pressure from her father and twin sister on how to live her life, although that was part of it.  No, her real quest was to save Guinevere and Lancelot's child, and bring the baby out of the conflagration of the last battle of Camlann and into our own world for safe-keeping.  And so I wrote the last of the trilogy: Shalott: The Final Journey.

What I've learned from this experience of how not to write a trilogy is this:

• While it's good advice to write what you know, it's absolutely vital to write what interests you and what you feel passionate about, given the amount of time you're going to spend on writing a series.  Plus: if you really care about what you're writing, so will your readers.
• It's very important to know what you're writing - whether it's a one-off, a trilogy or a series - right from the start.
• Know the ending of the story, even if you're not quite sure how you're going to get there!

 
There were many disadvantages of writing the Shalott trilogy as I did:

• If I'd known what I was doing, I would have given more clues and hooks through the first two novels that there was more at stake than might be apparent at the beginning.
• There was always the danger that I could have written myself into a corner and not been able to take the story further.
• There was no marketing strategy in place from the beginning to indicate that this was a trilogy, or to sell it as such, which proved a disadvantage.

I was determined not to make the same mistakes when it came to writing my medieval crime/romance series for teenagers, The Janna Mysteries.  Before I went to Random House with the concept, I nutted out scenarios for 8 books (now down to 6).  I had to make a decision whether they were to be stand-alone - as many series are - but I decided to have an overarching theme:  that of Janna's quest to find her unknown father in order to gain his help in bringing her mother's killer to justice.           

There are pluses and minuses to this approach.

The advantages, as I see them, are:

• Janna's quest is the engine that drives the series: a quest for identity, justice and revenge, love, maturity, knowledge and wisdom - her journey to adulthood
• Readers, hopefully, are hooked into Janna's quest and will keep buying the books to find out what happens next.  Certainly I receive many emails asking when the next book will be out and telling me to hurry up and finish the series!
• There's a marketing strategy in place to sell this as a series

 Disadvantages - as I see them - are: 

• If the books don't sell to expectation, the publisher could pull the plug mid-quest - this is something to think about when signing a contract.
• While each book is a stand-alone, it's probably best to read them in sequence, starting with Book 1 - which may impact on marketing strategy and also on sales.

A final note of warning:  children/teenagers do judge books by their covers.  As this is the first point of contact, it's important to get the covers right.  Lilies for Love, Book 3 of The Janna Mysteries, was a different size and had a completely different cover from Books 1 & 2.  The four novels currently comprising the series have now been redesigned and rejacketed.

As to what makes a series work?  An action-packed, page-turning read is a good start, but primarily, I think it all comes down to your characters.  If readers can't identify with your characters, and don't care what happens to them, you can be sure they won't buy or read your books.  Both the Shalott trilogy and The Janna Mysteries are set almost a thousand years ago, in medieval England.  How can they be relevant to teenagers today?

 My answer is that my characters embark on the same journey made by every teenager:  to find out about the world, to find out about themselves, to find friendship, love and a sense of purpose.  Just like teenagers today, my characters do the wrong thing, make mistakes, learn from experience, change and grow. In so doing, they come to an understanding of themselves, who they are, what they're capable of, and where they belong. 

Judging from the many emails I've received, these two series speak to teenagers - and really, this is why I write: to take readers into the world of the imagination, and show them that all things are possible.

 ©  Felicity Pulman, 2007-2009