R. L. Stedman

Writer

SoulNecklace Stories

The Perils and Pitfalls of Writing a Trilogy

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Writing a Trilogy? Here’s What to Do (And What Not To Do)

SoulNecklace Stories (Box Set)

I’ve just published the final book in The SoulNecklace Stories.

This feels like a momentous occasion; it certainly has felt like a lot of work! This series has been nearly eight years in the making, with a fair number of fits and starts along the way.

So this blog post is like a message to my former self – as well as to anyone embarking on a trilogy. Here’s the things I wish I’d done, plus the (few) things I did do that worked well.

Top learnings:

Do

  • Write them! Series are great! They are actually a heck of a lot easier than writing stand-alone novels, because you don’t have to reinvent another world or another set of characters. Writing A Memory of Fire, the last book in my SoulNecklace Stories, felt a little like slipping on a comfy pair of slippers. Once I’d settled on the plot, I could just go.
  • Build your world-rules carefully. When writing fantasy, or indeed any fiction, you create a fictional world. This world has rules: things that are allowed, or not allowed.  Readers are (generally) content to go with these rules, but they do become upset when they spot an inconsistency.

Typically, a writer will have rules that are based around location or appearance (you can’t have a black-haired character suddenly becoming blonde without a reason) but in fantasy the rules are way more extensive and can include magic, technology, religion, geography: in fact, any part of life. This makes writing fantasy fun, but full of pitfalls.

As a writer, it can be hard to remember all your rules, especially once you’re 300,000 words in!

  • Draw maps and pictures. This helps to navigate around castles, houses, villages, countries, whatever. Once I figured this trick out I could get a feeling for distance (how long would it take to travel 40 leagues – and how long is a league anyway?)
  • Plan a little bit, but not too much. I found it helpful to have an idea of the stories ultimate destination (and no, not going to give that spoiler away), but by not being too settled on what would happen too early, interesting characters emerged. Like the Kamaye, the Wayhouses, TeSin and Ma Evans. They all spontaneously arose from my subconscious. I’d not planned for them at all, but weaving their stories into the main narrative added a lot to the overall depth.
  • Write faster! I really wish I’d just knuckled down and put the words on the page. Instead, I became distracted by other projects. This was partly fear – what if the conclusion was awful, what if no-one liked it. So, all in all, it took nearly 8 years to complete the series, but if I’d gotten over my fear issues I could have finished it a lot sooner.

WTF

Don’t

  • Don’t bother too much with the marketing until you’ve finished the series. I really wish I’d figured this out earlier. No point on worrying about Facebook ads or Goodreads giveaways until the series is completed. On a plus side, once a series is completed suddenly readers are very happy, because they can binge-read.
  • Don’t overpromise.  I found that I needed breaks from my imaginary worlds to retain the joy of the process, and this meant I had slow periods. Plus, because writing a series just takes so darn long, life gets in the way. This is part of the writing challenge, but it’s hard to explain to an impatient publisher or reader.
  • Don’t be daunted by the amount of work. Writing a novel is a huge amount of work. Writing a trilogy … oh man! It’s way more! You have to be totally committed before starting, because this world and these characters will be part of your life for a couple of years. It’s a big deal, taking on a two-year project, and not being certain of the outcome. All the time, through your head, a little voice murmurs: What if it’s no good. What if no-one likes it? What if no-one buys it? What if, what if…

And Finally

The most important lesson to anyone embarking on series: ditch the fear. Just do it anyway. You’ll be glad you did.

And, as a bonus, the third book might be so much fun to write that you might be tempted to write another book, or even just a novella, in the same universe.

A Long, Long Life

But that’s another story…

 

You can find The SoulNecklace Stories online or, in hard copy as individual titles on this website, or at your local library.

6 Things You Didn’t Know About My Books

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Six Things You Didn’t Know About The SoulNecklace Stories

I’ve been asked these questions about The SoulNecklace Stories:

  • Why do you have Christmas in your worlds?
  • Pockets weren’t invented until the 1700s. Why do your character’s clothes have pockets?
  • How come you don’t have guns but you have fireworks?

 

Great questions! Here’s why:

1. The books of the SoulNecklace Stories (A Necklace of Souls, A Skillful Warrior and A Memory of Fire) are set in a parallel world to ours. The world has similarities, but also a great many differences.  For example, in the world of The SoulNecklace Stories, much of the technology we have, like cars and guns, were never invented. Coal-fired steam boilers are present, and so is hot water. Fashion, though, is similar to that of the 1800s, and hence long skirts, jerkins and … pockets.

2. The events in these stories take place at roughly the same date and time as the present day in our world.

3. In The SoulNecklace Stories some characters have the ability to move between worlds. N’tombe, an enchantress, is one such person. N’tombe actually comes from The Central African Republic (CAR) in our world, where they do have guns. (Actually, she refers to them briefly in A Skillful Warrior.)

4. When writing a fantasy, it’s important to have rules that contain the world-building. Here are my rules for the history of The SoulNecklace Story world:

• Rule One: Worlds split off from other worlds when something significant happens. That is: an event with two possible outcomes occurs – AND each outcome will create a significantly altered future. The separation is called ‘a divergence’. (This rule was created long before the Divergent series!)

• Rule Two: Things in place prior to the divergence event are unchanged. It’s only the future that is altered.

• Rule Three: The reason for the divergence in The SoulNecklace Stories was a comet striking Earth. The comet carried a passenger (or perhaps, the comet is the passenger). This happened on or about AD 75.

5. So, the history of The SoulNecklace Stories is the same as our world up until about AD 75. This means that in The SoulNecklace Stories the Roman Empire existed and, because Jesus was born before the comet strike, Christianity arose (and so did Christ’s Mass, or Christmas). But the Renaissance never happened and in The SoulNecklace Stories, the Chinese Empire is the dominant power. And so we have fireworks, used for celebrations and religious festivals, but not guns.

6. This means that, as you read The SoulNecklace Stories, you may find things that are the same as our world, but you’ll also find things that are different.

SoulNecklace Stories (Box Set)

I hope this clarifies the point for readers who noted apparent errors in fashion, holidays and religious festivals. Well spotted, but No.

Behind the Scenes with A Skillful Warrior

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Where is A Skillful Warrior Set?

writer's notebook - behind the scenes

Paulo Coelho’s advice to aspiring writers: don’t keep a notebook. Just live your life. The things that are important will remain, and those that are not will fall away.I do keep a notebook, but not for recording thoughts and impressions. I keep my notebook for when I don’t have a computer with me. Sometimes this bothers me, as though I’m not a real writer.

But surprisingly, when it comes to story setting, I don’t need a notebook. I rely on memory. Take A Skillful Warrior, and its settings.

 

The Settings of A Skillful Warrior…

The story opens with Will, Dana, Jed and N’tombe travelling beside a river towards a moorland plateau.

Later, Will and Jed find a hotel in a fishing village just north of a town called Abervale. Nearby is a tower, like a castle, set into the sea, and accessible from the clifftop by a narrow bridge. Jed falls afoul of its owner, a woman named Ma Evans.

Rock Towers - behind the scenes

A little later there’s a scene where Dana meets a goat herder. He takes her to meet his family, and they share food and a lice-infested cave.

The last scenes of the book are in a maze-like network of narrow canyons. Once, long ago, people lived in hollow caves, carved from the rock. Now, all the caves are abandoned; the only sound is the wind, whistling sadly through the empty holes.

River Trail

…And The Real-Life Places

The river valley of my imagination was the Conwy River, in Gwynedd, North Wales. I worked as a physiotherapist in Llandudno Hospital in the 90s. Many of my patients were small-holding sheep farmers, wiry tough little men who eeked out a living in the harsh pasture of the Upper Conwy.

I went hiking in the Conwy Vale in my weekends, and gained a first-hand insight into why my patients had such bad knees!

Where the Conwy River meets the sea lies a castle, one of my favourite castles in all Wales (and there are plenty there to choose from, thanks to Edward I and his bottomless treasury), and the gorgeous medieval market-town of Conwy.

Back in the 90s I had no idea of writing a book, let alone a trilogy, so never really meant to cast these places as locations, but they crept into the book nonetheless.

Conwy Castle
Conwy Castle.

Abervale and the nearby fishing village of Towyn are totally fictional, but I used drawings of old Exeter – the Exeter from before the bombing raids of WW2 – and Chester (which was not so damaged) to form the idea of the narrow streets and over-leaning tudor-style post and beam buildings of Towyn. The tower in the sea is totally made up, although Tintagel Castle, built into the clifftops of North Cornwall, and Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy (see an earlier blog post) acted as a catalyst.

The goat-herder lived in the Sinai Mountains. I holidayed on the Sinai Peninsula nearly twenty years ago – diving and snorkelling, as you do – and the camel-riding, landrover driving Bedouin were a familiar sight along the coast. Later, we travelled into Petra. If you’ve ever been to Petra you’ll understand how powerful the landscape is; how evocative, and how lonely. Once you leave the beaten tourist trail you realise just how vast the place was. Once it must have been simply crowded with people. High in the cliff walls are thousands of holes – cave homes, now empty. Except for the lice that are legendary among backpackers.

Petra
Petra, Image by Pete Rojwongsuriya from Bucketlistly Photos

In one of these lonely caves we met with a goat-herder and his family. This wasn’t their regular home – the government had moved all the inhabitants away – but periodically they’d return, bringing their animals and their furnishings with them. They welcomed us into their cave-home, plied us with hot sweet tea and offered to be our guides for the day. Such hospitality is common among the Bedu, or so I’m told.

It’s strange how tiny events, not even important at the time, remain in the subconscious and eventually make their way into a story.

Makes me glad I didn’t bother with a notebook.

An Exclusive Snapshot: The Backstory to the SoulNecklace Stories

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Just as Every Person has a Past…

…every story has a backstory.

Because nothing really starts (and nothing really ends), my stories are just a snippet of a grander, larger whole. I plan the larger whole just as I plan the snippet that constitutes the little pieces that make up the books. Today I’m sharing a part of the backstory of The SoulNecklace Stories.

 

Imagine…
A castle on a hill. A small girl plays a chasing game along its ramparts. Mid-stride, the girl pauses.
‘Daddy,’ she stares at the castle tower. ‘Look! I see someone!’
As her father grabs her into his arms, his crown falls. ‘No, Dana. There’s nobody.’
Peeping over his shoulder, the girl sees: a flash of red at the tower window, and a figure smiling. Her father is wrong. There is someone there.
‘She’s waving at me,’ Dana whispers.
Her father hugs her tightly…

 

My story-world begins in fire and ice. First came the fire, and then the ice, and then, much later, the fire returned. This second time the fire came it changed the world, and my story-world split away from our own Earth. So my story-world, the world of The SoulNecklace Stories, is similar to our own, but is also very different.

With the second fire came the Kamaye, creatures of great evil. Seeing the world, so beautiful, so small, they wanted it for their own. The Kamaye struck a bargain with a powerful emperor: they would ensure he would never die, provided he gave them his eternal obedience.

Of course, the emperor agreed (after all, who wouldn’t want eternal life?) and so the Arm of the Eternal was born. A side note: the emperor should have asked for eternal youth, but being young when he made his choice, he did not consider the effects of age. Youth was all he knew; he took it for granted that it would remain.

Over time the emperor grew old, but did not die. And being old and full of malice and a most efficient ruler, the Arm of the Eternal gradually spread throughout the world. Eventually the entire planet came under his domain. Except for one small island, far out to the west.

 

There is a castle on this island, and a tower within the castle and a woman within this tower. The woman wears a necklace, and the necklace protects the castle from the Emperor. This woman is called the Guardian.

There’s one catch.

There’s always a catch.

 

The necklace protects the land by taking her strength and magnifying it, but …At the base of the necklace is a ruby. The ruby lies over the wearer’s heart. Over time the ruby becomes the heart; the wearer’s ribs dissolve and her heart dissolves and they grow into the ruby, and the Guardian becomes the necklace. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to live without a heart, so when this happens the body of the Guardian dies. Another Guardian must be found.

Almost always the Guardian comes from the royal family. Almost always she is the oldest daughter of the King.

As The SoulNecklace stories begin, Dana is the daughter of the King.

At the beginning of A Necklace of Souls, Dana wakes from a dream of a necklace and an old woman, dying…

This is only part of the backstory. There is more. Because nothing really starts, and nothing ever ends.