How Much Do I Need To Know?

[D. Gray Warrior]

I have two or three stories I want to write and I am pretty satisfied with my ideas.

One of my stories is a political fantasy that resembles the Roman Republic ( the similarities are mostly unintentional). Based on my idea, it could be a novel, but I wonder if I would have enough for a four book series.

The story is about a monarchy with a magic using king. The non magic users were oppressed, so a civil war began and the king was dethroned. The people founded a republic. Prince Lucius, the son of the last king, wants to destroy the republic for both revenge and to restore the monarchy. Because of this, another civil war begins.
The first civil war occurs before the story actually begins.

How could I spread this out into four books?

 

[skip.knox]

There are so many ways to spread it out, they would exceed the character limit of a post here. But why are you trying to spread it out? Why not just write the story and then see how long it is?

If you are riffing off the Republic (Tarquinus Superbus, for one) then one obvious way to go is to invent your version of a Carthage. IOW, not all the conflict needs to be internal. Heck for that matter, invent Gauls and Pyrrhus and throw in a slave revolt. Colleen McCullough got six or seven books just out of the Republic's final century. But nota bene: she wrote not so much about events as about people. Characters will carry your series further than will events.

 

[ThinkerX]

Your story will be as long as it needs to be. It could be four short stories. It could be one novel, or four.

I will point out we get a fair number of novice authors here setting out to write multi-volume epics without first developing the skills to pull those epics off. You might want to look into scribing some short stories set in your world first, to get a feel for it and hone your writing ability.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

I would agree with ThinkerX - it's not a great idea to start off with the intention of writing a vast epic series. Write a story set in your world, and when you have it finished, then see if there's another story in there. What happens afterwards? Maybe there's a new challenge, or maybe what seems like a settled peace after book 1 falls apart. But get the first book down before worrying about that.

I see a lot of people say: I've got this great idea for an empire or a civil war or whatever it is. To my mind, it's better to start from the other end, with a character with a problem. If you want to 'discover' your world, write a chapter where your character just goes about his day. What does he wear? Eat? Drive/ride? Where does he work? Who does he meet? Then throw him a problem.

Then just write, and see what happens.