Starting with an epic: is it even doable?

[Feo Takahari]

I see a lot of beginning writers who want to write a series of three or more volumes, with a rich cast of characters and a large world. They haven't actually written much yet, but they keep making more and more plans. Maybe I'm being overly skeptical, but this reminds me a lot of my foray into game design, where it was a truism that folks who tried to start with massive games would burn out and leave without finishing anything. Is it really doable to start with an epic?

 

[Trick]

I started with an epic... and learned how unprepared I was. I now have two standalone WIPs, one of which could be a series later (but not an epic by any means). My epic work has years of world building behind it but I am not ready to write it. In a way, I'm glad I planned it for so long because I'll be able to reassess my skills at a later date and hopefully do it justice.

 

[Scalvi]

Anything is possible. It's just that writing an epic series of novels, even as something other than your debut work, takes a ridiculous amount of dedication.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I think it's a mistake. There's a massive learning curve as it is for standalone novels, novellas, & short stories. An epic takes a lot more time investment & experience to do well.

The battlefield of writing is littered with the bones of beginners who began their efforts with an epic. That's true of all writing, to an extant, but I believe it's more so for the inexperienced epic writer.

If you don't have a handle on craft fundamentals, your vision, your voice, and style choices...how can you possibly pull off an epic of three or more books?

Finishing a story, whether it's a short, novella, or standalone book, teaches the writer a ton. You need that lesson to succeed in writing larger, broader, more intricate works.

 

[cupiscent]

I think you should write the story that's burning in you - even if that's an epic, and especially when you're just starting out.

But yes, finishing anything is a challenge, and making it more challenging for yourself doesn't make things any easier. The only thing that makes a writer is perseverance, and sometimes that isn't about finishing the thing in front of you, it's about petering out, taking all the things you've learned and moving on to a new project.

I started approximately sixteen novels before I ever pushed one through to completion. It's a little like swimming in the ocean. It doesn't matter how deep it is when you're only using the first six chapters.

I think the thing with starting writing... and continuing writing... is that it's not what you're working on, it's how you're working on it, what you're learning, how you're growing. There's a conversation in another forum I'm in about "writing a million words of crap as your writing apprenticeship". And I did mine in fanfic, but there's no reason why someone shouldn't do their hard learning yards in writing an epic that doesn't get finished - or that does, finally, eventually!

Editing to add: I sound totally lovey-dovey here, so I thought I should note that, if someone said, "I've just started writing, I'm working on the first book in a planned ten book cycle spanning centuries and continents!" I would probably pat them condescendingly on the head (mentally if not physically) in full expectation of failure. It's just that failure is an important part of writing development too. How they respond to that is the important thing. And also I should note that I don't think you "level up" until you finish at least one - probably more - big, solid, satisfactory (to you - where you go, "Yes, that does what I wanted it to do") pieces of work.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

...failure is an important part of writing development too.

So true. We learn a ton from failure, maybe as much as we do from finishing.

 

[Ryan_Crown]

One thing I would add is there should be a distinction made between an epic, multi-volume story and a connected series of stories. I can't imagine writing an epic novel at this stage in my writing (if ever), but my current WIP is designed to be part of an ongoing series of novels featuring the same characters in the same world. In my mind that makes more sense than starting with a standalone novel, because this way all the time and effort I've put into my world-building and character development for this novel will pay off down the road as so much of the background work is already done when I move into future novels.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

One thing I would add is there should be a distinction made between an epic, multi-volume story and a connected series of stories. I can't imagine writing an epic novel at this stage in my writing (if ever), but my current WIP is designed to be part of an ongoing series of novels featuring the same characters in the same world. In my mind that makes more sense than starting with a standalone novel, because this way all the time and effort I've put into my world-building and character development for this novel will pay off down the road as so much of the background work is already done when I move into future novels.

Solid point.

This is why a lot of writers/publishers advise beginners to write stand alone novels with series potential.

 

[Mythopoet]

Of Course it's doable. It's been done before. Whether or not it's a good idea depends entirely on the individual writer and the individual story they are trying to tell.

 

[2WayParadox]

I'd like to way in as a starting writer with a multivolume epic on my mind.

The way I see it, that epic will be my life's work.
I also see that I'm not ready to deal with it yet, I'm slowly piecing together things and I have my grand vision of what I want to do. But the idea still feels naive, there are still many problems that I haven't found an acceptable answer to yet.

I have finished one novel so far, not a fantasy one, but still a novel length work. It took a ton of work and I still don't consider it finished. I had a lot of fun writing it and I had trouble dealing with and understanding some of the reactions it got. Good reactions on the other hand were great. But I digress, it's true that I did learn a lot from it.

Since my epic feels like Mount Everest right now, I've decide to practice on the Mont Blanc for now. I'm currently working on a story that can be considered a standalone prologue to the epic. It takes place on a peninsule, instead of a full continent. Everything's scaled down, but I thought it would be valuable to explore the world on a smaller scale.

I don't want to start on an epic and do a shit job, I want it to be awesome and clever.

Before I round up, a quick word about epics. I've read some pretty beefy ones (the wheel of time for example) and I liked them, I enjoy living with characters for longer periods of time, but I think that going up to ten books is just too much. It's probably an arbitrary number, but I think 6 books should do just fine.

 

[Julian S Bartz]

As a writer who chose to start with an epic trilogy I can only say I wouldn't recommend it unless you have your heart set on it. Reason being, you learn so much from your first completed novel. So much so that quite often you will look back on it and think you could do it 1000x better. What that means is that you have to go on with the rest of the books in the series knowing that your first book could be better.

I know they say that you always look back on your older work and think you could do it better. Writing is an art and the more you practice the better you get. But if you write a standalone novel, then whatever you move onto next can stand on its own feet. In a series/trilogy no one is going to read your second or third book if your first isn't as good as it could have been.

I've been lucky that I have enough readers who have enjoyed my first book enough to buy and keep reading the second book. That has helped me to finish the series. But I think I would have been happier had I ironed out the 'beginner' issues which come out in writing your first book, by completing a stand alone story.

All that being said. My motivation was on writing a trilogy, and you can only write well when you write what you feel like writing. So I don't think you can go wrong starting an epic story if that is where your heart is taking you.

 

[Tom]

I started with plans to make an expansive epic trilogy. Never has a plan gone astray like that one did. I just didn't have the experience required for writing something of that magnitude, and after a few months I pared it down to a standalone. The complexity and richness of my standalone is actually greater because it's just that--a standalone. My epic was just too expansive for me to fill it, and I ended up with flat characters, a bland setting, and a plot that was far too simplistic.

I wouldn't recommend that beginning writers start with an epic. Not in a million years. Since I've started doing short stories, I've realized how much more enjoyable it is than slogging through an epic. In my opinion, short story format is the place to start. First, learn to state things clearly and concisely, and create vivid characters, setting, and plot within the smaller word count of a short story. Then move on to the big leagues.

 

[cupiscent]

As a writer who chose to start with an epic trilogy I can only say I wouldn't recommend it unless you have your heart set on it. Reason being, you learn so much from your first completed novel. So much so that quite often you will look back on it and think you could do it 1000x better. What that means is that you have to go on with the rest of the books in the series knowing that your first book could be better.

Such a good point, Julian! Not to mention not being able to go back to the earlier books to add in the subtle elements that you've brought to the later books. With that in mind, it's probably a good idea to have the whole series well in hand before starting publication - of whatever kind - on the earlier ones.

Which just sounds even more daunting! I have to write how many words before anything goes anywhere? Heh. This is definitely not a business for the impatient.

Tom, I think you definitely have a point about the short story format being a good place to start - with the bonus that it's also a good way to start making sales and "getting your name out there" etc. For me, it's never been an option because, well, I don't read short stories, so I could never write a really good one. And I don't read them because either I love an idea so much that it's really frustrating when the story ends after 5000 words, or it feels thin and ordinary and generic and I just don't care. I even tried reading a novella recently, thinking that might be "long enough" (and it was a really interesting concept - noir and involving unicorn snuff films!) but I still found the "lack of depth" really frustrating, and I kept wanting to prise open the story and make it dig deeper.

I did short fanfic, though. So the point holds: getting practice with beginning, middle, end encapsulating your purpose and sending it out into the world. Then you can apply that practice to more ambitious purposes.

There is no One True Path, though. Whatever gets you where you want to go. It just might be a struggle. Wait, no, it will always be a struggle, it's just what kind of struggle!

 

[spectre]

If you don't rush into your story, it's doable I think. I struggle with the idea of series potential and how I want to achieve it, either as an intertwined story or set of stories with the same characters and land. These seem to me to be the two series options, and each requires different levels of planning from what I can see. Time is on your side. I won't get into the idea of beginning writing skills over advanced though, because again if you don't rush you can achieve maturation of your writing.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

In my view they're just trying to write the same thing as what they read and these days the multi-volume story in king in fantasy and sci fi. I think there was a survey done and well over half of all fantasy books presently out are epics of one form or another.

Does that make it wise to start out trying such a massive undertaking? Probably not. But to be fair to them those who do there are problems with doing stand alones too. Yes they're shorter, but if for example you later feel the need to write a sequel, you may start crying. In my case I'm 72k into Mage which is the sequel to Maverick. I put out Maverick four years ago, and when I had done it closed it and never looked at it again. I never intended to write a sequel at all, and wrote another dozen or more novels instead.

Then the muse hit me a couple of months ago and my life fell apart.

You have no idea just how difficult it is to reimerse yourself in a world you left years before. Trying to write a follow up which requires every little detail to be right, when you can't remember every little detail. It's hair pulling time! For example yesterday I spent ages going through the original work hunting out every reference in it that I could find to the fairy (a minor race in Maverick) just so I could rebuild an accurate picture of them in order to write three paragraphs about them in mage. Hair colours, names, descriptions, geopgraphy and so much more are exactly the same.

When I was writing Maverick I had all those details in my head (and in a companion document of facts / data which I somehow seem to have lost in the intervening time!). I didn't need to worry about them. That's the consequence of having a book in your head every waking minute for days, months and years. You can't get the same thing from simply re-reading a book - even an old book you wrote.

So my thought is that you should start with what you feel you should. What you're inspire by. Not what you think you can handle. If it's too big, it's too big. Maybe you'll crash and burn. And maybe you're more likely to crash and burn writing an epic, I don't know. But regardless that's just life. Move with the muse. Passion and inspiration are more important than practicality.

And pray you don't end up in my shoes!

Cheers, Greg.

 

[thedarknessrising]

My epic work has years of world building behind it but I am not ready to write it. In a way, I'm glad I planned it for so long because I'll be able to reassess my skills at a later date and hopefully do it justice.

I'm the same way. I've spent years building my world, fleshing out the characters, and writing the histories of the world. I want to start with an epic, because I feel it would be easier to write. Having an entire world mapped out and ready to go makes it easy to write a story, because I can literally pick any point in the history of the country and detail it in to a story. I've got very little interest in trying to write about anything else, because my world is rich with possibilities.

 

[2WayParadox]

I don't know, that sounds like your primary interest was worldbuilding and then wanting to write a story came after. Isn't there a danger then that you will unconsciously write a story that features too much of your world because you want to showcase it? Or you forget to clarify things because they've become so natural to you that you don't really need to think about it?

 

[K.S. Crooks]

My first novel is part of a series that will span at least four books. I am currently working on selling that book and writing the second novel. My frame of mind is that if the first book doesn't sell well enough, I will still write all the sequels for myself and have enough printed for those I know want them. If you try to go the traditional publishing route it may help to have two or three of the books read for print as a way to show the company that you really have the story planned and you can commit to writing the entire story.
You can also try to write the first novel in the series as a stand-alone, the way the first Star Wars was done. At the end of the movie the Death Star is destroyed and Luke, Han and Chewbacca are given medals. Seems like the end, and if people didn't love the story then it would have been. Finally, if for no other reason, write the story for yourself and hope that others want to read it as well.

 

[sankunai]

I started with an epic (planned 5 book series), but realized I'm not ready for it. For now I'm shelving the first novel until I'm more prepared / better writer. So now I'm working on standalones .

 

[Claire]

Like a lot of things in the world of writing, it probably depends. I chose to write my first book knowing it would be part of a series, but it is still a full story with a beginning, middle and end. The main conflict is resolved by the end of the book, but it raises questions that lead into the next. Book two will be the same - it will have a beginning, middle and end, and the core conflict will be resolved, but there is a larger story that takes shape as one book leads into the next. I wanted to write in a series, because as others have said, there is so much worldbuilding and brainstorming that goes into a fantasy world. I'm excited to keep using that world, and the characters. But I'm not taking on a huge series where the fate of the world hangs in the balance and you don't find out if the hero saves the day until the end of book 10. For me, it is a nice compromise - I get to write a series with a world and characters I'm excited about, but I'm still writing single, complete novels so I'm not getting so far in over my head. There's a difference between a series that is connected and a series that has an overarching storyline that spans multiple books - the latter takes a lot of skill, IMHO.