Free Series Craft 101 by Patricia Gilliam Page A

probably wouldn’t resemble what was intended.  Yet many of us have been taught novel-writing as a linear process with little planning—you sit down, possibly create a rough plot outline and a few character sketches, and then write the book from beginning to end just as a reader would view it.  I tried this several times—believing I was doing the right things—but it always resulted in me getting stuck in an area where I hadn’t prepared.  With something that’s going to take several months to several years of your life to complete, it’s worth taking the time to get organized before you start.
                  If you’ve been writing to some degree, you most likely have everything you need in terms of initial equipment and tools—a computer with Internet access being the most important if you intend to publish your book after it’s finished.  In part because I didn’t have the income at the time, I bypassed the idea of purchasing specific novel-writing software—opting instead to use Microsoft Word and a creating a set of folders on my desktop for character and setting templates.
                  There are also two helpful websites I want to mention that weren’t around in 2009.  If I was going to start from scratch today, Pinterest is a great social website—not only for promoting your work but organizing visual references.  If you’re not familiar with the site, think of it as a digital version of bulletin boards where you can “pin” photos and other digital references by category.  You can go as detailed as having a board for each of your main characters and locations if you wanted, and in some cases you could even share mutual boards and research with other writers.  This can save you a lot of time.  Popplet is a newer website that has great applications for mapping character relationships—and allows you to export that information as a .jpeg or .pdf file.
                  Your comfort level with technology may be different from mine, but my point is to leverage what you have first.  If something is distracting or doesn’t help you, you don’t have to force yourself to use it.  Once you know what does work, you put yourself in the position of being able to try new things and seeing if they save you time and effort.  According to the situation, I still use physical notebooks and note cards—especially for plotting and keeping track of smaller tasks.
                  For simplicity, I’ve broken down my personal system into four main categories:  Set-Up (concept, character, & setting development), Plotting & Production (actually writing the novels), Editing (revision on both a book and series level), and Marketing/Reaching Readers.  This isn’t to say that you can’t focus on more than one area at once, but it’s a cycle that can keep you on track and gets easier with experience.  Within each category, you have the opportunity to adapt everything to your own needs.
     

Set-Up:  Creating Reference Materials Specific to Your Story
     
                  There are two goals to this stage.  The first is to develop your characters and setting to a detail level that’s realistic to you as an author.  From a process standpoint, this will put you more in a director position when you start to write your book—as opposed to having to start and stop every time you run into something new that needs to be created or thought out.  The difference this made in my time management was significant, especially considering I had to fit writing around a full-time job and other activities at the time.
                  The second is to create a customized reference system for your series—which long-term will help you with everything from continuity to marketing.  As you’re doing this, you’re going to feel like you have way more background material than you’ll ever need—which is a good thing since it allows you to be