Tara Maya's Tales

  Editing has made me realize something I've always been reluctant to admit. To explain what I mean, let me tell you what I'm doing right now. I'm working on Book 11 of The Unfinished Song: Flute. The title references the infamous Bone Flute that when played by someone with all six Chromas of magic, forces everyone else to dance to his tune. I have a strong draft of Flute, but it's one that I wrote before I revised Book 10, Sworn, the book right before this in the series. For a long series like this, it's essential to work form an outline. But what do you do when the outline changes? Or when you read the scenes of you draft and realize they aren't as strong as they could be? In my case, the outline itself isn't so wrong, but I feel as if many of the scenes just aren't doing enough work. This, I can see, is going to drag out the story too long, and I'll have the same problem in this book as I did with Sworn, fighting to keep my wordcount at a reasonab...

    Chances are, you already have a good idea if you want to write a series or not. But let's say you don't. Let's say you have a bright, shiny idea for a story, but no idea how BIG this idea is -- is this an idea that can last a series, or is it the right size for a book, or is really just a short story. Ideas stretch. So this is kinda a trick question. There are three main factors: 1.) Expanse 2.) Medium 3.) Genre The expanse of the idea is a big topic, so I'll postpone that to a later post. Right now I'm going to talk about medium and genre. First, though, let's get the obvious caveat out of the way: It's less about the idea itself and more about your enthusiasm. I can think of a lot of good ideas for series that I know would bore me after one or two chapters, never mind books or episodes. If you are a novelist, your enthusiasm has to last over the long slog. You can't just shrug it off after a book and ...