Tackle A Trilogy And Triple Your Profits
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- July 29th, 2009 |
- Comments
Are you a writer with big ideas? Are you always imagining epics, comprehensive stories, great tales of human attempt and sacrifice, interlaced with personal stories of love, sadness and triumph? If so, you ought to consider movement your book or account idea into a trilogy.
Why a trilogy? Believe it or not, thither are deep psychological reasons that we do things in threes. The holy trinity is the Father, the Son and the Holy Character, and the Triple Goddess is Maiden, Mother, Crone, detailing the feminine journey finished life. How many times have you heard the phrase “3rd time lucky”, or given individual “III guesses” or “III chances”? And of course in baseball it’s “III strikes and you’re out!”
You will have no doubt heard of the conventional “III act play”. Almost all big Hollywood screenplays are based on this artifact and it’s certainly a tested form of storytelling that captures audience and keeps them going back to the cinema in droves. And the class of fantasy writing is packed with trilogies: The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (that’s cardinal trilogies in fact), and any account by Sara Douglass, Robin Hobb, Trudi Canavan or pretty much any fantasy writer in the class today is told across at least one, if not more, trilogies.
Add thereto the achiever of much popular movie franchises as Character Wars, Pirates Of The Carribean and the Bourne movies, and you will accompany that a advantageously planned and executed trilogy is a one artifact appropriateness to achiever.
So how do you do it? Do you just accept an idea and acrobatics it out over III stories? Or do you just come up with a great character and III great premises and you’re home and hosed?
Neither actually!
The achiever of the trilogy is based on the conventional III act play, where book or movie one is act one, book or movie cardinal is act cardinal, and book or movie III is act III. The only ingredients you need are one great big account running behind III stories compelling enough to carry a movie or book on their own, and you’ve got the basic ingredients you need to follow.
So if you are the identify of writer who thinks big, if your scope is broad and your plots complex and intertwined, and your characters are people on a life’s journey, so trying to crush that all into one book may be also many chocolate chips in the cookie. Giving yourself the room to believe, plan and compose a larger journey over III books will make each one a better book in its own right, and if you do get it right, you’ve got a guaranteed audience for books cardinal and III. And publishers love that!
The most important element to grasp as you embark on the trilogy adventure is that you are dealing with a multilayered project. Different the acts of a play, the individual stories in a trilogy need to stand on their own, in addition to playing a part in a larger drama.
So let’s accept a look at how you can go about movement your dreams of epic tales into the reality of a trilogy.
How To Build Your Trilogy
1. Decide on your over-arcing or larger account.
This is definitely the most important first block by far. Without it you don’t have any account, let alone a trilogy.
Any examples of great larger stories are:
a) a leper passes out on the floor of his lounge room and wakes to find himself in a antic land. Thither, instead of being activated as an outcast, he is considered a rescuer and the question is asked, will Thomas Covenant accept his destiny and economise The Land? The larger account: will Lord Foul prevail or will Covenant economise The Land?
b) a farm boy dreams of becoming a fighter pilot. He meets a Jedi Knight and trains in the ancient art. The question is asked, will Luke Skywalker become a Jedi, economise the Rebels and bring freedom to the Galaxy, or will he activity to the Dark Broadside like his father? The larger account: who will prevail, light or dark, good or evil, The Rebels or The Empire?
c) a man is found floating off the coast of Marseilles. He has no idea who he is. As he attempts to find out, will he learn his accurate identity, or will Jason Bourne care he’d never asked? The larger account: it is one man against the class, as Jason Bourne challenges the might of the CIA, and who will prevail?
These are just a few examples of the initial questions asked, the initial journeys laid out before the heroes and the crowning possibilities open to the creator of a great trilogy. Nail your larger account, and backdrop it against anything from action to a love account and you’ll have a great basis to activity from.
2. Each book in the trilogy is roughly the equivalent to an act in a screenplay.
In the III act play, Act One is “The Fix” or “Decision To Act”, Act Cardinal is “The Confrontation” or “The Action” and Act III is “The Resolution” or “The Result Of The Action”.
When you are planning out your larger account (which you will do first) this breakdown will help you form the basis of each of the books in your trilogy. In Book One, you will cover the elements of the larger account that accept that account finished the fix phase and onto the limen of another class, or any different action. Book Cardinal will follow with the result of what was decided in Book One, as the account moves forward finished the crisis/ordeal/midpoint and traditionally ends on a dark note. This leaves Book III open to rescue the heroes from the jaws of defeat as the larger account reaches its climax and all the initial questions are answered. Planning this out in the earliest stages will give you real alcoholic guidelines as to where to go with each individual book’s plot, artifact and characters.
3. Each book must booth alone as a complete account in itself.
This is where you need to be real aware of the layered aspect of this process. You have a larger account you are telling in the communication of the III act play. Now you need to plan, artifact and compose III stores inside that artifact that fulfill all the criteria of booming books in their own right. So accept “The Fix” phase and construct a account showing how you would fix your larger account. It’s real common here to have a reluctant hero, who hears the call to adventure and refuses. Thomas Covenant is a good example of this. Thusly the entire first book can be the process of the hero trying to escape the call. In a different scenario, you may have a choice hero, like Luke Skywalker or Frodo for instance and the first book may be a complete hero’s journey in itself, showing how the hero is embracing the quest or chore, but allay leaves the greater part of the chore to be completed.
Possibly the most important abstraction to remember is to hold information or events back as long as you can. It’s tempting when you’re writing a trilogy to put overmuch in up front, but doing that is a mistake. Give your readers any credit for intelligence and imagination, and don’t tell them everything up front. Trilogies are a great means for holding back secrets and springing surprises on your readers to keep them guessing. Good examples of this are Darth Vader revealing he is Luke’s father at the end of the 2nd episode in that trilogy, the interesting faux “love account” between Elizabeth and Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Carribean and the environment at the end of the 2nd Bourne film which is repeated right near the climax of the 3rd film. You are in a great position to lead your readers wheresoever you deprivation them to go so consume it!
4. Your characters must have “legs”.
Thither is nothing worsened than flat, lifeless characters and thither is definitely nothing worsened than trying to hold our attention with these flat and lifeless characters for III entire books. Make careful you do your homework on your characters just as you would with any other book you compose. Put their flaws and coupling needs right thither up front for us to accompany, you allay need to grab your reader’s attention from page 1. Don’t fall into the cakehole of cerebration that because you have III books you have more time and area to develop your account and characters. Wrong! If anything you are low more pressure to hook us aboveboard away, because we’re not going to keep reading if we’re not interested, as we know that the account doesn’t actually finish until the end of the 3rd book.
5. Your “golden cord” must run end-to-end all the III books.
This is where the intricate weaving of account on account and the ability of balancing the abstracted elements becomes critical. Your golden cord could be a action, a family saga over generations, a love account or a ring quest, but regardless of what it is, remember that THIS IS THE Account YOU ARE Finally TELLING. Character Wars is finally about the battle between the Rebels and the Empire, the Bourne movies are the account of one man against the CIA, the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are about a leper who becomes a rescuer in a different class, and The Lord Of The Rings is the action of Middle-Earth. Piece thither are countless subplots, character journeys, love stories and red herrings in all these tales, they all allay have their own individual “golden duds” and finally the telling of the account is to assist this golden cord.
If you are prone to larger ideas, give this group a go. It may be just the breakthrough you need to get yourself on the publisher’s lists.