Writing the first book in a series

Tips for intriguing your reader, satisfying individual plot points, and giving your character an arc that spans multiple books

The first book in a series has to accomplish quite a lot in a single book. As if writing just one book isn’t enough, you’re setting yourself up to write three (or more!). You not only need to hook the reader for this book, but for the entire series. You’ll need a compelling plot, but it can’t all resolve at the end or the series has nowhere to go. Your protagonist will undergo some change, but they can’t have their entire transformation, or they have nowhere to go either.

So, in the spirit of fresh starts, and the fact that Mistborn is our masterwork this month, let’s talk about some ways to tackle this problem.

All of these tips can actually apply to each book in the series, as every book should lead naturally to the next. But for the purposes of this article, we will mainly focus on that first book and using it to set up the series.

Note: this is advice for a series with a predetermined length, rather than a serial-style series like Janet Evanovich or Harry Bosch!

To start, it’s helpful to know how many books you plan to have in your series. Is it a trilogy? A 5-book series? You want to know just how long the main storyline will stretch. Even if you only have a rough sketch of the books beyond the first, it will help you decide where your protagonist needs to start in their arc, how far that arc will need to go, and how the conflict and stakes will escalate across the series.

Once you have an idea of how long your series will be, you can toggle back to looking specifically at the plot of the first book.

This is where knowing what your central plot and subplots are for your first book really comes in handy! You can use your subplots to introduce questions and mysteries that can be answered in later books.

When you have an idea of both the central plot of the series and the first book, you can then choose which subplots can “wrap around” your overarching series plot. You might consider what mysteries are going to continue and complexify as the story moves forward, or what relationships and conflicts are going to extend beyond the first book.

Knowing the subplots that will span the series, you can introduce those and begin their development in the first book. Remember that even if your subplot is going to extend into all three books, it should still be relevant to the main plot of the first book. Its development should impact and be impacted by the central plot of your first book; otherwise, you risk introducing threads that feel tangential and losing your reader’s interest.

So how do you do this well, so that readers will commit to the series? You do want to open up questions that will get answered in subsequent books, but that doesn’t mean the reader shouldn’t be getting any answers at all!

This is most important with your central plot for the first book. In general, the primary conflict that you introduced in the first book as your central plot should resolve in some way by the end of the story. I think of this as doing right by your reader’s investment in your story. Especially as a first-time author, hard cliffhangers go wrong more often than they go right.

Instead, you want to give them answers that generate more questions.

For example, Ninth House ends with the discovery of who killed Tara Hutchins, closing the central loop of the first book. However, along the way, we also get the answer to the subplot mystery, “What happened to Darlington?” But the answer to that question is what gives rise to the second book. This is a great example of both satisfying a plot point and using that answer to catapult us into the next book.

Mistborn resolves the central conflict surrounding the skaa rebellion. (Mild spoiler ahead, but I don’t think it’s anything shocking) The success of the rebellion, however, raises new questions about what happens next. It clearly teases another book, and more conflict to come, while still bringing the core of the first book to a close.

You may also consider planting smaller mysteries, smaller questions that the audience doesn’t even know they’ll get answers to later. This is about creating setups for payoffs later in the series, and leaving room for the world to expand throughout the series. For example, in Mistborn, we’re introduced to the Steel Inquisitors, but we have no idea that we’re actually going to learn about how they work and why they are the way they are. This particular point allows our understanding of the magic and the world to grow throughout the series.

And speaking of growth, your protagonist’s arc is another key element of crafting a series.

This is tricky because you need your protagonist to change throughout the first book, but they will still need room to continue developing over the course of the series. So, in crafting the arc of your first book, remember to give your protagonist room to grow.

There are two major pitfalls to avoid here:

1. Making the protagonist’s arc repetitive, where they wrestle with the same problem over all three books, making them frustrating to be with for an extended series.

2. The “Disney Sequel Problem.” This is where the protagonist undergoes a heartfelt transformation in the first (in this case) movie, but in the second movie, there is an interpersonal conflict that essentially causes the protagonist to revert to their pre-transformation behaviors. It often looks like either a repeat of conflicts we saw in the first book, or interpersonal conflicts between characters that have developed a meaningful relationship that cause the protagonist to behave in ways that make them unrecognizable from the ending of the previous book.

The trick to avoiding these comes from knowing your series a little bit, which is why even a rough sketch of the future books will help you here.

Consider how your protagonist needs to grow in the first book so that they are capable of handling the escalating conflict that is coming their way in the next book. You can use this as their first arc.

Then, use the escalating conflicts of the following books to challenge the protagonist to continue growing. This could take the form of developing facets of their character, so that by the end of the series, they are well-rounded and fully matured. Or, they may have one central arc over the course of the series, kicked off in the first book, that they will continue to traverse throughout the entire series. Here again, this is about using the conflicts of each book in the series to challenge your protagonist in new ways to avoid hammering the same problems from the first book over and over again. And the same rules as the external plot apply: in general, there should be a sense of resolution to the protagonist’s arc at the end of each book. Consider opening each novel with a question about the protagonist’s development so that you can make sure that you’ve answered it by the end of each book.

The first book in your series is all about establishing trust with your reader, and this is why resolution is so important. Your goal is to take them on a great ride and attach them to your characters. If you dazzle them in the first book, you’ll be sure to see them again for the second book.