Writing Multiple Series in a World: Part One

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So, I've decided to start another series. This one detailing writing multiple series in one world, it will answer the questions of why I do it, how I do it, and what doing it looks like.

I'll be publishing one post a month in this series for the next three months, so keep your eyes out for parts 2 and 3! The questions are ordered as follows:

Why Do I Write Multiple Series in One World? (March)

What Does Writing Multiple Series in One World Look Like? (April)

How Do I Write Multiple Series in One World? (May)

So, onto the first part of the series. Why do I write multiple series in one world? 

First of all, such a phenomenon is not entirely unheard of. Lots of authors write new series in older and already established world. J.K. Rowling, Rick Riordan, Susanne Collins, Cassandra Claire, Brandon Sanderson have all returned to their famous worlds (please note that this is to the best of my knowledge, I've only read Collins and Riordan to date and I don't even read Riordan's works anymore so I don't have all the information regarding their other series and how interconnected they are). And Tolkien set the majority (if not all) of his works in Middle Earth. The point I am trying to make is that it happens, and usually quite often at that.

Authors spend so much time developing a world, a culture, sometimes even an entire magical and religious system that it almost seems a shame to only set one series in it. Now I can't speak for other authors on the exact specifics of why, I can only speak from my own personal experience so that is what I shall give you.

Currently I have two worlds which I have multiple series set in. I've written many other worlds that I have no spinoffs. Illesya from Winter Cursed, I doubt I will ever do one for. I do hope to release a short story collection set in the Otherworlds, but I don't think that quite qualifies as an entirely different series especially since the short stories will just enhance what's in the original series.

No, only two worlds so far have spinoffs. Amar and Ruskhazar.

Amar has three series set in it, the original series My Time in Amar which is four books long, and then two sets of duologies, Return to Amar (which is A Certain Sort of Madness and A Matter of Curiosity) and Far From Amar (which is not released as of yet)

Ruskhazar has five series set in it and two standalones (Amar definitely doesn't really hold a candle to this world which is why most of what I discuss below and in the subsequent posts will be primarily Ruskhazar related with only a sprinkling of Amar on top). The original series is five books long, then there is a four book long series, two trilogies, a duology, and then of course the standalones.

But WHY?

I think primarily I have five reasons for deciding whether a story should be set in an already established world versus in its own unique realm.

1. I have an idea and it fits perfectly in a story world, culture, magic, and religious system that I have already developed.

Or more specifically, I have an idea and I don't have a world for it yet, but it would fit perfectly in this story world that I already have and I could develop a plot around this magic and religious system and connect it to the world as a whole, so why go through the trouble of creating a whole new world when I can simply insert it here?

2. My world has outgrown one single series

So, you created a fantasy world, you developed a culture, a history, you've figured out what fantasy creatures reside there... and then you step back and realize that you have this amazing concept that you barely even touched on in this series so you decide to write a whole other one to be able to properly flesh out this idea.

No?

Is that only me?

This happened multiple times with Ruskhazar. I have four seperate clans living there, the Higher Elves (short, gray-blue skinned, elves that used to live in the mountains but were almost wiped out a thousand years ago and now they exist with no culture as servants, criminals, or outcasts), the Lower Elves (valley-dwelling elves with golden skin and dark hair and eyes, these elves can easily live for hundreds of years and consider themselves above everyone else, they are usually quite stuck-up and isolated), Highlanders (mountain dwelling people, descended from Viking-esque raiders and born immune to magic, these people are proud warriors), and Lowlanders (valley-dwelling people, merchants, farmers or nobility, Lowlanders are a softer clan, preferring the fineries of life, they are also the only humans capable of wielding magic). And that's not even taking into account the outsiders from the deserts who come to Ruskhazar because they have doubtless been exiled from their homeland.

And then on top of that there are two conflicting magic/religious systems. The magickers who use magic which they believe was gifted them by the goddess Meruna; and sorcerers who draw power from the gods' children the vile demigods. Magic is perfectly legal, there is even a grand and massive academy that anyone wishing to learn magic can attend for free; sorcery is illegal and those caught wielding it face dire consequences.

And then there are also vampires and werewolves, both creatures that humans or elves can be turned into with just one bite. Vampires exist due to a curse, they have many weaknesses but also dark and twisted abilities such as living forever, but having to draw someone's life force in order to do it, they are always trapped in this state of limbo between life and death. Werewolves supposedly exist due to a blessing, they can choose to take a stronger form or continue to remain as a human (or elf), it can have absolutely no affect on their everyday life if they so choose it. Werewolves are primarily Highlanders, because it was a clan of Highlanders that was first blessed. Vampirism is a highly contagious blight that affects anyone.

So, as you can see, with all of these differing groups, systems, and such I started to realize that Ruskhazar had outgrown Rage Like the Gods.

For instance, in RLtG I realized that I gave vampirism a bad rap. I have a few characters who become vampires, but they all hate it and desperately seek a cure. However, not everyone would consider vampirism to be such a bad thing (I mean, it does come with immortal life, doesn't it?), and so the Blood of the Gods trilogy was born, which is a series where all of my characters are either A. Vampires, B. Vampire Hunters, or C. Either in love with a vampire or trying to become a vampire.

I also had no Lower Elf main characters in RLtG, (the closest I have is Eirik who is half-elf) in fact they are for the most part shown in a bad light (which isn't hard to do since the majority of Lower Elves are pretty huge jerks), but there are good Lower Elves out there as well, ones who go against the mold and they needed their stories told as well.

This happened dozens of times over, I realized that I wanted to write a story with more outsiders who are foreign to Ruskhazar (A Tale of Gods and Glory), the only MC in RLtG from outside Ruskhazar is Dagmy and I wanted to explore what it would be like for someone who had a different background (Dagmy was raised in a tribe of mercenaries, Taliz from AToGaG was a city dwelling politician). I wanted to see what it was like to have main characters serve some of the sketchier demigods (In RLtG the only sorceress MC is Azern and she serves the demigod of dawn who is the only demigod not considered inherently evil) but what if I had a character who served one of these inherently evil demigods, who actually partook in necromancy and other sacrilegious horrors? I wanted to write a story where a Lower Elf and a Higher Elf fell in love, there are natural tensions between all the clans, but none so much as there are between the elves, such a love seems impossible so of course I had to write an instance when it actually happened.

The list goes on. The what if? questions just kept coming. And so, consequently, did the side series.

3. The story has outgrown one single series

This may seem like the same thing as the last reason, but it's slightly different.

This has happened to me in two different forms. The first and more common option is that a side character wants their story told. The majority of the Blood of the Gods trilogy characters were first introduced in Rage Like the Gods. In fact, I think all the main characters in that trilogy appear in RLtG at least once before they get their own story.

The second form is when I get the desire to write something spoken about during the course of the series, but it has already happened, it hasn't happened yet, or it does not happen to the characters that the original series is about. My example for this is that Ruskhazar has a fairly developed history going back a thousand years, there are two eras that take place before the events of RLtG start off. Certain characters are descended from legendary figures, other characters have lived through this history (although not all were exactly conscious at this point), and I started wanting really badly to go back and write about some of this history. And so Ancient Gods was born, about a protagonist (who is actually the child of one of my protagonists from a pervious series) who goes back in time and is forced to live through the thousand year old history of Ruskhazar (don't worry, she's a vampire so old age isn't going to get her), meeting these immortal characters and witnessing their backstory before disaster befalls them, fighting beside legendary ancestors of other characters, and just all around trying not to change the course of the future.

4. A new idea is similar in a sense and fashion to a story that I have already developed a world for.

For this one, I'm going to use an example from Amar because it is feeling left out. My Time in Amar is a portal fantasy series about a group of teens being dragged from their homes on Earth and taken to the magical and dangerous world of Amar. There are pirates, dragons, castles, kings, wars, and basically anything a Medieval/Kingdom fantasy would want with the added charm of four teenagers who have no idea what they are doing and accidentally leaving their fingerprints all over this world.

Okay, that's super fun, but a few years back I got it in my head that I wanted to write an Alice in Wonderland themed story. Once again, I would have a main character from Earth who travels to a strange and fantastical land.

These two idea concepts just seemed so similar to me. I mean, I was already writing a portal fantasy! But none of my preexisting characters quite fit what I wanted to do for this Alice in Wonderland theme.

It only took me a couple of hours to figure out that instead of creating a whole other world and a whole new way of traveling between worlds, a new magic system, and all that I could simply make the series related to each other. Which also helped with my worries that the basis of these series were too similar, I could now write them to sort of parallel and compliment each other now that they are connected in this manner.

Now please note that I'm certainly not saying that you should only have one world per genre. I don't think that should be the case at all. Of Gold and Iron is another portal fantasy about a character from Earth traveling to another world, but the world in Of Gold and Iron is heavily based off of Irish myths. It broke rule number one, it didn't fit the magic system I had created. Of Gold and Iron is a faerie romance, and while there are faeries in Amar, they are entirely different creatures in these two separate worlds.

5. Crossovers, baby

I try to keep crossovers at a minimum, at least in earlier books in the series, because I understand that they can be pretty confusing. As a whole I try to establish my characters and series first before I bring anyone in from another series, but it does happen. Characters do meet each other. I mean come on, crossovers are flipping awesome and it would be a criminal act to let such an opportunity go to waste.

Ultimately, it's a fine line between intricate and too complicated, and I do the cha-cha slide on that line. But I also think that it can get confusing to have all of your books set in different worlds as well, especially if you write multiple fantasy series, it can get difficult to keep them all unique, sometimes your worlds might end up starting to look too similar to each other anyway. I personally think it's better to just set multiple series in one highly developed world, than to create several cookie-cutter worlds that are exact replicas of each other. But that's just me.

Okay, so this post ended up being far longer than I originally intended. I will try to keep the other posts in this series a bit shorter, but hopefully I answered your question as to Why I write multiple series in one world.