Novel Saga?

[BillyxRansom]

Like the Dark Tower; has anyone attempted to do one of these?

My question has to do with this: I know Sai King wrote a good bit of Drawing of the Three by the time The Gunslinger was published and released in the stores. Has anyone done this method? Writing parts of later books in a series before the previous one(s) was/were written?

[Jon]

Billy there may be a better forum for this post. You may have better odds at an answer elsewhere.

[Jean]

soon I am going to merge all threads regarding technical questions on writing, I am only thinking of the best way to do that

[cozener]

I have yet to write a novel but I certainly don't see anything wrong with the approach. Sometimes you might know where you want a story to go but haven't fleshed out the path. You know that you want to get to point A, B, and then C but you might have a good idea of what you want point S to look like. There's no reason not to write it even though you haven't written all that leads up to it. After all, you don't want to forget anything and what you have in your head right now might be exactly what you need point S to be like.

I had in my head the ending (point Z) to my DT fanfic, Darcella, before I actually wrote the story

[Jon]

I have yet to write a novel but I certainly don't see anything wrong with the approach. Sometimes you might know where you want a story to go but haven't fleshed out the path. You know that you want to get to point A, B, and then C but you might have a good idea of what you want point S to look like. There's no reason not to write it even though you haven't written all that leads up to it. After all, you don't want to forget anything and what you have in your head right now might be exactly what you need point S to be like.

I had in my head the ending (point Z) to my DT fanfic, Darcella, before I actually wrote the story

I often do that with my poems and riddles.

[Dave!]

True. As I write I have a core vision of what I think the general idea of the story is going to be. Often times I think "Hey! This will be a cool thing to add later on"...it may come into play ten chapters later. As far as a series, no. Haven't tried that one yet..But I am thinking about maybe one of the stories I am working on having a sequel, and perhaps a prequel..depends on the reception of it, I guess. If it has enough interest and somewhat of a following, or a hunger for people to read more maybe. It is a story posted on these boards, actually. I do have some ideas for the prequel as well as the sequel to Diablo on paper and in my head, but it would be a second book and maybe a third, provided this one actually makes it ok. But it is a WIP(work in progress) so time will tell.

[Adumbros]

actually, i find this to be a rather poor scheme of writing. Yes, you may know exactly where point S is, but compare it to travelling...

say you know where your final destination is. let's say Pittsburgh. now, if you've never been here, and you live in New Mexico, and you try to map out Pittsburgh's location too soon, you're gonna fuck up and get lost. so instead, you "outline" your destination. This is where I'm going to end up; how do I get there?

I've done it before myself. written something that occurs waaaaaaaaay later in a story. and what happens? unless i construct the story specifically to get that point (and doing so will make the story way too predictable, i.e., SUCKISH), then i'm gonna wind up with a fucked up story. which is why an outline is better.

as it stands now, i am currently writing what i intend, ultimately, to be a 13-book series. 400+ pgs ea. yeah. ne ways, i honestly know what i expect the ending to be already, but instead of writing it and having to write AROUND it to make it work, instead, i wrote some sequence ideas off to the side, so that, 2 or 3 or 4 years down the line, when i get to the ending chapter, it will lead me to the destination, not to the outskirts.