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How I Wrote a Creative Fantasy Series
Author Helen Scheuerer
I’m often asked how I came up with the idea for my YA fantasy trilogy, The Oremere Chronicles. So with Book II, Reign of Mist, about to hit the shelves, I thought I’d shed some light on the process…
People often have this romanticised idea of an author having a "lightning bolt" moment of inspiration when it comes book concepts.
For me, it’s never been like that. Jack London said, “Don’t wait for inspiration. Go after it with a club”, and that’s definitely in line with my general approach to writing.
It feels like this happened a long time ago now, but the overarching plot of The Oremere Chronicles came together slowly. While I knew the general feel of each book, random plot points, and how I wanted the series to end, the concept in full didn’t come to me in one epic light bulb moment.
In fact, the series has developed much in the same way that each individual book develops - in layers. I find that as I write and redraft, the finer details, the creative aspect of the narrative and the characters become clearer. I’d love to say that I have these bursts of genius, but in truth, I don’t at all. I have to work very hard to draw the magic out of my drafts.
The Oremere Chronicles is the first series I’ve written, and so far, I’ve found that writing a series is an exercise is problem solving. Particularly so if you’re publishing as you write (for example, releasing a book a year, rather than writing everything and publishing later).
As I write and publish, I come up with new plots, new character quirks and backstories, and it’s up to me as the author to weave these in as authentically as I can. The creativity of the series is the result of thousands of hours of work, reading and brainstorming.
One of my favourite things to do is to create boards in Pinterest for settings and characters. It acts as a springboard for my imagination and allows me to hone in on the finer details.
A mistake I made when I was a less experienced writer was that I always tried to fit too much into one manuscript. As I wrote, ideas and creativity flowed, and I wanted the book to have everything…
Writing a series provides much more wriggle room than a standalone novel, and can help snowball creativity. I often come up with new ideas for plot and characters midway through the writing process, when there’s already a lot going on in the book. Writing a series allows for flexibility, I have multiple books to develop the world, which has allowed me to be infinitely more creative with the settings and especially the character arcs and relationships.
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits all method to writing a creative series, but that’s what makes each series so unique.
What’s your favourite creative series? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below…
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About the Author
Helen Scheuerer is a YA fantasy author from Sydney, Australia. Heart of Mist is the first book in her high fantasy trilogy, The Oremere Chronicles. It explores themes of identity, belonging, loyalty, addiction, loss, and responsibility. After writing literary fiction for a number of years, novels like Throne of Glass, Elantris, The Queen’s Poisoner and The Queen of the Tearling inspired Helen to return to her childhood love of fantasy. Helen is also the Founding Editor of Writer’s Edit (www.writersedit.com), an online literary magazine and learning platform for emerging writers. It’s now one of the largest writers’ platforms in the world. Helen’s love of writing and books led her to pursue a Bachelor of Creative Arts, majoring in Creative Writing at the University of Wollongong and a Masters of Publishing at the University of Sydney. Helen now works as a freelance writer and editor, while she works on the second book in The Oremere Chronicles.
We'd like to thank Helen for stopping by the blog today to do this wonderful guest post! We've also interviewed her in the past, if you're interested in checking that out!
You can also...
- Buy a copy of Heart of Mist on Amazon!
- Check out the Heart of Mist prequels!
- Check out Heart of Mist on Goodreads!
- Check out Reign of Mist on Goodreads!
- Connect with Helen via the links above!
We'd like to once again thank Helen for being kind enough to stop by and put together an amazing guest post for us! We absolutely loved reading it, and we hope that you all did, too! :-)
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