All language subtitles for Masterclass - David Baldacci Teaches Mystery and Thriller Writing - 16.Writing a Series

I think the the decision writers have to

make that all of you have to make is

what kind of story do you want to tell?

I don't care if this is your first novel

or your 50th novel. If you have the

juice and you have um the desire and the

motivation and the material to start out

writing a series, go for it. I'll give

you a great example of somebody, a

writer I much admired and who was a

really good friend of mine for a long

time. she passed away with Sue Grafton.

So she had been a screenwriter and

television writer for a while and then

she started the series with Kenzie

Milhone. A is for Alibi, B is for

burglar. That was her first novel. And

so she started off one of the most

stupendously successful crime series of

all time um right from the get-go, right

out of the gate, you know, and and she

did it incredibly well. And Sue Graptton

was a very gifted writer and she could

do that. So, I don't I don't think don't

tell tell yourself that I can't do a

series because this is my first time.

You know, don't box yourself into that.

If you have a really cool character uh

that you think can live beyond the

confines of one novel and move on to the

next and on to the next and on the next,

I would swing for the fences because,

you know, the world otherwise might be

missing out on a character like Keny

Milhon uh that otherwise would be such a

gift to the world. Um, so don't confine

yourself to that. And it's not about

inexperience, not about having written a

novel, not written a novel before. It's

all about what is your material and

what's a story you want to tell. And if

it's story that's going to live beyond

the confines of one book, go for it.

There's nothing holding you back.

My first probably 12 or 13 books were

all standalones. You know, that the

story was encapsulated and those

characters are there and you never saw

them again. And then I wrote a book

called Split Second, Shawn King and

Michelle Maxwell. Didn't really intend

for that to be the beginning of a series

with these two characters. But as a

writer, I made the decision when I had

finished it. I thought to myself, I left

a lot of issues unresolved between these

two. And I think there's more potential.

I think they have more room to grow.

There's more fuel in the tank, as I like

to say. So I brought them back in the

second book, Hourgame, and I brought

them back in three other books after

that. That was sort of the beginning of

my series career, and I've done it now

multiple times with lots of characters.

There's the Camel Club and Amos Decker

and Will Roby.

And for me and as a writer, um, series

allow you another chance, you know, to

dig at these characters and to deepen

them and to get into their heads a

little bit more and see them grow and

evolve. Uh, you don't get that with

standalones. So, for me, it was exciting

to see that I would be able to see these

people again. And they almost become

friends, you know? I I feel like I know

them. I've hung out with them for years

of my life. With each book, it allows

you a more latitude. I could I can do

things in say a book in a series um that

I know are not going to be paid off. And

John Puller is a prime example of that.

In the very first book, Zero Day, you

learned that Robert Puller was in

prison. That wasn't resolved until book

three in the escape. You also learned in

that book that John Puller didn't know

what happened to his mother. She

disappeared one day. That wasn't

resolved until the very last book in the

John Puller series that that I wrote, No

Man's Land, which is the fourth book in

that series. So you can lay these little

Easter eggs knowing they're not going to

be resolved, but people know this is a

series, so they just wait and they know

it's there and they just wait. And when

those things are resolved, it's kind of

a payoff for them. So it allows you

broad latitude to take your time to

really almost leisurely build these

characters, you know, keep finishing

those edges to them, u making them

really larger in life, but making them

more complicated. It's almost like a

aging, you know, I'm not who I was when

I was 20. I've learned, you know, 30s

and 40s. life, you know, etches stuff on

you, scars and wounds, and also helps

you to learn and, you know, work through

things. So, we're all different than we

were when we were younger. And a series

allows you to age gracefully, sometimes

not so gracefully, with the characters

you created.

There there are several ways that you

can set a a series up from a standalone

um without, you know, confirming that

it's going to be a series book. And it's

just laying material within that story.

Let let's take the first memory man,

Amos Decker. I could have stopped the

book at that one and that would have

been it. You know, the case was

resolved. He found out who killed his

family. And as far as I was concerned,

you know, and the reader's concerned, I

could have just stopped it there. But I

allowed myself a little bit of wiggle

room in that in that he had accepted at

the end of the novel, he accepted a job

with the FBI to go on the special task

force to investigate Cole cases. Again,

I could have ended the book there, but

it allowed me that if I wanted to bring

him back, the second book would begin

with, well, you know what? I told you in

the first book that he was going to go

work for the FBI and do these cold

cases. The second book, guess what? He's

doing a cold case working with the FBI.

And so it gave me latitude and

flexibility to do that. Or you could lay

something in the background of the

person. Maybe there was an unresolved

conflict with a family member that you

didn't address fully in that novel, but

maybe you could if you wanted to bring

the character back. But sometimes it's

often about an unresolved issue or a

change in that person's career or life

arc. And I chose with Memory Man the

life arc option where he was going to

leave Burlington and not be a detective

there anymore and join the FBI. So that

gave me the wiggle room. If I wanted to

do book two, I could. If I didn't,

everything was cool.

You know, I've read that JK Rowling um

knew from the very get-go that there

were going to be seven books in this

series, and God bless her that she was

able to do that. That's an amazing

accomplishment to know ahead of time

that's what it was going to be. I have

never known how many books were going to

be in a series, whether it was going to

be. I did a series a few years ago with

a guy named A. Shaw, just the letter

initial A. Shaw. There was only two

books in that series. I didn't even know

it was going to be two, but I finished

the first one. I thought he's

interesting enough I can bring him back

again. I haven't returned to him for a

lot of different reasons. Um, so for me,

never know how many books it's going to

be. I know Amos Decker has more room to

go. I have no idea how many books. I may

bring King and Maxwell back again. John

Puller may have a couple more books left

in him. Will Roby probably has a few

more books left in him as well. But it

comes down to I don't want to bring them

back just to bring them back. I haven't

brought I have a very popular series

called the Camel Club. I wrote five

books with the Camel Club. I get emails

every time I go to a book event. You

know, somebody's clamoring, you know,

camel club, camel club, camel club. I

hear it over and over again. I was in an

event in Atlanta and I walked in this

huge crowd of people and this guy stands

up in the middle of the room. He's got

this huge pole with a camel toy stuffed

animal stuck to the top of the pole and

he screams out, "What do you think I

want more of?" And I he caught me off

guard and I looked and I said,

"Medication."

So, um, but I haven't brought them back

because I haven't really thought of a

story that would justify to plausibly

bring them back. You know, I don't bring

them back just to bring them back. So,

for me, I go book to book to book. The

only one where I really knew that I was

going to bring them back for a specific

reason was John Puller because I left

those open-ended issues, his brother and

his mother, and I knew those had to be

resolved. So, I knew there was going to

be at least three books in that series

just to take care of those issues as

well. Other than that, I think as a

writer, you can allow yourself some

latitude and flexibility. It comes down

to one question. Do you want to spend

more time with these characters? If you

do, bring them back. If you don't, move

on.

When you're when you're writing a

series, the question always becomes, can

somebody read it as a standalone or they

have to read it in chronological order?

You know, my my standard response is, my

publisher will say that to fully enjoy

this book, you need to read all of my

published books. and buy them for your

friends and family as well. I like to

play fair such that I give you enough in

every book in a series that enough

background that you can read any of

those series standalone. Now, is it

better if you read them in order?

Probably. So, just because things happen

and you might be lost a little bit

because wait a minute, you know, how did

this happen? Well, it happened because

it happened in book one. You know,

that's why that happened. Where did this

person appear? Without a person appeared

in book two, if you read that, you would

have been fine. You want to give people

who haven't read the books in

chronological order enough information

to follow. You don't want to turn off

the people who read the all the books in

chronological order with too much

information they already know. So the

way I try to deal with that is thinking

in my mind my psychologist had again is

that even people who read it in order.

It's not like this is all they do with

their life. They wait for my book to

come out. They have rest of their life.

They forget stuff. So for me even for

the sequential readers a little bit of a

refresher course is not such a bad

thing. And that's why I keep it to a

minimum even for the people are reading

it out of order. It's not like I spend

two pages going over who Amos Dicker

was. It could be is is a sentence that

says, you know, because there's

traumatic brain injuries, hypermesia, he

he has perfect recall. Can't forget

anything. Done. That's all they need to

know. It's one sentence and that tells

them his amazing gift that he has. So

somebody reading it out of order, they

like that's why he can remember all this

crap, you know, because he has perfect

recall. So, don't spend a an an amazing

amount of time on something like that

because you're going to get bogged down

the people who actually know this

character because they read the books in

order. But at the same time, you give

even those readers a little bit of a

refresher course. And you give the

newbies, you know, at least a sentence

or two that allows them to be able to

follow the book in a standalone. And I

keep it to a minimum. Don't go on and on

about it. That that's not good for the

newbies. It's not good for the people

who read it in order. It just bogs the

stuff down. Trust your readers. They're

going to get it. You give them a little

information. and they're smart. They're

readers, you know, they're not going to

be totally out in the woods. Um, and I

think the more you do it, the better you

get at that.

One of the biggest things that you have

to avoid when you're writing series is

inconsistency. Um, you know, film sets

have the the scripty who everything is

about consistency where the books are

placed, the wardrobe and all that has to

be the same. Otherwise, people are like,

"Ah, whoa, whoa, whoa. Something's

really out of out of whack here." Same

thing with a book. So if I write about a

character who has a certain skill or a

certain knowledge base or knows somebody

or did something or background and the

second book I screwed that up totally or

the third book or the fourth book I

screw it up totally, then people are

going to go he doesn't even know what

his characters did. You know, how can I

trust him to tell a good story? You lose

them. I swear to God, focus on this

because you lose them right there if

you're not consistent. So with series

books, I can't remember every detail. I

have a really good memory. I'm not an

Amos Decker, but I have a good memory. I

remember a lot, but nobody can remember

every detail from 140,000 page book,

140,000word book that I wrote 10 years

ago. I mean, nobody has a good a good

enough memory for that. At least I

don't. So, I will go back if I'm going

to write about a John Puller or Amos

Decker or Will Roby or King Maxwell and

I haven't been with them for a while. I

go back and reread, you know, some of

the other previous books to make sure or

if I'm going to say something definite

about them, I go back and check, is this

consistent? So that's kind of the the

first thing. It's consistency because

that shows your mastery of the of

material. If readers don't think you

think you can master your own material,

they don't trust you to do anything else

right. And so you've lost them right

from the get-go. And then it's it comes

about well, you know, mistakes that that

you can make are um is the arc off? You

know, so if you had a character, you

know, sort of arcing one way in two

books and all of a sudden the arc just

falls off and they go a completely

different way and you don't give a

plausible reason why, then where did

that come from? You know, if the guy's

an upstanding citizen and does all the

right stuff and you write a third book

and he's robbing a bank and you don't

adequately explain why that happened,

you've blown the arc. Um, and readers

are not going to let you get away with