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Q&A How to expand beyond a single series?

Tell more stories. If you've built a world, put sentient beings in it and put conflicts in front of them. Let the world unfold in front of your characters, and let the characters talk about the o...

posted 8y ago by Lauren Ipsum‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T12:00:36Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/21908
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:14:32Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/21908
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T05:14:32Z (almost 5 years ago)
Tell more stories.

If you've built a world, put sentient beings in it and put conflicts in front of them. Let the world unfold in front of your characters, and let the characters talk about the other parts of the world, and the history of it, which haven't been discussed before. Write stories set long before or shortly after your existing series. Link it to your existing series via character, plot, place, or time (so that there's some reason for your readers' interest to carry over).

Mercedes Lackey has the planet Velgarth on which her Heralds of Valdemar stories take place; she has jumped around something like a thousand-year timeline telling various stories with various characters who may or may not interact (depending on how far apart they are). Many of her books are set within a period of three generations, but there are also quite a few set hundreds of years earlier.

Anne McCaffrey created the planet Pern. Most of her stories are set in a twenty-five year period long after Earth humans colonized the planet, but there's also one story about the colonization and few set before that group. The main links are locations and species (the dragons and their growing intelligence).

If your series get popular enough, you might be able to publish your Silmarillion or Codex, but to _get_ popular, write more books in your universe.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2016-05-01T17:23:55Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 3