How to write a trilogy

Writing a trilogy is difficult, it really is.

I think that a lot of people aspire to write a trilogy (especially given how we’ve seen trilogies sort of enter the pop culture sphere of late).

But a trilogy has all the same issues and complications of writing a stand-alone novel, but is further complicated by a number of other factors.

If the first book is successful, the second and third then have to live up to (if not exceed) the expectations of the reader.

My experience writing a trilogy

I don’t usually delve into my own writing, but I feel like this particular story has a fair bit of relevance to the topic of writing a trilogy.

A number of years ago, I started writing a trilogy. It was my first true stint in trying to put together a story in any meaningful way outside of the occasional short story. I was sure that I had a great idea for a trilogy. So, I sat down and started writing the first book, got through the first draft, and naturally ended it on a cliffhanger.

And then I had no idea what came next. I didn’t even know how to start the second book in the trilogy. Worse yet, I had no idea how the trilogy was supposed to end. Basically, I had written a book with all further elements in the story amounting to “stuff happens”. I tell this story not to dissuade anyone from writing a trilogy, but rather to make a point.

Trilogies are a story—spread over three books, but a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Ask yourself this question: “How does my story end?”

Writing a trilogy vs. writing a series

If you have a clear sense of how the story ends, then you’re on the right path. If you don’t have an answer to this, don’t sweat it—it’s not the end of the world. But something you might need to keep in mind is that your trilogy isn’t a trilogy at all. It’s probably a series.

What’s the difference between a trilogy and a series?

There are lots of different answers to this, including the obvious “trilogies have three books and series have more”. Some of the answers are clear cut, and some of them have a bit more nuance to them, but the easiest way to look at it (and the way we’re going to be looking at it) is this:

A trilogy is a single story, told over three books.

A series contains interconnected stories, usually with the same (or at least some overlapping) cast of characters.

Let’s really break down a series and a trilogy. My favourite series, Dune, often changes its cast (sometimes almost completely) from book to book, but there is always connective tissue that keeps the story cohesive. Organizations like the Bene Gesserit and the Fremen persist, even if our favourite characters don’t. On the other hand, the trilogy of trilogies, The Lord of the Rings, is ostensibly about “the quest to destroy the One Ring”.

“[…] Dune, often changes its cast (sometimes almost completely) from book to book, but there is always connective tissue that keeps the story cohesive. Organizations like the Bene Gesserit and the Fremen persist, even if our favourite characters don’t.”

So, with that clarified, let’s start to look at how we can organize ourselves and write our trilogies.

I’ll be covering four important things to remember when writing a trilogy here:

What is your trilogy about?
Figure out Book 2 (and Book 3).
How do you make the story compelling?
How do you handle characters (and their stories)?

What is your trilogy about?

Like we said above, ask yourself this question: “How does my story end?”

This matters a lot for the process of differentiating trilogies and series, but it is the most important part of your trilogy as well. The most fascinating and interesting characters and scenes need a skeleton to sit on—that’s your story.

The process of writing a novel and a trilogy are similar. In a trilogy, Book 1 should generally do the following:

Introduce characters.
Introduce the setting.
Have an inciting incident.
Have a conflict of some kind.
Have a resolution of some kind.

You’ll notice that the general structure of Book 1 is similar to that of a trilogy. This structure is extended over a trilogy. Generally, Book 1 introduces the characters, the setting, and covers the inciting incident. Some form of resolution occurs at the end. Book 2 is where the conflict shows itself and the characters realize the stakes. Book 3 is where the conflict, for better or worse, is resolved.

The original trilogy

The original Star Wars trilogy, often referred to as the “original trilogy”, almost perfectly lines up to this structure. A New Hope introduces our characters, our inciting incident sends Luke into the stars, and after the battle of Yavin, the Death Star is destroyed and the rebels victorious.

The Empire Strikes Back shows us that the victory from A New Hope was important, but that it was temporary. Here the conflicts of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, Han and his debts, Luke’s challenges of becoming a Jedi, and more leave the story ending in a dark place. This is sometimes called the “Dark Night of the Soul” or “Rock Bottom”.

In Return of the Jedi, Luke rescues Han, and the Rebels discover a new Death Star and the final conflict takes place—Luke facing the Emperor and Darth Vader with the Empire being defeated.

While this is a fairly simplistic way of looking at the story, it’s a great example.

“The Empire Strikes Back shows us that the victory from A New Hope was important, but that it was temporary.”

Figure out Book 2 (and Book 3)

In a trilogy, you’re closing out the first part of the story, but not the story as a whole. You need enough loose ends to create interest in the second book of the trilogy to continue the main story arc. Let’s take a look at the structure of a trilogy vs. a stand-alone novel.

Structure of a trilogy

You know the story you’re trying to tell. You’ve already figured that out. So now, start by breaking up that story into three parts.

When you’re telling almost any story, you can almost always break it up into three basic parts: the setup (SU), conflict (C), and resolution (R). In a typical story, it looks like this:

SU —> C —> R

This is to say: You have your setup, which prepares and leads into the conflict, which is then resolved.

Simple!

When you have the three books of a trilogy (let’s call them B1, B2, and B3), you have:

B1SU —> B1C —> B1R
then,
B2SU —> B2C —> B2R
and then,
B3SU —> B3C —> B3R.

Easy, right? Remember though that the trilogy itself is usually a story arc as well, meaning that we have the “trilogy version” of this:

Trilogy SU —> Trilogy C —> Trilogy R

It’s important to note that unlike the individual books, the trilogy as a whole doensn’t quite break down in the same way, and the conflict of the trilogy can be in all three of the books, elements of the setup might occur in Book 2, and so on. The important thing is that the story itself follow a sensible arc, much like the individual books!

Know what happens in Book 2

I don’t know if it is possible to overstate the importance of planning out the second book in a trilogy.

Because of the way that trilogies are structured, Book 2 is often the one that doesn’t have a very clear writing path. In a lot of cases, initial story structures look a lot like “Characters and villains are introduced, stuff happens, and then the heroes win”. That “stuff happens” part that is really important though. A weak second book can collapse a trilogy. This is sometimes called “Second Book Syndrome”.

Here are three simple but useful tips that you can use to plan your second book:

1. Work backwards.

2. Kill your darlings.

3. Focus on the main arc.

There are lots of different ways that you can approach a second book, but it’s pivotal that it receive a lot of attention (debatably more than the first or third books). Let’s examine each of these points.

Work backwards

When you know the end of the book, you know how you can get there. Working your way backwards from the conclusion is a good way to make sure that you have a logical path towards the resolution. This approach takes the question “How did we get here?” and uses it to flesh out the central part of the trilogy.

It is also a handy way to logically get your cause and effect chain working in a sensible way (only in reverse). An example of this structure might look like this:

The heroes win.
Why?
Because they found the Dagger of the Sun.
Why?
Because they went to the Tomb of the Guardian and survived the traps.
Why?
Because they were given a map by Agent Joe.
Why?
Because they saved Agent Joe from the cultists.
And so on.

This is a simple outlining technique that you can use to populate your story with a series of events that logically flow into each other. Just be careful that you’re keeping the story logically consistent.

Kill your darlings

The term “kill your darlings” is often used in a very specific way—kill your characters, even if you love them. This can sometimes feel like A Song of Ice and Fire, where deaths are shocking but excessive. Here, I’m using it to speak about ideas more broadly. We sometimes get attached to ideas, and our desires to want to jam ideas into a book can sometimes cause a break in the logic.

Look at your story and be objective about what is causing problems. Are you having trouble getting a scene to play out because a character would do something they normally wouldn’t? Are the heroes not really in danger because you’ve given them some kind of get out of jail free card early in the series?

Can you remove (or kill) a problem by revisiting the main structure of the story of Book 2? For all the potential heartache of abandoning a story or character, your book (and by extension trilogy) will be all the better for it.

Remember what we said about The Empire Strikes Back—it’s the low point for the characters, and in that story the victory in Return of the Jedi is that much sweeter for it.

Kill the happiness (if it exists) of the first book to get your heroes to a low point. The lower the point, the greater the victory.

Make things worse.

*“For all the potential heartache of abandoning a story or character, your book (and by extension trilogy) will be all the better for it.”*

Focus on the main arc

When in doubt, always go back to main spine of your story. This is, after all, the point of the whole trilogy, right?

Figure out the main plot points that get you from the setup (Book 1) all the way through to the resolution of the story (Book 3) and then work out how much of the story can take place in the second book. Remember, you want to divide the book up (generally) evenly, but you also need to make sure that the middle is exciting enough to get the readers to commit to the conclusion.

Your main story can be supplemented with any number of side quests, but you cannot neglect the progress of the main story. If we look at The Hunger Games series in the context of the revolution that starts in The Hunger Games and ends in Mockingjay, the second book in the series is where the general concepts of revolution really take hold and ultimately where Katniss joins the rebels.

That is a good place to lead into the final book, right?

How do you make the story compelling?

It doesn’t matter if your story is a romance or a post-apocalypse hero’s journey, the story has to be compelling. Without a story, readers will check out and stop reading. The question here is “How do I make my story compelling?” Well, there’s good news and bad news.

There’s an easy part

Your characters need to be interesting, your stakes need to be relevant, and it all needs to be believable. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but these are not fundamentally complicated ideas. Here’s The Handmaid’s Tale in a nutshell:

Our character is Offred, a fertile (in a world of infertility being the norm) woman enslaved by a theocratic government, assigned to produce children for the ruling class of men. It is a very potent hook and has issues of oppression, rebellion, and fear laced into the concept. Her bodily autonomy and freedom are at stake, concepts that almost anyone can relate to in some way or another. And it is set in a part of America, the Republic of Gilead, that took over part of the USA, where people are oppressed or oppressors.

It’s a straightforward concept.

Interesting characters do not need magic, they just need to be people we can relate to. Relevant stakes don’t always need to be world-saving events, sometimes it can be as simple as “personal freedom”. Whether something is believable is largely related to how characters act. Do they make sensible decisions based on their circumstances? Or does the author’s hand show in the narrative?

And a hard part

The tricky part is, of course, writing this. All of the points mentioned in the “easy part” above are challenging to write, and more specifically to keep consistent. Settings are often static, whereas characters are dynamic. Make sure that your characters act in accordance with expectations and that they don’t break reality and logic in how they act. As an example:

Situation: A five-year-old peasant child who grew on the streets in Victorian England is trying to survive.
Solution: The child breaks into a castle, steals valuable metals and builds a device to send them to create food.

What’s the problem?

The first part conflicts with the second part. It breaks the suspension of disbelief. The solution and the situation are at odds with each other from a logical point of view. What would be more sensible?

Flesh out the world, how does a five-year-old child survive in that world?

It’s tricky, but the more logical and sensible the path, the easier it is to write. It is always more difficult to try and justify unnatural or strange solutions than to just write things that make sense.

Your world’s internal logic is key to keeping a reader hooked. If the author ignores their own setting and logic, the reader will spot this and probably not be willing to keep going along for the ride. If you’re not careful, your characters might come across like this:

“Why yes, I’ve acquired this detailed map of the royal palace despite having no resources. What? You think that’s wild? Just wait until you see me build 26th century technology with a hammer and some twine.”

We all want our heroes to be amazing, but sometimes we can make them unrealistic instead.

How do you handle stories (and characters)?

So, now that you’ve figured out the main arc of your story (or spine), you can start to populate your book(s) with the content that will flesh out the world, the characters, and draw the reader in. Who (if anyone) is working against the main character(s)? Does the reader get that perspective? What allies and challenges does the main character encounter?

With your spine set up, it’s now time to weave in these other elements of the story. Remember that you want to make sure that your main story is enhanced by the other elements. You don’t want side quests to derail the main story arc (something that can happen if you put too much focus on secondary stories and characters).

Side plots

A side plot can be a small adventure or deviation from the main narrative that your characters go on so that you can accomplish specific goals. Some of these goals might be to give more context to a character or place, to create a sense of suspense, or to give the reader information that the main character might not know—this is a bit more common in stories where different chapters have different POV characters.

There are two primary things that you need to consider: How does that side plot get established and how does it get resolved.

These two questions are important because you need to logically deviate from your story and then be able to return to it organically. If you’re on a personal vendetta to avenge your parents’ murder, you’re probably not going to want to go help someone fix their relationship with their estranged sibling. Unless there’s something that sibling has that can help you, perhaps. Here are some examples of common story types:

· Romantic arc;

· go get a “thing” quest;

· save so-and-so from bad guys;

· learn about the world/bad guy from someone;

· gain wisdom from an uninvolved person.

Being able to weave these stories into the main narrative can be challenging, but think about the entry/exit points of the story and how you can write those so that they enhance the main character’s journey.

Writing compelling characters

We’re going to be covering how to write compelling characters at length soon, but in brief, I think that there are two main things that can help to achieve this goal. This isn’t to say that there are only two, but that these two are the most important in my opinion.

The first is that characters need to be sympathetic—from hero to villain—so that the reader can understand them and their motivations. While there is a time and a place to have “evil for the sake of evil” type characters, or “good for the sake of good”, characters that are sympathetic engender an emotional response. We can relate to, or at the very least understand why, they make the decisions they do.

This relates also to the point mentioned earlier about characters needing to make logical decisions.

The term “real” characters is sometimes also thrown around, and it makes sense. We want characters to be three-dimensional people that we can connect to. The less there is in terms of sympathy, the less the reader will (or even can) relate to your heroes and villains.

The second trait that I think matters is that they cannot be perfect characters. Fundamentally, with perfect characters, the possibility for growth is absent. When you start the story “perfect”, there is no where to go. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that the character can’t think that they are perfect, only that they shouldn’t be perfect. I go into the necessity for a character to be believable in another article, so if you want to get a bit more insight into this, I recommend you take a look.

Just by ensuring that you’ve given careful thought to these two points, you’ll be starting off with a strong foundation for your characters. Remember, characters, even side characters, should make sense and be understandable.

Trilogies vs. novels vs. chapters

We’ve already talked about how writing a chapter is a microcosm of a novel. A trilogy is effectively a novel being separated into three parts and extended over a much longer number of pages. With these fundamentals you’ll have a really good sense of what the major pitfalls are in writing trilogies.

Good luck writing your trilogy.