With a month to go until NaNoWriMo, this week’s rebroadcast features a condensed version of a post from 2021 where John looks back at writing the Arlo Finch series (which started as a NaNoWriMo project).
In October 2016, I began writing Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire. It’s about a kid who moves to the mountains of Colorado, where he joins the Rangers. Modeled on the scouts of my youth, Rangers can do some kinda magic things because the forest outside their town is kinda magic.
Arlo Finch sold to Roaring Brook/Macmillan as a trilogy, with Valley of Fire debuting in February 2018 and Lake of the Moon the following year. It has spawned thirteen translations published around the world. I’ve toured extensively across the U.S. and Europe. It’s been a wild trip.
As this part of the journey ends, I wanted to look back on what I learned in writing a trilogy. Here’s what I wish someone had told me before I started.
Have a plan, but be ready to change it.
When I sold the trilogy, my proposal included descriptions of books two and three. Here’s a paragraph I wrote in my summary of Kingdom of Shadows:
The Duchess, who has always operated through proxies and emissaries, is finally forced into the open. Charming, clever and ruthless, she’s willing to make a bargain with the boy she can’t seem to kill. Arlo must decide whether to forsake his friends and family in order to keep them safe.
No spoiler warning needed, because this doesn’t happen. The Duchess — a character I’d intended to become the series villain — never appears in the trilogy at all. There’s nothing even remotely like her. Early in writing book two, a better villain appeared, one who was a much stronger foil for Arlo.
And it’s not just the Duchess. Here are seven crucial elements in the trilogy that I didn’t know when I sold it:
Hadryn, and his connection to Arlo
Fallpath
The Broken Bridge
Big Breezy
The Summerland Incident
Mirnos and Ekafos
Why the Eldritch actually need Arlo
Shouldn’t I have planned better? Was it pure hubris to start writing without locking down these details?
Maybe. But I didn’t know about Hadryn until he showed up in a scene. He was a bit player who caught my interest and ended up becoming a costar. I didn’t know — and perhaps couldn’t have known — that I needed him back when I was writing the first book. Many things you only discover while writing.
In the end, a series outline is like a map. It can help keep you from getting lost, but if you follow it too closely you may drive right past some amazing discoveries.
Set rules. Break them when necessary.
Every book has rules. Some are conventions (such as spelling and punctuation), while others are specific to the genre or audience (no swearing in a kid’s book).
These rules help both authors and readers. For example, consider how we handle dialogue in prose. The author doesn’t have to add he said or she said to every line because readers have come to expect that characters alternate speaking unless otherwise indicated.
The same principle applies to point of view. Like many fantasy novels, Arlo Finch is told from a close third-person perspective. As the reader, we are hovering right behind Arlo’s shoulder. We only see what he sees, and we can only peer inside his head. Arlo Finch is at the center of every scene.
Fifty feet away, by the edge of the gravel driveway, a dog was watching him. Arlo assumed it was a dog, not a coyote or a wolf, though he had never seen one of the latter in person. The creature had a collar, which at least meant it belonged to somebody.
Arlo knew to be careful around strange dogs, but this one didn’t seem threatening. It was simply watching him.
Although the book never explicitly states it, the reader quickly understands the rule: Everything is from Arlo’s point of view.
This point of view splits the difference between a first-person narrator (e.g. The Hunger Games) and an omniscient narrator (Game of Thrones). It keeps the reader dialed in with the hero, which makes it a perfect choice for Arlo Finch…until chapter 37 of Lake of the Moon.
Arlo and his friend Indra had gotten separated. Now I needed to show what Indra was up to. But how? There was no elegant way to do it without breaking the rule on POV.
So I did it. I broke the rule. After 100,000+ words from Arlo’s perspective, we shift to Indra’s POV for that chapter.
And it was fine.
My editor noticed — but no one else did. (Or at least, they didn’t complain.) In context, it felt natural to be seeing these events from the point of view of a well-established supporting character. Later, when Indra meets up with the Blue Patrol, they’re focused on finding Arlo but the reader hardly notices that our POV character isn’t there.
Ultimately, I wasn’t breaking the rule as much as amending it: Everything is from Arlo’s point of view — unless he’s not present. Then it’s from the POV of the best-known character.
For book three, I stuck with this modified rule. One of my favorite chapters in Kingdom of Shadows is told from Uncle Wade’s perspective.
POV wasn’t the only rule I ended up breaking in Arlo Finch. I initially set out to show that Arlo’s real strength was not as a leader, but rather a follower. If there was a decision to be made, he’d help find consensus but would never take the reins.
This “hero as wallflower” approach lasted until the midpoint of book two, when he found himself facing many more challenges alone. By the third book, he’s standing up against governments and supernatural forces of unfathomable power. He’s a reluctant leader, but he’ll do what it takes.
Doing what it takes is part of writing a trilogy. You need to break rules carefully but unapologetically.
Build roads, not worlds.
The town of Pine Mountain brushes up against the Long Woods, a vast extra-dimensional wilderness that can only be navigated by mastering a special Ranger’s compass. Unlike a lot of fantasy literature, there’s no map at the front of the novels because the Long Woods cannot be mapped.
But there are books in Arlo Finch: Arlo and his friends occasionally consult Culman’s Bestiary to learn about the dangerous creatures they’re facing, yet I never seriously considered putting together the actual catalogue. Nor did I write out the oft-cited Rangers’ Field Book. I knew the names of the ranks and a few of the requirements, nothing more.
When it came to world building, I tried to create only what Arlo could himself encounter. I put a sticky note on my monitor to remind myself: Don’t build more than you need.
In the case of Arlo Finch, the decision was partly practical; I simply had too many chapters to write. But I also recognized a pattern I’d seen in a lot of fantasy literature:
Elaborately constructed universes that have little to do with the hero’s story.
Supporting characters who talk about events that happened long ago.
Visitors hailing from faraway lands the hero (and reader) will never visit.
Creatures described but never encountered.
Even over the course of a trilogy, your characters will only see a small corner of their universe. So focus on that. Make it rich, rewarding and most of all relevant.
Slow and steady wins the race.
I started Arlo Finch as part of NaNoWriMo, the annual challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. That’s a pace of 1,667 words per day.
While I’d had a lot of experience as a screenwriter, I was a complete newbie to the world of publishing. I knew I had a lot to learn, so I used the excuse of making a documentary podcast (called Launch) to ask hundreds of naive questions to editors, booksellers and other authors. They taught me about the joys, challenges and frustrations of getting a book published.
When told I was writing a trilogy, authors invariably offered a sympathetic smile along with a gentle shake of the head. Oh, child, they seemed to be saying. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.
Writing any book is a marathon. Writing three books back-to-back is like a race that never ends.
I wasn’t prepared for the sheer number of words I’d be typing — 202,595 in all — and having to do copy edits on one book while finishing the next. In the morning, Arlo might be investigating a mysterious campsite in Lake of the Moon. In the afternoon, he was back six months earlier in Pine Mountain, meeting his friends for the first time in Valley of Fire.
As a screenwriter, I’m used to working on one movie at a time. When writing Toto, I don’t need to worry about the sequel; it’ll only happen in wild success.
Instead, my experience writing a trilogy had much more in common with the life of TV showrunnner. My friends who write TV have to map out a season, then write the episodes, then oversee all the tweaks and changes — often all at the same time.
While it’s amazing to have this amount of control over one’s work, it requires a steady pace. There’s simply no way to sprint it.
You won’t get everything right.
If I could go back to book one, I would make a few changes.
Capitalize Eldritch. I didn’t realize these supernatural beings would become so important. (I also didn’t know they were giants.) We started capitalizing Eldritch in book two, but it bugs me that we’re not consistent.
Set up Arlo’s origin earlier. In book one, we learn Arlo is a “tooble,” but not what it means. We get an answer in book two, but most reviewers only read the first book. Fox, who appears at the end of book one, could have been less oblique.
Name the Warden. In book three, we learn that the adult Ranger Arlo talks to after the campfire in book one is the middle school band teacher (Mr. O’Brien). I wish I’d given him his name from the start.
Put Hadryn in book one. Hadryn appears early in book two, but by the rules of trilogies, he should have shown up in the first book — if not as a character, then at least as a named threat.
Call out how it’s different from other fantasy trilogies. Unlike Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, Arlo Finch sleeps in his own bed every night. It’s a much more grounded adventure. I think that’s obvious, but none of the reviewers seemed to notice. I should have underlined that.
You can read the full post on John’s blog!
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