Playing God Isn’t Always All It’s Cracked Up to Be

I love a good series.

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files (fantasy fiction), Kate Quinn’s tale of Rome (historical fiction), Lauren Willig’s bouquet of flowery spies (historical fiction meets chicklit), Kyra Davis’  Sophie Katz (straight-up chicklit), Dee Henderson’s O’Malleys (Christian fiction), Seanan McGuire’s October Daye (fantasy fiction)…

My shelves are filled with them. There’s something about following a made-up character from book to book, seeing them grow, journeying with them as they struggle and cheering for them when they win that mimics real-life friendships. And friendship is a beautiful thing.

Yet reading a series and writing one are two very different experiences. At least, that’s how I felt while constructing the Dirty Politics trilogy. I was so happy I wrote them all before publishing them, seeing as how all the details I changed in The Politician’s Pawn while writing Moves and Countermoves, and Moves and Countermoves while writing Amateurs Play Elsewhere.

To me, it seemed unbelievable that an author could keep plot points and character development and themes running from novel to novel without taking some serious time to first map them out.

And who knows. Maybe that’s how Butcher and Quinn and Henderson do it. I don’t know.

But in writing Faerietales Book #4 after publishing the first three, this little pantser is learning that it might not be so intimidating after all. It can be a giant, intriguing puzzle that makes your brain swell and your eyes sparkle as you rise to the challenge.

Really, it’s a lot more like living life instead of playing God.

You see, someone who writes a single book is the deity of her created world. Her final word is law. End of story.

Until she publishes it and writes a sequel. Then, all of a sudden, she’s bound by the same rules as her characters.

I’m not gonna lie. It’s kinda scary letting that control go!

Yet it’s also totally doable. I’ve managed to turn minor characters from the original trilogy into much bigger players, develop details I’d intentionally left fuzzy, and revive old plots I thought I was done with.

Sure, I’ve also had to take different roads when my original brilliant ideas clashed with my canon. But overall, I have to say I’m enjoying this new journey with Sabrina instead of above her.

I guess that makes her one of my fictional friends.