I would be interested to hear about the Neverending Series and Character panels, plus send me a copy of The Forest Queen if you would.
In the Neverending Series panel, the main subject of discussion was the distinction between a neverending
series and a neverending
story. An example of the latter would of course be Jordan's Wheel of Time. The success of those books notwithstanding, the general consensus in the room was that readers were somewhat tired of that approach, and expected a fuller resolution, and story-within-itself, for each book. In a series approach, there will generally be an overall story arc tying individual books together, but each volume has its own arc of beginning-middle-end, with a satisfying resolution, and with character change, just like a stand alone novel. This can be accomplished in 'sets' of trilogies (CJ Cherryh was mentioned, although ones that come to mind for me are Katherine Kurtz' Deryni series), or as individual books sharing a common world that you've created (for example, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series). In both cases, characters can be shared among the books to greater or lesser degrees, the constant being the environment and the larger story arc (Darkover didn't have a particular overall arc, but that was because Bradley was more "re-visiting" that world than building it with a larger story in mind). A visual example was given with Babylon 5, wherein we had a weekly episode but also a four year (extended to five year) storyline that was being followed as well.
The other point that we made was that new writers starting out would be advised not to approach an editor with, "I have this great idea for a ten book series." Unless you have some track record, your material would have to be extraordinary for a publisher to commit to anything like that. When talking mutli-book stories, more often they are going to commit for from one to three book deals, the gestation of the second and third then hinging in part on the success of the first book. As well, it takes some measure of experience to be able to maintain pacing and interest over a long series, and a new writer would be advised to hone those skills with shorter story arcs first.
There were several character based panels, but I'll assume you might be asking about the one called Characters are People Too. This one was interesting in that our moderator had prepared a list of questions for us in advance, so I could jot down some notes. Her questions were fairly specific, asking us to cite examples of various techniques we used with our characters to highlight individual traits. For example, drawing on personal emotional experiences to graft realistic reactions onto your characters. This is not to say to make your characters like yourself or someone you know, but to utilize the emotional reactions you've observed in others so that your own characters can respond in similar and believable ways.
Several of the other panelists advocated the biography approach, of writing out a complete history of your characters' lives, what they like and don't like, even going so far as to "interview" them with a series of questions. This is a popular approach to building well-rounded characters. I discussed an alternative approach, which is to take a more holistic view of your characters in relationship to the story. The danger (both in extremely detailed advance building of your characters' lives, and in elaborate world building down to the rates of currency exchange and the like) is that quite often once you start the actual writing the story may not go as originally planned. People may need to be a bit different than originally envisioned, or something in the world may need to function in a different way, for the story to work properly or to read well. There then can be a hesitancy to "mess with" all that elaborate and carefully crafted structure. Yet a writer should always remember that characters and settings are just tools in the tool box, as much as the words you use to write with. You want to avoid boxing yourself into a corner or be afraid that something's going to unravel if you deviate from the plan (this coming from someone who makes a fairly structured outline for his fairly large novels).
One of the other panelists had a good example: she got halfway through her horror novel and faced a situation where her character had to ascend a staircase to where something bad awaited. For whatever reason, though, she realized that the way she had consructed him, at that point he simply would just have not gone up the stairs. And now she was stuck and couldn't go forward. In the end she had to go back and re-write him in ways that would allow him to go up the stairs. What I always tell people in these panels is that when you face such an issue, you have to make a decision: is the way you've envisioned the character more important than the story point, or is this story point vital to the plot? One or the other has to be adjusted, and to be done correctly you'll have to go back to earlier points of the manuscript and make adjustments to make everything come back together properly once you reach the current sticking point, so as to make it un-stick.
That's not everything we talked about, by any means, but it takes a lot longer to type this stuff out than to say it.
Forest Queen image is being emailed to you, too.
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