Is this even possible?
Turns out that yes… yes it is. Recently I’ve dived back into a story I’ve been world building for several years, a Medieval Science Fiction. When I originally set out on the journey for this story, the intent was to have a 5+ book series with several parallels. They were all mapped out in my head, and I just knew the awesome direction each was going to take and how they all tied together.
Bucket of cold water please. >.<
Then I got smart. There’s a reason authors consistently encourage one another to keep writing and evolving, and this is one of those reasons.
The world I built is so huge, that telling a single story will never, ever expose the entire thing. I got a little lost in the information with trying to make every detail reflect and foreshadow all the things to come. Problem #1.
Problem #2 came when I realized that every book I planned in the series had no arc or focus as an independent story. They fed into the whole, but none would ever stand on their own.
Problem #3 – oh hell, I was pulling so many characters into the story, and some wouldn’t even show back up again till book 2 or 3.
Truth: if you’ve run into this issue with your own writing, know that all is well. Pick a story to tell, and tell only that story. Open and close it, showing the best features (or weirdest) your world has to offer. Make sure the story stands alone, because if it’s well-received, then each subsequent tale can continue to open up more of the amazing universe you’ve built.
And if there’s one thing we fantasy readers love, it’s the bizarre, crazy, mysterious universes we can bury ourselves in.
