Introduction
The two Olivia Plymouth International Traveler and Fashion Consultant books and one story have been my best-selling series to date. These were originally created in the early 2000s and sat on the shelf until 2012.
I always envisioned writing four books for the series. This blog concerns the effort to create and distribute the last two books.
Challenges
The challenges being faced are:
- Planning two books at once.
- Capturing continuity across the series.
- Developing the overall story arc.
- Organizing the book bibles.
This is the first time that I have planned two books at once. I just recently completed the following process and started writing.
Planning two books at once
This was fairly easy to do because
- It is one continuous story with two distinct phases and emotional feels.
- There is a logical break in the story to end the third and begin the fourth book.
Continuity and story arc
Fortunately, it is fairly easy to resume work. There are some things that greatly helped:
- An “odds and ends” idea list for both books.
- 3000 words of Book #3 written between 2004-9.
- A Book Three Bible that had the chapter names revealing the plot direction.
- The prophecy from the Story that told what was to happen.
The next step below also helped as well
Organizing Olivia Book Bibles
Since creating the last Corporate Intent and Saving Eddie books, I use Wikidpad to build a story bible and track the creation/publication progress.
The software can be downloaded here:
http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/
I re-read the above works and then created a wiki of key characters and places. This is invaluable for these reasons:
- Capture key sentences from previous works to be reused or rephrased.
- Note items to be added to the last two books for continuity.
- Unanswered questions or topics from previous books to be explored.
- Key hyperlinks and research topics are organized.
- Handy to use as a project planner and tracker.
- Got me quickly into the “Olivia Plymouth mindset.”
The amount of storage for this information — 400 K.
Did the above make a difference? I will know when the books are completed in 2015.
References
More on the series can be found at the link below.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/byseries/1730
http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/help/