It's not that I ever sat down and outlined a trilogy, but I always have a sense of what size an idea is when I start it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When a young writer comes up to me with an ambitious idea for a 20-book series, I usually tell him to maybe try something smaller to start off with.
The great thing about a trilogy is that it feels like you've got a beginning, a middle, and an end.
I think I have a sense right in the beginning of how big an idea it is and how much room it needs, and, almost more importantly, how long it would sustain anybody's interest.
A trilogy is a pretty abstract notion. You can apply it to almost any three things.
I think the danger with using the term 'trilogy' is that it sets up particular expectations in the reader's mind.
Each book first begins with a little idea.
I start with an idea that is no more than a paragraph long, and expand it slowly into an outline. But I'm always surprised by the directions things take when I actually start writing.
Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.
In all seriousness, people think that it's the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words - that's how long a novel is.
It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.
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