I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Most fiction series are written so that the reader can come in at any point and not feel lost, but if you can start at the beginning, why not?
I'm sure you're aware, with the time it takes to put these books together, everything can suddenly start coming out at once even though I wrote anything between one and five years ago.
My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.
For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.
The great thing about a trilogy is that it feels like you've got a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Although when I start a novel I know how it will begin and end, I like to let the people within the story take me on a journey between those points without having a fixed plan.
I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing.
I write synopses after the book is completed. I can't write it beforehand, because I don't know what the book's about. I invent something for my publisher because he asks for one, but the final book ends up very differently.
There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.
I knew I wanted to write novels, but I could not finish what I started. The closer I got, the more ways I'd find to screw it up.