A while back I talked about the pros and cons of writing a series of shorts in different POVs. That was particularly about my shorts series “The Puppeteer Series”.
For more info on “The Puppeteer Series” click here
As I eat my French Cruller doughnut (yum!) in hopes of soothing the pain, let me tell you that I did not plan “The Puppeteer Series” at all. I was a pantser for the entire thing.
That means I ran into a lot of extra trouble:
- I decided it would be fun to begin each story with the year and the month or rough season. Yet, in the beginning, I didn’t keep track of the timeline and the more stories I wrote, the more complex the timeline became, and I ran into trouble:
- I sometimes found someone who has already died, resurrected years later by mistake. Children were born before their parents met, grandchildren were born before their parents were born, and I suddenly have a bunch of zombie characters.
- Not just death or birth, relationships got confused. People were friends before the other was even born, children became orphans before their birth, the evil force of The Puppeteer suddenly changes his mind and lets his victims live by mistake…and the list goes on.
- Apart from these inconsistencies, the story of The Puppeteer affected the entire timeline. Everything was connected. And, people are not perfect, so some characters got his story wrong. Why did I do that to myself? Why couldn’t all my characters be perfect???? AGH!
- Some POVs were created randomly. I was just going to introduce some of the victims of the The Puppeteer just for funsies. I then had the brilliant idea of connecting all the characters somehow. So, how does character X connect to character B? Uhhhhhh…
If you read all that, kudos to you.
Clearly, I set myself up for confusion and I was almost like the reader trying to figure out the mystery and not the writer that knows all the answers in advance.
I did eventually figure out the lore of The Puppeteer and why he’s called “The Puppeteer”, who or what he is, why is he turning people into puppets, and how he came to be, and, how he can be defeated if at all.
How it all began…
The Puppeteer Series all started out with two stories:
The Puppeteer (currently titled “Prelude”)
Available HERE
An introduction to the series that begins with telling the reader of a kidnapping and disappearances happening in a fictional city. It is almost like omniscient view point as I tell you about the old carnival grounds were the culprit lives…
(those carnival grounds detail was another detail I had to work into my complex mess of no-planning series writing)
and
Daniel
“Don’t forget who you are.”
The story about a little boy whose town has been destroyed by The Puppeteer. Can he escape the evil? The only comfort he has with him is a stuffed blue bunny called Berry.
Available HERE
(The quote was another troublesome detail I had to figure out how to work into the story without forcing it in.)
I kept adding new stories…
Somehow the series snowballed into not just two or three, but thirty-seven and growing a little bit more.
I don’t want to write any more new POV shorts XD At some point, the series has to come to an end. Otherwise it’s just ridonkulous!
Finally…
it’s coming to a nice end. It took YEARS to write mostly because I had a time when I was unwilling to add any more stories and had ZERO inspiration.
Thinking back…
OMG, me.
I really set myself up for trouble.
FOXWOOD FOREST 