Processing My Fiction – Sub-Series Within a Series, Benefits & Challenges

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Processing My Fiction – Sub-Series Within a Series, Benefits & Challenges

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Pictured Left : “Slumming in Paris, Part One – Arthur & Gricinda“

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20,265 Story words.

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“the intent of this blog is to incrementally build a body of thought that works toward integrating various topics, yoga, fitness, and the arts – it’s a process…”

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Processing My Fiction

Sub-Series Within a Series, Benefits & Challenges

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Categories : Fiction – Author Bio Info & Updates – Paris

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The Question, ie, Challenges

The whole question of should I or shouldn’t I have a major sub-series within an established series, which initially seemed so convoluted and fraught with yay’s and nay’s just finally shriveled away.

The more I struggled with the question, and the less time I had for more projects I wanted done before the end of the year (audio books, the series in question itself, a new poetry collection book focused on inspiration, physical gift writings, upgrading the texts for some poetry and image books now almost two years old, eating, sleeping, watching some great BBCAmerica and PBS shows and other less expected channels now with solid entertainment, and that small entity called family, thought that latter definitely has no end date 🙂 ) the more I struggled with all that, the quicker I burned out, let it go, and found the answer.  Typical, huh?

Basically, my sub-series, “With the Children,” initially a major plot thread among several, absorbed my attention like an exotic five grain rice my wife Sheila found at Sprouts does with water, and the thread was a major story line.

But I write multi-generational stories (because I like to), much as I do my poetry.

So…I either needed to spin this new expanded thread off, with new covers, titles, etc, or, or…well, that was my quandary.

I mean, I have other story lines with the same cast of tween to teen characters, bolstered by their parents and grandparents, and I give those story lines a different name: Texas Shorts, Paris Shorts, Vermont Shorts (just begun), or leave as a stand-alone novel, “The Children.”

So what was the big deal?  Call this something else, right?  Like, the kids do Paris.  Or, based on their appetites, the kids ate Paris.  Leave Part One of Slumming in Paris for Arthur & Gricinda.  Part Nine and/or Ten for Antone and/or Arthur and Gricinda’s Paris wrap-up stay after the kids leave after they’ve been there with Arthur & Gricinda (Parts 2-8).

Nope.

Okaaay.  How ’bout Arthur & Gricinda are prequel and sequel, and the kids are in-between, with their own series name?

Uh uh.

Didn’t feel right.  And why should it?

The seven novellas, are part and parcel of the family’s stay in Paris.

Slumming in Paris is the series of the family’s visit in the City of Light.

The kids arrival, stay, and departure, are a sub-series within the larger series.  Plain and simple.

I think maybe only writers, publishers, and over-organizers even bother with that being a problem, or not “standard” or, as Simone, the twelve year old would say, “Whatever.”

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The Solution

So then, how to delineate this, in a title?

The answer was looking back smiling at me from my file folder names.

Organically, all these novellas are grouped under “Slumming Paris.”  Within that folder, were the names of what went on in the particular novella, (paraphrasing) stuff with boys & girls in Paris, the Champs-Elysees, etc.

I even already had the sub-series files sub-named : “Slumming in Paris Part Three, With the Children – Boys & Girls in Paris” and “Slumming in Paris,Part One, Arthur & Gricinda.”

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Benefits

• Did I mention I was spending a lot of time figuring out what was the “right” way to title all this? 😉
• I can use one cover, change the “Part” number.
• Reader knows instantly this is one extended story line, and it has something to do with Paris
• No confusion when the story shifts to “Lounging in Austin” or Galveston or Vermont.
• Places imagery and promotions more easily, when desired, on Pa-ree.

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Happy Holidays everyone 🙂

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Other Posts You May Like

Rendezvous, at Place Saint-Michel – a Paris Short Story

Processing My Fiction : Referencing Other Stories Within Your Story, An Example

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namaste´- con dios – god be with you

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