Writing Regional English Sagas
By Janet Woods
Page 2
Researching helped me discover the county I was born and grew up in. It was a very different place to the one I thought it knew. My birthplace had a richer and more varied history than I’d ever imagined. It began to release many ideas for stories, as if I was suddenly being handed a gift.
There are problems in writing sequel books. Because you know the history of your characters, you feel the need to tell the readers, and there’s a temptation to dump blocks of flashback into the sequel story at every opportunity. As my editor wisely advised, “This is a new story, there’s no need to keep harking on about the heroine’s background. Edit out, unless flashback is on a ‘reader needs to be informed’ basis. Editing-out removed most of the first chapter, and I learned a valuable lesson from that.
Endings to sagas can be a problem too. If there are to be a sequel books it’s easy to leave the conclusion hanging and threads untied. This can leave the reader feeling cheated, because she’s forced to buy the next book to find out what happens next. I strongly believe that all story lines should be resolved satisfactorily in each book. That’s not to say the thread must be irrevocably broken. It can be resolved, but carried on in some way for the next book. It would be too complicated to explore ways and means of doing this here, but I prefer a reader to be left feeling satisfied and on an upbeat note. Each book in a saga should stand alone and read as a complete story by itself, without having to be propped up by books on either side.
When Simon and Schuster UK added me to their publishing list, my editor there commented that she liked the “earthy tone,” of my sagas. I don’t try to be earthy, in particular, but I do try and be realistic. My aim is to write rounded characters with depth and emotional motivation and to create the best story I can. To achieve this I believe I should provide an honest and well researched environment for them to live in.
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