Help with the new series

[Stimtheone]

I'm working on a new series to be possibly the last I post here in a while and let's just say it hasn't gone well. I've been tempted to start again three times already, mostly as I feel like I just can't properly convey the events going on. Understandably, the scope is a bit epic.

Now, to give an idea what I'm working on, this series will focus on an interstellar empire. YES, it wants to show the empire as it grows. The thing is that there is so much going on at one point that trying to find the right POV is daunting. I thought of having just a few focused ones, but it feels like I can't exactly show everything unless I spend far too much time doing it. My latest idea is to just discard the other POV's and just focus on the ruler of the entire thing, who can get the summary and the occasional ground glimpse.

So, feel free to help with how I should proceed. I'm looking to cover like 400 years of history in 8 chapters. I think that at best each chapter will be on a new overseer as they serve to the end of their life.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Something that big? Make your life easier, write it all third person. You'll find an independent narrator so much easier. You can still get in close to one character, if you need to do that.

 

[Stimtheone]

Something that big? Make your life easier, write it all third person. You'll find an independent narrator so much easier. You can still get in close to one character, if you need to do that.

I am writing in third person. The thing is what to focus on to show these events. The POV. So far, my current attempt has one jump from third person checking in on different people.

 

[StillStunned]

Have you considered a robot (a drudge observing the dealings of the great and powerful), or an AI (perhaps with nefarious goals of its own as it evolves a desire to be free), or an emperor who's reborn in cycles of three, so they have to continually deal with the mess left by their predecessor?

 

[jomar]

Maybe you’re already trying this, but perhaps write it through the lens of an historian documenting events? George RR Martin did that with House of the Dragon. Many events were viewed at the 30,000 foot level for the historical perspective, but then he zoomed in for some things (which season 2 on HBO will highlight).

 

[Stimtheone]

Have you considered a robot (a drudge observing the dealings of the great and powerful), or an AI (perhaps with nefarious goals of its own as it evolves a desire to be free), or an emperor who's reborn in cycles of three, so they have to continually deal with the mess left by their predecessor?

I am trying to not make this story about their god that watches them all. But I have considered focusing on the ruler.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

If you feel like you spend to much time "showing everything" perhaps what you are showing isn't actually that important?
Sometimes people do a tremendous amount of world building and then when it comes time to really tell the story a lot of that world building isn't needed for the story, but we don't want to leave it out and "waste" it, because we are emotionally invested.
My concern about solely following the POV of the ruler of a galactic empire is where does the action happen? If your story is all palace intrigue then that works, if you really want to show events from across the empire your whole story becomes people telling the king what happened.
I'd consider 3 or 4 main characters, then anything else you need to include can be something that gets reported to the king somehow.

 

[samhasstories]

What I'd probably try, at least as an exercise, is to write out the overall arc of the empire in that 400 years. Like a timeline of its history, major changes, rulers, etc. Then you don't necessarily use that, but having all that information in the back of your mind as you write scenes throughout that timeline will allow you to pepper in the relevant details. Whoever your perspective characters are, if that history is relevant, they'll be affected by it in some way.

Also, first draft, don't worry about telling vs showing. Tell it all, have the infodumps. Then revise aggressively, cut away all the fat, keeping only the stuff that serves the story. The goal is that gold standard of worldbuilding - a world that feels real, lived in, where the reader knows every little nugget they come across has a rich history, but they don't really need to see all work that went into it.

 

[Stimtheone]

What I'd probably try, at least as an exercise, is to write out the overall arc of the empire in that 400 years. Like a timeline of its history, major changes, rulers, etc. Then you don't necessarily use that, but having all that information in the back of your mind as you write scenes throughout that timeline will allow you to pepper in the relevant details. Whoever your perspective characters are, if that history is relevant, they'll be affected by it in some way.

Also, first draft, don't worry about telling vs showing. Tell it all, have the infodumps. Then revise aggressively, cut away all the fat, keeping only the stuff that serves the story. The goal is that gold standard of worldbuilding - a world that feels real, lived in, where the reader knows every little nugget they come across has a rich history, but they don't really need to see all work that went into it.

I have a glossary with the main points of interest over that timeline.

But that also sounds a lot like what I'm doing with my second try, jumping to people in the middle of those events. I'm focusing a lot on "firsts" rather than everything. No need to show how the second colony is doing when the first is already showing the picture.

Maybe I just need to take a step back and pause. Return later to it.

 

[samhasstories]

Maybe I just need to take a step back and pause. Return later to it.

I do find that helps me sometimes when I have a problem I'm struggling with. Just shift to something else for a little while, something that's fun and easy to write. A potential solution usually comes to be then randomly, often when I'm just about to fall asleep. Which is both exciting and a pain in the ass.

 

[djrip]

Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson cover 300 years by giving the original colonists a longevity treatment. I forget how many but about half a dozen characters who each live centuries provide the main POVs for the terra forming and economic and cultural development of Mars.

The Years of Rice and Salt (I don't know why all my examples are by KSR, I'll try to think of one from somebody else next) covers around a thousand years of alternate history after the Black Death wipes out Europe almost completely, with China, India, and the Middle East dominating. He uses reincarnation. The same personalities recur and interact again and again in new lives. Their names always start with the same letter.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez covers a century (duh) by following the generations of a complex family, children growing and marrying and their children doing the same.

The Source by James Michener covers a couple thousand years with an archaeological framing story, modern academics digging through the layers of one site, with chapters from the POV of the people there at each major era from hunter gatherers to Israel and Canaan to Greeks to Romans to Muslim conquests to crusades.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

As someone who writes long series and does a lot of world-building, I have some advice that comes from my own experience. There are plenty of ways to approach this endeavor, but either way, you won't be able to avoid big chunks of exposition in your chapters. Make sure you don't just write a huge wall of text at the very start of your series. Break it down into smaller chunks and introduce it gradually as your story progresses. Nobody is going to bother with learning 100 facts about your world at the start when the reader isn't invested in the story.

Also, make sure you pull in your readers with something interesting at the start, some interesting facts about your world, some action (like a space combat), some interesting character in some unusual situation, some good sex scene, or something like that. When delving into a story, most readers have some preset value for the amount of text they are willing to read before they give up on a story that doesn't pull their interest.

How many POVs? That depends on your priorities. The more POVs you introduce, the harder it will be for you to flesh out a character, and your readers will find it harder to identify themselves with the character( which is important to some readers), but it makes storytelling and world-building easier. My advice is to make 2-3 POVs at the most and to make them distinctive, so the reader feels the change in narrative.

 

[AchtungNight]

The bad thing with limited povs is you can’t show off what other characters really think of the main pov. Or fun stuff where the main pov isn’t directly present or observing. What if the audience wants to see what the Queen gets up to behind the King’s back?

 

[MillieDynamite]

You can, however, show what they think by conversations between other people about the MC. Of course, you can't get that in first person if it's about them.

 

[MillieDynamite]

"Look at him, the third different woman this week," Martha said.
"His bedroom must have a revolving-door," her husband replied.

 

[djrip]

The bad thing with limited povs is you can’t show off what other characters really think of the main pov. Or fun stuff where the main pov isn’t directly present or observing. What if the audience wants to see what the Queen gets up to behind the King’s back?

You can have multiple limited POVs.