Trilogies are a holy grail in storytelling. They make any story larger and grander, and can create a real connection over time between the reader and the central characers. I’m in the process of writing my own trilogy, so I thought I’d do some digging into what makes trilogies work. I found a bunch of great advice on a bunch of other blogs, so I thought I’d share my findings with you, along with some of my own observations from writing my own trilogy.
- The first part of the story must be able to stand on its own merits. The Master & Commander series of books are quite popular, but when adapted for screen, never made it past the first movie (despite the movie being pretty damned good and making a lot of money). The lesson is that you cannot assume that your storyarc will make it to book two. Make sure your first story is strong and well-told and can work as a standalone story.
- Part two takes everything that worked about part one and ramps everything up, the stakes are higher, the character swings are bolder, and the consequences more severe. And part three is the closure where story arcs conclude and loose ends are tied up.
- Throughout the stories, there have to be details, thematic or otherwise, that tie the three stories together. Ideally, your reader should be able to sit and go through all three stories in one sitting and feel that they have read one complete narrative.
- To piggyback off of point one: each part of the trilogy has to work as a self-contained story within itself while at the same time advancing the overall narrative. You never know which story will be somebody’s jumping-on point, so you want to make sure they get a complete story in that one instance, whether they are reading part one or part three. At the same time, the most successful trilogies have a narrative thread that develops over the course of the series. It could be a plot arc or a character development arc, or even a setting/environmental arc. I’m a huge James Bond fan, and I love each of its 25+ movies, but the stories pitting him against Spectre and Ernst Starvo Blofeld resonate the most with me because the rivalry between the two is built and developed over the course of multiple stories (i.e. Dr, No through Diamonds are Forever was an excellent build, as was Casino Royale through Spectre). Likewise, the original Foundation Trilogy chronicled the fall of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the Foundation over the course of many generations.
For me, a good trilogy is a prime example of the 3 act rule that I spoke of in earlier posts, just in a bigger package and working at a Meta level. To review, Magic: The Gathering Head of R&D Mark Rosewater (who also wrote episodes of Roseanne) described the process in three steps: 1) get your protagonist stuck up a tree. 2) throw rocks at them. 3) get your character down from the tree. This works withn the confines of a regular story, but it also works within a trilogy. The first story gets your character stuck up the tree. Even within your protagonist’s resolution of the story’s central plot, there are seeds planted which show that the greater problem has not been solved yet. Think Star Wars: yes, the Death Star was destroyed, but the Empire still rules the galaxy, and the big bad (Darth Vader) was still out there to create havoc in a future movie. The second story raises the stakes and truly puts the heroes in jeopardy of not completing their overall goal; like in Empire Strikes Back, where Luke and Company were dealt devastating blows by Vader, Palpatine and the Empire and the only central plot of the story was whether our heroes could survive it all and make it to the end of the movie. And the third story ties everything together and resolves everything, like in Return of the Jedi where Luke finally redeems his father and destroys the leader of the Empire…along with another Death Star.
There are a lot of things to keep in mind if you are planning a trilogy, but then there are added challenges if a story you originally hadn’t intended on expanding organically develops into something that needs more installments. Maybe your standalone story is so successful that your fans of your publisher demand a follow-up or two. Or maybe you have so much going on in your sequel that you can’t contain it all in one book. In those instances, the best thing to do is to do a deep dive into the world you created in book one. Pick out as many aspects of the settings, plots, subplots and characters that could be explored, and find an overall theme you can build an overarching narrative from that can carry multiple books.
So if you are hankering for a good narrative challenge, try taking one of your stories and expanding it into a 3-part saga. You might discover some new things about your world that will only serve to enhance your original idea.
