Urban Fantasy YA Planning

[Riley]

I'm back and in need of more advice! And opinions, don't forget the opinions. Firstly, about my series: The love leads are going to be werecreatures. No doubt about it. But:

• Should I do a different couple each book if I make it into a series? Like J.R. Ward?
• Do I gotta explain how species' came to be? That's too much work!
• Does Tennessee make a good urban fantasy setting?

And here are the species option for my first book's love lead:

• Werewolf
• Werecoyote
• Werefox
• Weretiger

 

[Maelstrom]

werecat?
I don't recall anyone doing werebears now that woulds be real scary .....
Or giant wereowls sneaking up on you at nightEeeee!

Darkwoods is nice but you can do dark city stuff too or evil creatures hiding in the storm drains

Good luck ...remember to write or draw general out line plots so you don't get lost in the text okay?

 

[Southern Discomfort]

Well I think it's always better to write about where you know. Unless you've got extensive amount of money to go on research trips to far away places and are willing to read books about towns and cities you plan to set stories in. I mean when it comes to story telling in RPGs like Vampire: The Masquerade, I look at a lot of what the population centre was going through at the time to make an authentic story and flesh out the area for interaction during the game, and that's just for a story I can play with my mates. You can if you want to make it all up completely but I don't think they tend to work out as well. But I do think it's best to tell stories about places during a time when there is a lot of change happening. Whether that's the city of York during the Viking invasion or Berlin during the rise of fascism. I suggest unless you're really dead set on setting it in the here and now, have a look at when there were important changes happening in Tennessee and set it there because you can then weave in interesting fact with fiction and that'll then make it a better story to read. It can also help you if you get stuck with what to do next in a story, you can involve mortal politics then.

I like a little prequel to my stories. That gives the world a bit of context and then through the story it drip feeds you more out the origins of things. Whether that's in a dream sense, a narrator's frame story or something else. You should plan out what the origins are first before writing it down of course to make sure it's coherent with the story you're going to tell.

And in terms of deciding if you want to do others in other books I guess you need to decide if you're wanting to tell a personal story of one person or groups of people. Groups, I think, tend to require a lot more hard work in a meta plot sense where they're going to cross paths at some point but probably makes it more richer because there's more things going on.

That's my thoughts anyway. I'm not really a writer but that's my novice insight anyway. I don't know if that helps.