Young Writers Society

What do you think of my book series layout?

Overall- Well overall its about 13 dragon guardians who are are descended from dragons and are chosen to protect their world(called Eythiran).

1st: 13(prone to change) new dragon guardians are chosen to fight off an invasion of infective demon race called The Horde.




2nd: If they are to stand any chance off surviving the final battle against apollyon they must free the elementals and find the dragons who've been missing for well over a thousand years.




3rd: They've finally found the dragons but apollyon has gathered the help of a hellknight army led by the invincible Eternal Kolasi who are marching to the World Tree, set on ripping the heart out of the world.




4th: The guardians have finally slayed Apollyon and his army but not without a terrible cost, slaying him released the 4 oldest beings in the Universe and known as the 4 horsemen. The only one with the knowledge of how to beat them has been dead since the first Cataclysm and so the guardians travel through the world within a world 'Gehenna'(aka hell) and try to find him.




5th: This is the final battle they've all been training for and the guardians are on the losing side, with their home of Eythiran destroyed they must go into The Fringe(ie spiritworld) and activate the heart of the universe and gain help from the one who created all; The Source




Please let me know what you think and any advice you might have

Dragons sound fun. I do have some advice, though.

Tip 1: Make your first book self contained.

Long, epic series— even trilogies— sometimes don't get printed in full. This is especially true if you're a new author. Publishing companies can and will pull the plug on a series that isn't selling, because they need to stay relatively profitable in order to survive. So even though you have 5 books planned, if you don't have a self contained first book, your story is very risky for publishers.

Tip 2: Make sure your conflict can carry a whole book.

Right now, this looks like a single book outline instead of a series outline, just because there's not enough information on what else is happening. Is there some sort of epic battle in the first book? Is there a conflict that threatens to tear them apart? Because I read "pick" and go "okay, that's... two chapters? Three? Where's the rest of it?"

Everything you have flows very well together, but it flows too well together. This looks like a single novel outline, maybe two or three at most (1-3 as one novel, 4-5 as another; the only way I could see 3 is if the second one got way more fleshed out and the third stood alone. Even then, that's still 1-2, 3, 4-5). The only thing that hints at it being a full 5 novel series is the number of characters, but if that's the only reason, I'd trim back the characters so the plot isn't artificially fluffy.

Tip 3: Make sure you have people in there.

People read stories for the characters. The fact you have next to nothing about the actual 13 in here makes me hesitate to pick it up, because every time I've looked at an epic, it's always been the character conflict that pulls me through. I'm not interested in politics— and I'm a political fantasy writer. I like people, and I like finding out how they react to being thrown into such a huge conflict.

And you have so much potential for lots and lots and lots of character conflict— 13 people as a main cast is pretty giant (almost too big; this is me speaking as somebody who has 25 characters at least in my current novel, with seven as "major players." The number's ever-increasing and it's hard to include that many people), so the fact I don't have characters or dynamics to latch onto is a pretty big turn off for me.

All in all, this has potential, but it's very sparse and doesn't give me much to go on in terms of actual critique. If you flesh it out, then it'll be easier to help you.