WRITING Trilogies — classic and modern (Part 1)
In Part 1 of this new series, David Barker
looks at the origins of the trilogy, with some classic examples as well as recent three-book series in children’s publishing.
Three, as they say, is the magic number.
Fairytales are
full of references to the number three – Goldilocks And The Three Bears; The
Three Little Pigs; Three Billy Goats Gruff, to name a few. The Genie of the
Lamp grants how many wishes? The plot of Rumpelstiltskin features three feats
of spinning and three days to guess his name.
But what about a collection of three related stories?
Trilogies have been around since the ancient Greeks performed a set of three plays at the Dionysia festivals. In the nineteenth century the three-volume novel was a common form of publication for commercial reasons, though it tended
to be a single, very long story split into three parts.
Perhaps the most famous example of a trilogy is The Lord of The Rings by JRR Tolkien. You might be surprised to learn that Tolkien originally wrote it as a single volume with the aim of it being published alongside The Silmarillion. But Unwin & Allen insisted on splitting up The Lord of The Rings into three parts, publishing each separately – and ignoring The Silmarillion for many years.
Not a bad decision in hindsight.
The fantasy genre has lent itself to trilogies ever since perhaps because all that worldbuilding needs time to develop. I devoured Lord of the Rings as a child as well as other fantasy trilogies such as Stephen Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and The Riftwar Saga by Raymond Feist. As a writer and reader we want to find somewhere new, but then travel back to explore it some more with characters we’ve learnt to love, to see how they react in different situations.
In children’s literature His Dark Materials by Philip
Pullman carried on that tradition to award-winning effect in the second half of
the 1990s. The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins helped propel a wave of interest
in Young Adult fiction at the start of the 21st century. And it proved that
trilogies can work for sci-fi/dystopia just as much as for fantasy.
We’ve had an abundance of excellent examples of fantasy-focused trilogies for middle-grade readers in recent years.
Perhaps
closest in form to Lord of the Rings is the brilliant Podkin One-Ear trilogy by Kieran
Larwood. Jenny McLachan’s wonderful Land of Roar trilogy features a fantasy
world travelled to via a fold-up camp bed and a frightening scarecrow called
Crowky. In The Last Wild trilogy Piers Torday gives us a hugely inventive
adventure about the interaction between humanity and the natural world. And in the
Beetle Boy trilogy by MG Leonard, (one of my daughter’s favourites), young
Darkus befriends a giant beetle while battling the evil Lucretia Cutter. Tom
Fletcher’s debut book, The Christmasaurus, began a trilogy of adventures for
the titular dinosaur and a young boy called William Trundle.
I’m sure there are plenty of other examples out there I could have mentioned and some current series that will become trilogies in the fullness of time.
What are some of your favourite trilogies either out now or
from your childhood? Do let me know in the comments below.
Of course, many children’s series run to more than three
books. Five in the fantastic Eerie-on-Sea series by Thomas Taylor. Six for Rick
Riordan’s Percy Jackson, (plus plenty of spin-off books). Seven for Harry Potter
and The Chronicles of Narnia. Twelve adventures for Hiccup in the brilliant How
To Train Your Dragon books by Cressida Cowell, (another daughter favourite).
Thirteen for Lemony Snicket. Twenty-one for The Famous Five… I could go on!
Recent debut authors, Philip Kavvadias and Thomas Leeds, with series originally planned to be much longer, tell me they have both been drawn towards three books in the end. There must be something innately appealing to writers and readers about that magic number. My first book, Blue Gold, was intended as a standalone thriller but when my publisher asked for another I realised the character arcs needed a third story to complete their journey. And so two become three. There must be something that makes that number special.
So that's what these articles will focus on – the self-contained series that is a trilogy. Of course, I’ve split the discussion into three parts!
In part two I’ll share some of my own experiences of writing trilogies and look at how trilogies are plotted, what works well and what doesn’t.
See you next time.
*Header Image: Tita Berredo & Ell Rose
*Other images courtesy of my bookshelves
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David Barker has been writing stories for over 10 years, after many years working as an
economist. A graduate of the Faber Academy, he has written adventure novels for
adults (The Gaia trilogy, Bloodhound Books) and for children (the London
Falling series, Tiny Tree). He has also written scripts for pantomimes
(published through Lazy Bee Scripts) and has two short stories included in
anthologies.
You can find more about David and his writing on his website, on X (Twitter), Facebook or Insta.
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