Once you add more books than that you’re going to have to accept tradeoffs. Doing it over five books is theoretically feasible. Doing it over a trilogy is a lifetime pursuit. Doing all of this in a single book is a monumental task. Then make all of them converge to the same place and time for the ultimate showdown/last battle/what have you. Oh yeah, also make sure that each group has equal page time and is working toward the same things in the end, although it’s not readily apparent that that’s the case. Add to that the fact that people want each book to have its own complete arc with a climax for each group of characters, all roughly at the same time and also making progress toward the overall story for the series. When you’ve got hundreds or even dozens of characters scattered all across time and space and working toward seemingly different goals things get complicated. In fact every long series that I’ve read has this same problem. Then it cascades in a giant waterfall of uncountable subplots and side characters. Robert Jordan’s series is beautiful, and then it starts to crumble around the edges. The problem is that most of them don’t realize it. Some authors handle complex stories brilliantly.
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