Do You Prefer Tetralogy or Quadrilogy?

Both terms refer to a series of four books, and it seems like that might be where our ghost story is headed.

Our writing output so far consists of three trilogies. A trilogy of trilogies, if you will. It’s all very tidy. But now that the prose outline for our spectral saga is nearing completion we’re faced with a story that seems to want to break neatly into four pieces. And we’re not sure how we feel about that.

Our main work sessions are currently devoted to editing the Science Novels. Since we’re only brainstorming this spooky bad boy part-time, we still have a lot of detail to fill in, but the parts that we do know (and are quite attached to) include four momentous events. The sort of events that would make resounding, satisfying finales. It’s certainly possible that one of them could be adjusted and made into a tentpole moment, the sort of mini-climax that shows up in the middle of a novel to keep readers on the edge of their seats, but we’re hesitant to jump right to that.

We’re still exploring the story and interrogating the secondary characters for exciting backstories. This new story world is expansive and the last thing we want to do is hem ourselves in prematurely. For now we’ll keep talking during our nightly dog walks, and keep expanding everything. By the time we’re ready to make this project our main focus, we’ll have oceans of material to work with. At that point we’ll be better situated to tell whether there’s enough material to fill the spaces between those four big events and make our first Tetra/Quadrilogy.

Let’s hope we don’t have to figure out the word for a series of five.