5 tips on writing a series
BY Jessica Bull
25th Mar 2025
Jessica Bull is a historical fiction writer, who studied on our Writing Historical Fiction and Edit & Pitch Your Novel courses in 2021. A Fortune Most Fatal, the second book in the Miss Austen Investigates series, is out now from Penguin Michael Joseph.
Read on to discover Jessica’s advice for writing a series, including insights from her research into the life of Jane Austen and the journey that led to the creation of her historical fiction series.
1. FIND A STORY YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST TELL
I always wanted to be a novelist but, after I had my two daughters, I found it difficult to find time to write and lost some of my confidence. When the pandemic happened in 2020, I turned to my love of Austen for comfort, and it was realising how hard she struggled to get published that encouraged me to start writing fiction again after a hiatus of 10 years. I felt I had a vivid impression of Austen’s character, and I really wanted to portray the vibrant, witty and joyfully irreverent woman I believe she was. I was also compelled to tell her story because it’s tempting to conflate Austen with her more privileged heroines and imagine her path to success was easy, whereas the truth is far more inspiring.
2. WRITE, EVEN WHEN YOU DON’T WANT TO
I don’t think many of us can afford to wait until the mood strikes before we sit down and write. There are so many demands on our time, we must take the opportunity whenever we can. If I’m not feeling the creative urge, I trick myself by committing to a sixty-minute session. Often, by the time the hour has passed, I’ve found my rhythm and don’t want to stop. For, as Austen put it in a letter to her sister Cassandra, October 1813:
'I am not at all in a humour for writing; I must write on till I am.'
3. HAVE FAITH IN YOUR STORY
I always envisaged Miss Austen Investigates as a series, as there was so much that I wanted to say about Austen’s life and work. Before I even started writing the first instalment, I drafted the pitches for all 6 novels I wanted to write (Austen wrote 6, and each of mine are tributes to hers). Then, while I was querying the first, I dived straight into writing the second. Everyone advised me not to do this as, if the first book didn’t sell, it might be construed as a waste of time. But this was the story of my heart, and even if I never received at publishing deal, I’d have found satisfaction in writing it anyway.
4. DEVELOP YOUR MAIN CHARACTER THROUGHOUT
I wanted to explore Austen as one of my own heroines, and, therefore, my Jane is a young woman (a teenager in the first instalment) learning to navigate the world. Miss Austen Investigates was very much inspired by Northanger Abbey, and, like Catherine Morland, Jane had good instincts, but her naivety and tendency to fling accusations about without proof, caused her some toe-curling mortification.
In A Fortune Most Fatal, she is slightly more mature (twenty-one) and, as this is my tribute to Sense And Sensibility, subject to similar faults as Elinor Dashwood. Throughout the novel, Jane desperately wants to save her brother’s inheritance by resolving the mystery of a young woman claiming to be a foreign princess who has been taken in by his adoptive mother, rather than asking friends and family for help. As Austen put it, ‘pictures of perfection… make me sick’ and it is young Jane, the exuberant author of Lady Susan, rather than the wise and mature narrator of Pride And Prejudice, who takes centre stage in this series.
5. KEEP DRAWING ON NEW SOURCES OF INSPIRATION
As well as Austen’s life and works, this second instalment is very much inspired by the true story of Mary Baker, who, in 1817, persuaded a Gloucester magistrate and his wife that she was Princess Caraboo of the fictional island of Javasu in the Indian Ocean, and that she had been captured by pirates and escaped by jumping overboard in the Bristol Channel and swimming ashore. Her ruse lasted two months before she was discovered as a runaway servant. Everyone who knew Mary said she loved to tell stories. It made me wonder, if Mary had been born into the class of women who were fortunate enough to receive an education, would she be remembered as another Austen?
I can found on Instagram as @jessicabullnovelist and on my website.
A Fortune Most Fatal is out this week!