“Warriors” Author Erin Hunter Shares 10 Behind-The-Scenes Stories About Creating The Series

Something that stuck out to me is the sheer complexity of the plot. Did you know how a series would end from the start, or did the plot develop as the books were written?

Vicky: I am 100% a planner! I don’t write the first line until I know exactly what will happen in each scene, what the characters will do, say, and feel, and where the story will be on the very last page. 

Of course, the way that I work is based entirely on my enthusiasm for a hyper-detailed storyline. I didn’t write any of the main series books myself. I had my brilliant co-authors, Kate Cary and Cherith Baldry, to transform my storylines — which were about 30,000 words long, half the length of the finished book — into glorious first drafts. 

Kate and Cherith took it in turns to write the books. They would send their manuscripts back to me for editing and tweaking in order to make them sound perfectly “Erin,” and to tell the story that I had in my imagination at the very beginning.

Even for the books that I wrote on my own — the Special Editions and several of the novellas — I always started with a detailed synopsis. I don’t like surprises!