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Probably the biggest question when it comes to writing series is: just how much backstory do you include in subsequent novels?

Again, a piece of advice from one of my grad-school seminars: when trying to figure out how much backstory to include in a series novel, pretend like you never wrote the first book. According to the person leading this workshop, it doesn’t matter if it’s a spinoff, serial, or sequel, a series novel should never contain more backstory than a stand-alone novel.

This made perfect sense to me when I heard it three or four years ago. But that was before I started writing the Ransome Trilogy, a sequel-series. Now that I’m faced with writing the second book in the series (or will be as soon as I get the second book in the Bonneterre Brides series written—or at least under control), I have to wonder if I’ll be able to just pick up and continue the story as if just continuing the first novel, or if when things happen in the second novel that are precipitated by stuff that happens in the first, I’ll need to include a little explanation of why it’s important or of what happened before that leads the character(s) to make a certain decision.

When I first tried reading The DaVinci code many years ago, aside from being frustrated at the poor level of craft in the writing, I became more and more frustrated by the character’s internal dialogue making a continual reference to some event that happened before this book opened. I remember at one point thinking, If this event is so important, why not show it in this book instead of just referring to it as backstory? Well, after I tossed the book aside (around chapter seven or eight), I found out that it’s actually a sequel to Angels & Demons, and the event happened in that book. Did that make me want to read the previous book in the series? No. But that’s more because of the writing and my lack of interest in the second story than anything else. So I don’t know if that incident had any bearing on what happened in The DaVinci Code or not. All I know is that it didn’t work as backstory—because the event was never explained; it was just referenced.

Around the same time, I picked up the second book in a new historical trilogy by an author whose previous historical trilogies I’d enjoyed. I did approach it with a little trepidation, because I hadn’t been happy with the way the first book ended—though it was multiple POV, the entire setup of the first novel pointed toward the girl getting together with the main male POV character. However right at the end, she makes a sudden and surprising choice to marry someone else—a much more minor character whom we as readers were led to believe was the wrong choice for the heroine. So, as I mentioned, I was already a little leery of reading the second book. But when I did finally pick it up to read, I ended up putting it away about a third of the way through—because the first third of the book was mostly devoted to the male POV character (the one not chosen by the heroine in the first book) rehashing mentally everything that happened in the first book, which was supposed to have been five or ten years before. In other words, the first third of the book was all backstory—and it seemed like it was the author’s way of trying to justify the choice she had her heroine make at the end of the first book.

So here are two examples of series—one in which I’d read the first book, the other in which I hadn’t—where backstory didn’t work for me as a reader. Either it was referenced but not explained as being important, or it was rehashed to the point that the story of the second novel couldn’t get its legs under it and take off.

As with everything in writing, there must be a balance—and that’s where that piece of advice I mentioned above comes in.

When we’re reading a stand-alone novel, we as readers know that there’s been stuff that happened to the characters before the story started that will impact what they do and say within the structure of the novel we’re reading. That’s how we need to approach writing subsequent books in series. Yes, this time we have actually written what comes before. However, we cannot guarantee that anyone will have read that. So we need to treat it the way we treat all of the stuff we wouldn’t include in a stand-alone.

With sequel series, this is much harder done than in the others—especially when it’s a series like Lord of the Rings, where what happens in subsequent books is predicated by what happened in previous books. But as mentioned before, there will always be some series that must be read in order and in full to really be able to understand what’s going on. These are a harder sell for writers; if the first book doesn’t do well, that pretty much guarantees the subsequent novels won’t do well. However, if a sequel series is written so that each could be read apart from the others—while making the reader want to know what happened before and what’s going to happen next—then it’s going to be much more attractive to editors. Because, if the second novel in the trilogy takes off in a big way, it’s much more likely that sales of the first book will increase, and it will create increased demand for the third book. And The DaVinci Code is a prime example of how series books can become popular out of order.

For Discussion:
What does “pretend like you never wrote the first book” mean to you? What are some examples of series books you’ve read that do a good job at weaving the stories together with backstory? What are some that didn’t work quite so well?

Before we can consider how we move on into a second, third, or sixteenth book in our series, we need to be able to successfully end the first book. The advice that most editors and agents will give is that, in the CBA especially, while editors like to look at series—to know that an author they’re about to invest in has more than one novel in them—they aren’t necessarily going to immediately dive into purchasing a seven-book series from an unproven author. Their advice: make your books read like stand-alone novels, even if it’s a continuing story throughout. For spinoff and serial novels, this is much easier than it is for sequel series where the main conflict of the story arcs over all of the volumes.

Ending Spinoff novels is just like ending any other stand-alone story. The first novel is a self-contained unit, even though you may have already started planting the seeds for the spinoff story of a secondary character. What’s important to remember here is that the spinoff series typically features characters who are not POV characters in the originating story. They are usually a secondary character—sometimes even a minor character. Or, if it’s the setting and not a succession of characters (a family, college sorority sisters, coworkers, victims of the same crime) that the series is built around, you must ensure that each successive title, while building on the richness of the stories that came before, is whole and complete in and of itself. While the main characters from the originating novel(s) may come into play in the spinoffs, they are no longer POV characters and any role they play in the spinoff should be minor, or else you have a sequel or a serial and not a spinoff. However, spinoffs can be tied together by having a continuing minor subplot thread through all of them—such as Meredith, in Menu for Romance working with Anne (heroine of Stand-In Groom) to plan Anne’s wedding. Or the continuing story of Jennifer’s cancer in the O’Malley series—a seemingly minor subplot which doesn’t have to be known by the reader to enjoy the books individually, but which actually sets in motion the events of the final book in the series.

Ending Serial novels is very much like spinoffs and stand-alones: hardly anything is left hanging at the end . . . though there may be a thread or two left dangling—but no major cliffhangers. The questions that could remain at the end of a serial novel would be along the lines of a continuing will-they-or-won’t-they relationship between the heroine (Stephanie Plum) and a recurring male character (Joe Morelli). The POV character is going to have some kind of job or life-situation that continually puts them in series of conflicts—solving mysteries, chasing bail-jumpers, becoming mired in political intrigue, etc. Many times, serials will feature an “arch-nemesis” such as Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes serials or the Nazis in the original Indiana Jones movies. It is someone or something that the hero will come up against time and time again, and, though each book will end with a victory for the hero and a satisfying ending, there may be a stalemate between the hero and his arch-nemesis that will come to a conclusion only with the end of the series. The arch-nemesis does not always appear in every story—or, as in the case of the Indiana Jones films, it is an amorphous enemy/society against which the fight will be continual, with different faces put on it in each successive story—which keeps it from being a Sequel.

Ending Sequel novels may be the hardest skill a writer ever acquires. Of course, the final book in the series will be least difficult, as you’re finally wrapping up all of the threads/plots/conflicts you’ve created throughout the series. But when ending the first and middle books, you must find a balance between giving the reader a satisfying climax, resolution, and denouement, and keeping some questions unanswered and conflicts unresolved so that they’re anxious to read the next installment. In fact, many sequel-series writers will say that they wrote the ending of the final book at the very beginning of the writing process—some even before they began the first book. The important thing when writing a sequel series is to figure out the entire story from beginning to end, then determine the main events that can become the climaxes of each of the novels in the series. What is going to happen to your characters before they can get to the ultimate resolution? Stories centered around a war are easiest to use as examples. Which important battles must the soldier-hero survive and what atrocities at home must the heroine make it through before the two can finally come together at the end? Sequel series typically feature more than just two POV characters, and definitely more than one plot. There should be multiple subplots. The main plot of the novel is your over-arching throughline. It is the story of the entire series. Your subplots are those which drive the narrative of each individual novel. For example, in my Ransome trilogy (historical romance), the over-arching question posed in the first novel is, “Will William and Julia fall in love and have a happily-ever-after ending?” Now, by the end of the first book, they’ve gotten married. Both have also realized they love the other—though have not admitted it to each other. However, there are enough threads still hanging, and hints at conflicts to come—in addition to a subplot left hanging wide open with another POV character—to set up the action of the second and third novels. But there is satisfaction in the ending. They’ve fallen in love and now they’re married and getting ready to embark on the next leg of the adventure, where the hanging subplot will take center stage and drive the narrative of book 2.

For Discussion:
How much closure do you want at the end of a series novel? How much do you think can be left hanging and how much needs to be concluded? What will make you want to read the next book in a spinoff series? a serial series? a sequel series?