Beginning next week, I’ll be starting a new series, so I want to collect as many questions as I can ahead of time to make sure I research all of the areas of interest.
Writing Series Novels: As a follow-up to the series I did on Endings, this series will go more deeply into how much to review in a sequel or a follow-up—is it backstory, flashback, or even necessary? How many threads can you leave hanging at the end vs. how much should be wrapped up? Can you introduce the POV of the main character of a second/spinoff novel if they’re not a POV character in the original? Etc.
Now, what haven’t I mentioned that y’all would like to see covered in this series?
6 responses so far ↓
PatriciaW // Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 10:32 am
I was just thinking about this. I’m reading a book that shares characters and setting with a prior book by the same author. Yet, it’s not considered a series. Why not? The main characters here are completely new. The prior main characters are secondary here, rarely seen.
What makes a series a series?
Jennifer // Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 11:31 am
I wrote my genre essay on series
Well Children’s Series books. And it dealt with Syndicate series vs. Single author series. (Something I don’t think adults have when they talk about series–that is they don’t have syndicate series…at least I’m not aware of any) It also dealt more with qualities that make good children’s series. I love series. I like to invest in a character though and keep coming back to them, which is why I’ll take a TV show over a movie any day. Week after week I can return to my favorite character and watch them grow.
Kaye Dacus // Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 11:38 am
There are a few continuity series (what they’re called in adult fiction), such as GuidepostsBooks’ Grace Chapel Inn and Mysteries of Sparrow Island series—series in which the publisher came up with the characters/settings/storylines and they contract different (usually well-known) authors to write the titles.
Barbour does something similar with some of their anthologies—four authors will write four novellas based on a central theme.
Georgiana Daniels // Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 2:04 pm
I’d love to know how far to take each character in a series, per book. Is there a rule of thumb that seems to work well in general?
Eileen Astels // Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 8:34 am
This sounds like a good one, too. It seems to me that in the romance genre, series requirements are very loose. They just need some minor relation to one or another of the previous books. That might even only be that the people reside in the same town or are a friend of one of the previous characters, mentioned minimally in the previous novel(s). Makes it so much easier to work with doesn’t it? But is that the best way to hook a reader to the series? I’d like to learn what is needed in the previous book to hook the reader to watch impatiently for the next book in the series.
Are there different requirements set out for the different genres? ie. Is more required for suspense, women’s lit, etc.?
Rachel // Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Maybe something that discusses the differences between a trilogy and a series. The Epic is a trilogy, NOT a series and I’m always very clear on that point. But lots of people, some of my CP’s included, assume that trilogy and series are interchangeable.
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