Who hasn’t finished the latest installment in a favorite series and then hurried over to the author’s website: Will there be a new book? Is the author actually working on it? When can I read it?
I felt the same way — until I was the author and understood how uncertain the publishing industry is and how much time and effort it takes to produce a novel.
Standalones vs. Series
Standalones offer a complete experience, with a beginning, a middle and an end. No questions to be resolved. No lingering plot threads. At the end, you close the book and move on to something new.
A series provides a very different emotional experience. Reading each book feels a little like revisiting old friends in a familiar community. But if you write a series, how can you keep each book fresh while maintaining the familiarity readers crave? I’d like to propose four simple but powerful ways to keep readers reading.
Introduce Story Questions that Span More Than One Book
Each book in the series will have its own plot that will be concluded by the end. But if you’re writing a series, it’s smart to introduce story questions that will take more than one book to answer. Let’s say you plan to write a series of six books. One overarching story question might be answered in Book 3. Another is posed in Book 2 and resolved in Book 5. In my Kate Hamilton Mystery series, I’ve included several story questions that span multiple books. Kate and Tom’s romance, for example, was concluded in Mistletoe and Murder, Book 4.5, when they made it to the altar (barely). On the other hand, Kate’s rocky relationship with her mother-in-law, Liz Mallory, is an ongoing question that began in Book 2 and is still unresolved. Now, in Book 6, Liz is on a cruise with a girlfriend and writes home to tell Kate and Tom she’s fallen in love. Is this man trustworthy or is he after Liz’s inheritance? Will he bring Kate and Liz together at last — or will he disrupt their relationship further? I don’t know. I haven’t met him yet.
C. S. Harris, author of the Sebastian St. Cyr historical mysteries, said, “The more questions you can raise in your readers’ minds, the better.” Exactly — and some of those question should take more than one book to answer.
Deepen the Emotional Lives of Your Characters
One of the reasons readers love reading a series is watching the main character(s) learn and grow over the course of several books — as people do in real life.
Give your protagonist a fear, a flaw, or a failing — something from her past that crops up at the worst possible moment. How will she react when tested? Charles Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge suffers from PTSD and hears the inner voice of a young Scottish soldier he was forced to execute on the battlefield. Will Rutledge give in to his demons and spiral into madness, or will he overcome them? Readers identify with imperfection and will be rooting for your character.
Give your main character a secret. In the Kate Hamilton Mysteries, Kate has never shared with anyone the fact that sometimes precious objects “speak” to her.
Nothing as definite as a word, mind you. Just an impression, of joy or sadness or longing, as if the emotional atmosphere in which an object existed had seeped into the joints and crevices along with the dust and grime [A Dream of Death].
Over the course of several books, Kate’s reaction to these unwanted revelations becomes more intense and harder to disguise. Will she tell DI Tom Mallory? Will he think she’s mad? And how can she explain it to him when she doesn’t understand it herself?
Have a troubling family history or an unresolved romantic past crop up unexpectedly. In M is for Malice, the thirteenth installment of the Kinsey Milhone series, Sue Grafton gives readers an insight, not only into Kinsey’s past relationship with Dietz but also into the maternal relatives Kinsey didn’t know existed. We see Kinsey’s emotional fragility in this book. She must come to terms with the lies she’s always believed — about her family and about herself.
Gradually, over the course of several books, you can mine the depths of your characters’ emotional lives and give your readers additional reasons to care about them.
Elevate a Supporting or Minor Character
Secondary characters are the lifeblood of novels. They support or hinder your main character, serve as foils or mirrors and add contrast and suspense. They move the plot along by dropping clues and/or red herrings. Sometimes they add humor and generally bring the world of the novel to life. “Developing the supporting characters in your mystery novel,” says author Zara Altair [“Beyond the Protagonist: Supporting Characters in Mystery Novels”] is akin to adding hidden trap doors and concealed passageways to a grand mansion of mystery.” I love that.
One way to add freshness and interest to a series is by occasionally elevating a minor character into a major role. In The Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French, the cast is a “daisy chain,” with each new book narrated by a supporting character from a previous volume. Kurt Vonnegut’s recurring minor character Kilgore Trout takes center stage in Timequake. The dress designer Belinda Warbuton-Stoke, Lady Georgina Rannoch’s friend in Rhy Bowen’s Her Royal Spyness series, becomes the major focus in The Last Mrs. Summers.
I’ve done something similar in my own series, not by elevating a minor character into the major role but by bringing one of them to the forefront in each book, using their personal stories and secrets to drive the plot. In A Legacy of Murder, for example, Edmund Foxe, rector of the village church, is a prime suspect and we learn about a scandal he’s kept hidden. The Shadow of Memory revolves around Vivian Bunn’s childhood memories of exploring a vacant house where a horrific crime took place.
Elevating minor characters to major roles adds reader interest and allows the author greater scope for intrigue.
Change the Setting (But Not Too Often)
I was told once that Louise Penny’s fictional village, Three Pines, is so beloved by readers that her publisher advised her to send Gamache elsewhere no more than once in every four books. Did her publisher really say that? I have no idea, but in checking the so-far twenty-one books in the Three Pines series, I can see it is pretty much the case. Penny has moved the major action away from Three Pines only five or possibly six times in twenty-one books (Manoir Bellechasse, Quebec City, Montreal, a monastery in eastern Quebec, Paris).
True or not, I’ve taken that advice to heart. Not counting my first book, which was set in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, I’ve moved Kate’s base of operation away from the village of Long Barston only twice — once to Suffolk’s seacoast and once to Devon. Readers love the familiarity of Long Barston and its residents — the two rival pubs; the antiquities shop where Kate works; Finchley Hall, the church, the tea shop and river walk. But occasionally picking Kate up and dropping her into a new setting adds wonderful complications and the opportunity for the reader to see Kate in an unfamiliar place. Readers will keep reading a series if they are emotionally invested in the characters. That’s the author’s job — to create characters that are authentic and human, to spin out the threads that connect your characters’ inner lives with your readers’ hearts.
