Plotting a novel series involves planning longer character and story arcs and creating a fictional world that will sustain multiple books. Your readers should want to keep reading about your world and your characters across multiple books and, ideally, many years. Here are some ways you can encourage this response in your writing:
Make sure that your world and your characters are well-developed. Give your readers a story that they can’t put down, and avoid clichés. Series are a popular format in several genres (including fantasy, historical and crime fiction) but the general rules for keeping readers involved are the same.
When you set out to write your series, try to decide beforehand whether you want it to read as a single multi-volume novel or if each book will be more self-contained. The first is more common in fantasy series while mystery series are generally always self-contained. Urban fantasy and paranormal romance series may combine elements of both the multi-volume novel and the standalone series. Historical series such as the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brien have standalone plots within a larger framework. In those books, the larger framework is the story of the friendship between the two main characters and the ascent of the main character Aubrey through the ranks of the Royal Navy. Other books might have a larger framework with a stronger narrative drive throughout.
Once you have decided what type of series you will be writing, you will then need to think about your world and your characters.
Develop an authentic-feeling world
No matter what kind of story you are writing, you will need to develop the world in which your story happens. This is just as true if you are writing a contemporary mystery series as it is if your story is in an invented fantasy or science fiction world. The difference is that you will need to do more world-building from a practical standpoint for science fiction or fantasy because you will need to figure out the underpinnings of how everything from the politics to the culture to the climate works. If you are writing an urban fantasy novel, you will have the challenge of integrating a fantasy world with the real world as Charlaine Harris does in her Southern Vampire Mysteries series in which vampires are real and the world knows about them. For historical fiction, you will need to do a good deal of research.
However, you will also need to think about the world of your novel even if it is set in our known one. Consider how different a story set among wealthy New Englanders will be from one set among Cuban immigrant families in Florida versus one set in rural Scotland or the Australian outback. Each of these worlds has its own particularities of culture, and the more developed these worlds are, and the more authentic they feel, the more your reader will become immersed in them.
Develop your characters
Some of the most enduring and beloved characters in literature have come from series. Miss Marple, Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter and Nancy Drew are just a few of the most famous series characters. Your characters don’t necessarily have to be likeable — after all, hard-boiled crime fiction has a long tradition of anti-heroes who are ethically complex and not always likeable — but they do need to be engaging. You have the leisure to develop your character over the course of the series, but the character needs to be compelling from the first book. Avoid the urge to include too much backstory: work on making your character interesting and relatable in the here and now. If you think about the characters mentioned above, we associate them all with certain strong traits such as Frodo’s courage and longing for adventure or Miss Marple’s keen intelligence and observations.
Changing your characters and your world
Whether you are writing a series of stand-alone novels or a multi-volume novel as a series, your characters need to change over the course of the series, and the world may change as well depending on the length of the series and the type of storytelling you are doing. Here are some ways your characters might change:
- Idealistic characters may grow more cynical while cynics might become more trusting.
- It is common for characters to become more courageous and more skilled over the course of a series and to learn more about themselves and their abilities. Think about how you might approach this well-worn scheme with original flair.
- Change is not always an upward trajectory. If you are writing a particularly dark series such as hard-boiled crime or fantasy like George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, your character may over time turn into a brutal killer or unravel in some other way.
The world around the characters might change as well:
- One change may be simply the passing of time. Think about how you will handle your characters’ aging. Agatha Christie wrote about Hercule Poirot for decades up to his death and chronicled his aging and the changes of the world around him. On the other hand, Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Milhone mysteries that she began writing in the 1980s, made a conscious choice to keep the books set in the 1980s.
- In fantasy, science fiction and historical fiction, the actions of the characters may change the world particularly significantly. You will need to consider the ramifications of this change in your world-building.
- Keep in mind that changing the world the character inhabits does not necessarily mean that a literal world-altering event has occurred. A change in the character’s world may simply mean a change in the milieu the character inhabits.
Keep them reading
Extending tension throughout a series is one way to keep readers engrossed. Your approach will differ depending on whether you are writing a multi-volume novel or a series of standalone novels. With a standalone series such as a detective series, to some extent you have to count on your readers’ affection for the characters and world you have created to keep them coming back since they generally won’t thank you for ending a mystery on a cliffhanger. If you have a large story arc that you are telling over the course of the series, you might consider whether or not you want to end your book on a cliffhanger. This might mean that your novel may diverge from a traditional structure in which you offer resolution at the end, or you might resolve the main problem of the novel and introduce the main conflict of the next novel near the end to play on readers’ curiosity.
You will need to think carefully about creating multiple conflicts across multiple novels with multiple characters. It is important that you resolve some conflicts and offer some revelations along the way: readers become frustrated if you keep introducing more questions without answering any of them. Be sure that your conflicts and arcs that stretch across multiple novels are robust enough to do so.
Avoid series-writing clichés
Plotting a novel series requires avoiding common fiction clichés. Here are some of the most common:
- “The chosen one” is a cliché that is common to fantasy novels in which the protagonist is chosen for some special destiny that was previously unknown to them.
- Pseudo-medieval European fantasy worlds can be cliché in fantasy fiction. Look to other traditions for inspiration or different eras as China Mieville does in Perdido Street Station, a fantasy set in a kind of early-industrial society that includes weird insect-like creatures.
- Overstaying your welcome is a problem across all genres. A series should reach a natural end at some point. When your readers love the books and they are selling, it can be tempting to keep going, but you want to leave them wanting more. You can always start a new series and bring fans over to that one.
- Sometimes, over the course of a series, the protagonist becomes just too capable. Watch out for the character that turns into a kind of wish-fulfilment figure who can do anything. Think about a series of thriller novels about a spy or special forces character who over the course of the novels becomes almost invincible with networks in every country, the ability to speak multiple languages and amazing physical prowess. It can be tricky to keep giving your series’ central character challenges to overcome and also keep that character believable.
Writing novel series offers some unique challenges for writers. The world and characters must be developed enough and the story arcs gripping enough to sustain multiple novels. However, writers who do so and avoid clichés stand the best chance of building loyal, interested audiences.
What series have you found particularly compelling, and what elements of that series made you want to keep reading about that world and those characters?
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