I have written three series and am starting a fourth.  A recent WD (that’s Writer’s Digest for my readers who aren’t authors) article interviews four series writers.  One of the writers is Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus novels; he’s someone I discovered when I was polishing my mystery, crime, and police procedural writing skills.  Unfortunately (and typically?), the interviewer led these four down a few blind alleys, so I can’t recommend this article beyond saying my interest was more in what Ian Rankin had to say about generalities than series per se.  The fundamental question remains: should you, as an author, set out to write a series?

My answer is an emphatic no!  One reviewer of Aristocrats and Assassins admired the fact that that novel can be read independently of the others in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series.”  I blush to say that the review went so far as to recommend that I give a course on how to make a series book also a stand-alone.  While anything in writing is reducible to some algorithmic logic with great difficulty, here’s my short course (and maybe what that WD article should have been?).  I might reiterate points in the WD article—dunno; like I said, I was only interested in what Rankin had to say about things in general.  I also might repeat points I’ve talked about in other articles about writing.  Bear with me—I promise to be logical about it.

Don’t set out to write a series!  That’s stupid.  Where would Harper Lee be if she set out to write a series?  Moreover, where would Lippincott be if they’d forced Ms. Lee to contract for a series?  (Well, maybe, still in existence, and not a dead body cast aside by Wolters Kluwer, but that’s not the point here.)  Yeah, I know, Steve Moore, like Ian Rankin, has that great detective/crime/police procedural series, “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco,” and you want to do something similar, you say.  (More on why that’s not a pigeon-hole to put C & C in later.)  The temptation is great.  Let me just say that The Midas Bomb, Full Medical, and Survivors of the Chaos, first books in their respective series, were NOT written with a series in mind.  The only book I’ve ever written with that in mind is Muddlin’ Through, and only because when I finished it my muses were already whispering in my ear that Mary Jo Melendez’ story wouldn’t end with that novel.

What bad things happen if you set out to write a series?  First, you are tempted simply to break a long story into two.  I did that a wee bit with Survivors of the Chaos, but I added a lot to that first book (the first part and large portions of the second), so much so that it became a stand-alone on its own merit.  I shelved copious amounts of material, in fact, thinking that only my heirs would see it, but my muses wouldn’t let up.  All that original material and material corresponding to Soldiers of God was written before Full Medical and The Midas Bomb.  I hoodwinked my muses, though, by putting most of those first books in the same alternate universe—different times, of course.  That’s a setting, not a series, and it spans centuries.

Second, you’re tempted to write cliffhangers.  Leaving things hanging isn’t bad per se, but you, the author, want to do it in such a way that your reader can wonder if something happens to these characters that’s interesting, but can still be satisfied to think, “Well, like everyone else, these characters had some peculiar, exceptional, and/or stressful events in their life, and now can just enjoy living the good life—spouse, 2.5 kids, 9-to-5 job, and so forth.”

Modus operandi.  While I’ve collected what-ifs, character descriptions, and potential settings for years, any fiction writer picks some of those, collected over some period of time, and starts spinning a yarn.  Some outline the whole novel.  I can’t (and won’t) do that, but that’s a choice you make.  So, you start writing.  Things get going pretty good.  Somewhere along the way, it dawns on you that all this would fit into an existing series, maybe a sequel or prequel to another book, if you just morph characters, settings, and so forth a wee bit.  Should you do it?  That’s a creative choice.  The later you do it, the better chance you’ll have to creating a book that can be read as a stand-alone—most probably.  If you decide along the way that you don’t have enough for a novel (i.e. don’t set out to write a novel either), you can turn it into a short story.  All the stories in Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java are C & C cases that didn’t quite make novel stature.  The first chapter of Aristocrats and Assassins is a short story that first appeared in this blog—Castilblanco’s desire for a vacation in the aftermath led to the trip to Europe and the rest of the novel.

In other words, let your stories grow organically (outlining hinders that, by the way).  Think of yourself as an old Irish bard touring the countryside, lute in hand (or whatever they played), spinning yarns for a few coins (today’s meager royalties for most authors) and enjoying their Jameson whiskey (or mead or whatever beverage that was free and plentiful and not toxic).  That bard would see he was losing his audience and move on to another tale (hard to do today—the internet only goes so far), maybe with the same characters and setting, but maybe not.  You’re the storyteller.  Your job is to entertain—not write series.

Stale characters v. new characters?  Like readers, authors sometimes get too comfortable with their characters.  A certain amount of this isn’t a bad thing—I’m comfortable with C & C, but I’m also still exploring their complexity.  The problem with that isn’t necessarily that I get tired of them.  Old friends are old friends, after all—you can’t abandon them.  But you want to make new ones.  So do your readers, but you have to introduce them to your new characters carefully—they’re comfortable with the old ones, maybe shy to meet new friends,  and might generally resist.  Make the new ones entertaining, and the readers will come around.

That said, in a series you can introduce new characters in each novel of the series.  Some TV network has the slogan “characters wanted.”  As an author, you can ease into new characters by relating them to the old, comfortable ones.  Ashley Scott, DHS agent, for example, appears in several C & C novels until she convinced me that it was time for me to give her her own novel, The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan (more about Scott than Morgan).  A background theme in this novel is retirement for old agents, in particular women, when they know too many government secrets.  C & C become peripheral characters in this novel. (I guess you could call it part of the C & C series.  I don’t.)

Old settings v. new?  For the most part, Inspector Rebus is an Edinburgh man.  Rankin says he’s using him to continue his exploration of Edinburgh.  (Always wanted to visit Glasgow and Edinburgh, as well as Ireland.  Made it to the latter.)  From what I’ve read in the series, he’s still also exploring Rebus too.  As a reader, I’ve seen that character change.  If you’re a reader and a baby boomer, you might also identify with Rebus’ retirement angst (like C & C, he’s getting old).  But I get what Rankin is saying.  I can still explore NYC via Chen and Castilblanco, but I never wanted to turn Mr. C into Kojak (Mr. C is addicted to Tums, not lollipops).  PIs and cops in NYC are pretty common.  They’re also pretty popular still.

But the demographics are changing.  Tough, male cops loaded with testosterone were all too common in 20^th century literature; tough, male cops sensitive to women’s issues weren’t, and need to be, in the 21^st.  Rebus has his female sidekick to keep him in line.  Mr. C, already unusual in his compassion and feelings, has a more complete sidekick and equal partner in his Asian-American Mona Lisa, Dao-Ming Chen.  That said, those skyscraper canyons of NYC, can be confining.  Even in the second book of the series, my intrepid detectives leave their NYC comfort zones to pursue the bad guys.  If you write a series, this is something to keep in mind.  You can explore just one setting, but you might lose readers who get bored with that.

The Goldilocks Rule.  I’ve mentioned it many times in my blog posts about writing.  Here it means adding just enough in one given novel to make it part of a series, but not so much that the reader can’t jump in and read the novel without reading the previous ones.  This, of course, is reader-dependent, something the reviewer of Aristocrats and Assassins missed.  Some readers will feel lost; others will feel comfortable with the “old friends” feel.  You’re lucky if you can strike a balance that entertains a large number of readers.  (Given my sales, I can’t say the reviewer’s assessment was correct.  Of course, I’m willing to read your input on the matter.  Download Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, the middle book in the C & C series, and write and tell me if I’ve kept Ms. Goldilocks happy.  I’d appreciate your input.)

In libris libertas….  

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