The book series. Many authors view them as the Holy Grail, the chance to hook an audience that are practically guaranteed to buy every book, so as to read more about their favourite characters. Very compelling for an author, but the flipside is a certain loss of freedom to explore other characters, other genres. In reality, most authors will turn out a mixture of series and stand-alone books in their careers.
Here are several types of book series:
Same characters, different adventures
Think James Bond, Famous Five, Jack Ryan, Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Jason Bourne, Jack Aubrey.
This type of series gives you plenty of flexibility. Consider how varied the Bond books are, or Poirot. You have the advantage of your readers becoming extremely familiar with your protagonist(s), allowing you to concentrate on the plot, and the setting. Thrillers and mysteries lend themselves well to this format.
Same world, different characters
Think Pern, Discworld, Middle-Earth, Foundation and Empire.
Help me out here, since I can’t find an example outside of the fantasy and sci-fi genres, I guess because books on Earth with different characters are stand-alone novels. Pern, by McCaffrey, is a prime example of where your audience becomes addicted to the world. A collection of common characters may exist throughout a series, but more likely, each book is about someone new. This allows you to create a magnificent setting, but show it from numerous perspectives; perhaps a bandit, or a sailor, or a king. This type gives you probably the ultimate flexibility.
The Avengers is an example of a variation on both series types, where the reader is introduced to one or more stories about a single character in a shared world, and then those characters come together to fight as a team.
Monolithic story
Think Harry Potter, Dark Tower, Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, Belgariad.
This form of the series has an over-arching story and a definite end, unlike the other types where the author could write books forever. This type is typical of epic, quest story fantasy. Unless the reader dislikes your writing, it is very unlikely that they will not read to the last book, to read the dramatic conclusion. You’d better make it an earth-shattering climax too!
In its true form, like Harry Potter, every book is part of a pre-calculated sequence that moves the hero, antagonist, and reader one step closer. It should feel like a single story, with foreshadowing in earlier books, and revelations in later books of earlier mysteries. The whole series should build on itself to make the final book impossible to put down.
Another form concentrates less on an intricate story arc across all the books, preferring a series of loosely related stories that happen to get tied up nicely in the final book.
Theme or specialty
Not so much a type of book series as an author preference, this is where the author writes a series of books around a common theme, that may or may not feature the same characters. You could group many stand-alone books into this category, so it isn’t easy to define.
One could argue that Dickens wrote consistently about the rich and poor in Victorian England, or Jane Austen about the romantic intricacies of the landed gentry, or Cussler about marine archaeology.
You probably don’t want to venture into this type unless you actually are an expert on something.
Deliver a complete story
Whatever type of series you choose to write, you owe it to your readers to make each book a satisfying story in its own right. Never leave a book in the midst of an unresolved arc. (“to be continued…”) That’s lazy. The reader should always feel that some of the subplots have been wrapped up, and perhaps minor antagonists defeated, even if the major story arc continues throughout the rest of the series.
Opinions differ on how much recap you should include in each book. Ideally, you should cater for a reader that might have picked up the series in the middle. You could do this as a prologue (“previously on…”), or dropping in numerous references and character thoughts from previous books. I always feel that the second method is more natural if you can pull it off without it feeling heavy-handed.
Or you may just prefer to assume that your reader has read from book 1, and launch straight into the action or drama.
What are your thoughts on book series, as an author or reader?
