Writing a Series, by Judith Keim

Writing a series…

I’ve found that writing a series is both easier and harder than writing a stand-alone book. My longest series is ten books, my shortest, three books.

With all series, the setting is very important, becoming like a character itself, an important piece of the glue that holds the books together. The reader trusts you to be consistent with setting in all of the books. They want to know if they decide to continue reading after book #one, they will be in a familiar place. If you’ve done a thorough job of introducing that setting, it makes it much easier to use in additional books.

Characters, as always, are important in a series, even if they may come and go after being introduced, appearing in one book and then not in another until later. But each character and  their individual stories help build interest in the series. I’ve found that readers love to be familiar with characters who appear in all the books in a series, characters they love or hate. And, of course, introducing new characters with new stories keeps things interesting and building.

In writing a series, you must have a main theme compatible with a genre and a sub-genre. And while the main characters in each book have a story arc, the series has an overriding arc as well, ending story questions in the first book with a happy ending in the last book.

I tend to have a lot of characters and character names in each book which can be exhausting and hard to organize. It’s important to have a “bible” of sorts to keep track of characters, names, and places. 

In my Lilac Lake Inn series, my latest, I have background information listed, who the characters are in each book, listed by name, description, and other attributes which are important. I list all the places, like names of stores and shops and people in town, and have another list of those establishments and people that are out of town but in the area. It’s amazing how keeping track of details, even like the color of a truck a certain character drives, can save time later on. 

Also, by writing down character names in the “bible” as I introduce them in a story, I save myself a lot of headaches because I’m terrible with names, forever changing Steve to Sloan or Catherine to Cate and so on.  

Standalone books are fun to write without the burden of keeping track of everything a series requires. But if you create characters your readers love, it’s a wonderful way to keep them happy and for you to enjoy the success writing a series can bring. 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers