Observations on writing: Writing a novel-series

 Writing a novel-series

Unless you’re the likes of J.K.Rowling, Jeff Kinney, John Grisham, Dan Brown or Stephen King, you’ll have to work very hard as a writer to earn even the equivalent of an average annual salary – and you’ll only do that if you’re also very lucky. 

It’s a sad fact that most writers – and that includes many truly talented writers – don’t earn enough to give up the day job. For many authors, writing is a side-hustle at best.

              One way to maximise your earnings, if you’re actually lucky enough to be published, is to create a novel-series. If you can create a series which becomes popular, you have a ready-made audience who are going to buy each new instalment (as well as telling their friends). This is, I suspect, the holy grail for many genre writers, and literary agents often like books which are presented as the ‘first in a series’. They can drop you if the first book nose-dives, but, if it’s even a modest success, they might well keep your nose to the grindstone as they know that novel series sometimes increase in popularity with each new addition.

There are different types of series, of course, whether we are thinking of novels, short stories or TV dramas. Some are sets of stories where each contains a fully-developed, self-contained story featuring the same central character/s, a genre particularly beloved by crime writers – an interesting, engaging character like Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Sir Peter Wimsey, Inspector Morse, Cormorant Strike or Jackson Brody can provide the hook to draw readers in, even if each instalment tells a different independent story. Novel-series of this type can often be read in any order, though it is usually better to read them in the order they were published.

There are novels which are essentially detective stories but with a twist – the comic-absurdist Nursery Crimes or Thursday Next series of Jasper Fforde, for instance. Or they can be self=standing series in non-crime-related genres, such as children’s novels like the Jennings series by Anthony Buckeridge, comedy like the Jeeves and Wooster books of P.G.Wodehouse, or supernatural fantasies like Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series.

 The type of series I’m interested in here are those which have both a self-contained story in each instalment and each episode also, simultaneously, plays a role in a larger, over-arching narrative. Examples are Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series [Gothic/supernatural/YA], Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles Of St Mary’s [time-travelling historians/comedy/crime/mystery], Sarah Painter’s Crow Investigations  ongoing saga [supernatural contemporary female private eye], or Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant stories [supernatural police procedural]. J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series are a good example, as are many classic series aimed at children such as Susan Cooper’s Darkness Rising quartet to the saga of Anne Of Green Gables  It takes great skill to plot novels like these, not least because initial ideas sometimes have to be seriously revised when a series takes off and writers are under pressure to write increasing numbers of instalments.

Some writers use particular gimmicks, devices to enable them to tell intricate and long-winded tales in as convincing a way as possible. Conan Doyle used the conceit that the slightly dull and unimaginative John Watson, Holmes’s sidekick, was relating the various cases to a general reader. In the children’s gothic-comedy series, A Series Of Unfortunate Events, the author is suggested to be a mysterious character called Lemony Snickett. Sue Townsend created the eponymous Adrian Mole in her diary sequence, his ‘averageness’ and ‘typicality’ making him a humorous Everyman. Some writers tell their stories in the words of a single character – Max in The Chronicles Of St Mary’s, Peter Grant in the Rivers of London saga, Thursday Next in Jasper Fforde’s comic series, Jake Portman in Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. Others are narrated by an omnipresent, omniscient third-person story-teller.

              Of course, like any kind of writing, there are excellent ones and less excellent ones. The most successful are often boosted by the celebrity status of the writer – The Thursday Murder Club series springs to mind. And for every Terry Pratchett or George R.R.Martin, there are lesser writers who don’t write as well but still make a reasonable living out of their writing and have a loyal fan following. I’m thinking of writers like Wilkie Martin [cosy detective], C.J.Archer [romantic comedy in a mildly supernatural pseudo nineteenth century London], Liz Hedgecock [cosy detectrive and romance with a touch of the supernaturals], Heidi Goode and Iain Grant [comic fantasy], etc. Such writers start by capturing the interest of readers and building a fan-base which then guarantees that their novels have an audience for as long as they remain popular. Many writers whom we’d consider to have created a successful career from their work have written many different series, often in different genres.

There are some problems with writing such series, however.

1.      The Tyranny Of Fandom

If your series becomes very popular, it is obviously an excellent thing. Or at least you might think so. However, there is the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ problem. Arthur Conan Doyle became so bored with writing his Sherlock Holmes stories that he killed his hero off at the Reichenbach Falls, only to face an uproar from the consulting detective’s hordes of devoted fans which forced him to bring the beloved Sherlock back to life. Being forced to write endless stories about the same character must be a trial, particularly if you have lots of other ideas for novels you never get time to write.

 

2.      ‘Declining Interest’ Syndrome

On the other hand, if you write a series which relies too much on the plot to keep readers interested, your readers might well be hooked by the first book and want to keep on reading to get to the end and resolve the mystery or whatever. However, if there isn’t much more than a cracking plot, they are unlikely to want to ever re-read the books and they might well give away the plot to potential future readers who might then not want to buy any of them.  The plot itself might not be enough to keep them reading to the end. Novels that rely on gimmicky plot devices often suffer after their initial popularity fades. You need compelling characters, interesting settings and situations, and varied, intelligent plot-lines to keep readers hooked.

 

 ‘Jasper Fforde Syndrome’

This is where you write novels which have a rabidly loyal horde of fans who read and re-read your work and think you’re one of the best writers who ever lived. I am one such Jasper Fforde fan and I share the frustration many of us feel about the fact that Jasper just doesn’t write very fast. Unlike writers such as Terry Pratchett (who regularly churned out at least two novels a year and who must have spent most of his adult life writing novels or autographs), Jasper Fforde can take years to finish a book. He wrote a brilliantly weird and funny novel called ‘Shades of Grey’ in 2012  (nothing like the awful bestseller ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’), promised a prequel followed by a sequel, but neither have so far appeared. Apparently, a sequel [Red Side Story] is to be published in 2024. Douglas Adams once commented that he had to wait for enough ideas to pile up before he could write a new Hitch-hikers novel, and I think this is true of Fforde (and probably one reason his books are so brilliant). Leaving long gaps of time between novels, and frequently delaying publication dates, can build up a fevered anticipation for the next novel – but it might also end up frustrating and boring your readers. You have to be extremely talented and extremely popular before this approach works.

 

4.      Knowing when to stop

Some writers are pressured by publishers, and by the necessity to maintain their income, to stretch out their stories over a much larger number of books than was originally envisaged. This can lead to plot glitches, and to changes in tone and atmosphere. Do your characters remain the same age over twenty instalments? Do the books cover a realistic time-span, possibly more than one generation? Are you beginning to repeat ideas? J.K.Rowling planned for her Harry Potter novels to cover Harry’s secondary school years, which gave them a natural end-point. But more open-ended novel series appear to have characters who never age – even though it is difficult to see how all those adventures could fit into one year of a person’s life.  You might have originally planned to write a trilogy but then, due to the demands of success, you end up like Douglas Adams writing a trilogy in four parts (which in his case was a good thing). Writers need to know when to stop. Eventually, long-running series can become repetitive, dull, even nonsensical. What were once contemporary settings can become outdated. Ideas that were once fresh can become stale. Readers can gradually stop reading so the series plods on desperately trying to bring in enough money to keep the writer from starving. Quit while you’re ahead.   

 

5.      Other writers taking over

Some series produce characters who become iconic and live substantially longer lives than their authors. Sherlock Holmes is a classic example, surviving in film and TV versions, embodied by actors as diverse as Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett and Benedict Cumberbatch, the series extended into spoof, pastiche and homage – Holmes has been portrayed as a teenager and an old man, a drug-addicted Londoner living in contemporary New York with his female sidekick Watson, or a ‘high-functioning sociopath’ living in London with his best friend (in Charlie Brooker’s immortal phrase, ‘a wizard and a hobbit’). Not only have modern writers written new instalments of Conan Doyle’s stories (as has been done for other series such as James Bond and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), but he has appeared in cameo roles in other series such as the Enola Holmes series which focus on Sherlock’s talented sister or The Irregulars, which focus on the gang of street urchins who are Holmes’s secret eyes and ears. There are several series of novels which makes Mrs Hudson the brains behind the icon, and several which explore Holmes’s sex appeal! Obviously there are always copyright issues – you can’t simply pick up someone else’s character and write your own stories, at least not outside the realm of fan fiction. But once books have existed long enough to be no longer in copyright, they quite often start to appear again, sometimes transformed beyond recognition. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is open to discussion, but I would suggest that it is one of the greatest tributes that  can be paid to a writer who has created something extra-special.

 

The following points all take examples from a specific series of books by a current writer, C.J.Archer. Archer is an American writer who has written several successful series and has been a USA Today bestseller. I am going to pick out elements of her books that I don’t think work - but, let’s face it, I bought every book in The Glass and Steel series so they were obviously interesting enough to justify my spending hard-earned cash on them (unless it is just my OCD tendencies). There are thirteen books in Archer’s Glass and Steele series and I’ve reviewed them in an earlier post. I’m currently reading the final book in the series. The characters reappear in a new series set in the next generation, so they are obviously popular enough to make it worth writing more about the world Archer has created. Revitalising it by moving on to the next generation is a clever trick worth remembering.

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6.      Repetition

One of the things I find irritating about her writing is the repetitions of phrases, particularly phrases that strike me as being slightly odd or irritating even the first time they appear. Characters in the books are always ‘flattening their lips’, for instance, either in anger or irritation or to indicate the falseness of smiles. I don’t know how to flatten my lips. Maybe it means stretching them out wide so they flatten out – but this would suggest a facial expression suitable only for The Joker. Characters also frequently ‘bite off’ dialogue. This phrase suggests to me that they are making sharp exclamations, interrupting others or breaking off their own longer speeches. It implies aggression, hostility, or at the very least frustration. Yet characters ‘bite off’ (presumably their words) even when they aren’t particularly exclamatory.  Look at this example:

 

“Because we know the location of the bomb in advance,”

Brockwell bit off through clenched teeth.

 Here, the character not only ‘bites off’ the words, he does so ‘through clenched teeth’. Try saying those words yourself through clenched teeth. Unless you’re a skilled ventriloquist, you’ll find it difficult, particularly if you try biting them off too. 

        The problem with a series of books is that a writer’s pet expressions become amplified by frequent repetition, so the reader just can’t get away from them. If they start out as weak or annoying, things can only get worse. Each time they pop up, the reader gets another tiny hit of irritation, which, sadly, can only increase as the novels progress. In Archer’s case, it was the behaviour of the main characters, India Steele and her lover (later husband), Matthew Glass, that truly set my teeth on edge. Matt frequently rubs his thumb along India’s wrist or jawline or neck in a way that I find, frankly, quite creepy. In later books, he is forever ‘guiding’ India by putting his hand on her lower back (‘Matt’s steadying hand on my lower back’) – If you want to steady someone, you don’t do it by placing your hand on their lower back, surely? Also it would look odd when a woman is wearing a floor-length Victorian day dress. It makes me think he’s actually fondling her arse, and it also implies to me that he is determining her movements by pressing her lower back as if she is some kind of automaton. If this phrase appeared once or twice in a thirteen-book series, I’d never have noticed it, but it appears so often that it now glares at me like a metaphorical Belisha beacon.

              CONCLUSION: If you are going to write a series of novels, bear in mind that many of your readers will, like me, have OCD tendencies, and therefore, like me, they will buy the next instalment straight after the first and read the whole series as fast as possible. Such people will notice repetitions, and if you repeat phrases they don’t like, you risk making them decide never to buy another of your novels (after they’ve finished the current series, of course…).

 

7.      Plot loopholes

In Chapter 6 of The Spymaker’s Scheme, India and Matthew are undercover in a meeting with the head of the Wool Guild. They are pretending to be Mr and Mrs Gaskell. Matt begins by explaining to the guild-master:

 

“My wife’s father was a  rug-maker from Bristol.

He recently passed….He was friends with another rug-maker

in London and my wife would like to notify him of her

father’s death in person…But his wife informed us that he

had disappeared…We hoped it was a domestic issue between

Mr and Mrs Pyke and that he was merely staying elsewhere.”

 

The real reason for their visit is to get some information out of the Guild-master about Mr Pyke, a rug-maker who has vanished. The guild-master claims he knows nothing and India then says:

 

                           His wife suggested it was because he was a magician…“

 

If Mrs Pyke had said that her husband’s disappearance might be because he was a magician, why would they think it was just a domestic incident? Wouldn’t their father, Mr Pyke’s old friend, know he was a magician? Wouldn’t they, as rug-makers themselves, know that the guilds would not give licenses to magicians so magicians could not legally set up shop as carpet-manufacturers and had to keep their magician status secret? It would seem out of character for these Bristol rug-makers to ‘out’ their missing family friend to the head of the guild. Yes, India and Matt are only pretending to be rug-makers from Bristol, and they might want to test the guild-master’s attitude towards magicians, but it seems to me to be a strong hint for the guild-master that they aren’t who they claim to be. Yet it isn’t until they are leaving and are greeted as ‘Mr and Mrs Glass’ by their friend, Professor Nash, who just happens to be at the guild in a rather clunky and inauthentic narrative device, that the guildmaster becomes aware of their duplicity.

              This sort of thing isn’t terrible. It’s the kind of thing you get in a lot of mediocre writing, and mediocre writing is often much more successful than you might expect. Most readers aren’t all that discerning. If they have a lively plot and interesting characters, a bit of humour, romance, mystery and intrigue, they don’t care all that much about the occasional clumsiness. But, in stories that are stretched over multiple books, writers need to be extremely alert to plot holes. Readers get to know the worlds, the people, the back stories, the attitudes and behaviour of key characters very well, simply because they are reading so much about them.    

 

8.      Disappointing entourages

It has become something of a standard feature of plots involving mystery, quests or crimes-to-be-solved, and even in romances, to have a small group of interesting characters surrounding the protagonist. Frodo had his fellowship; Holmes had his faithful sidekick Watson, his smug brother Myecroft and the bumbling police inspector LeStrade; Harry Potter had Ron and Hermione; Buffy had Willow and Zander, Dawn, Angel and Spike; even Nancy Drew had Bessie and George. In many modern novel-sequences, I have noticed that this posse has become a regular feature, filled with increasing weird or wonderful characters. Supernatural tales can really go to town with a whole cast of minor exotics such as vampires, werewolves, goblins, elves, demons, witches, etc. But even novels set in the real word can push the envelope when it comes to secondary characters. A maverick PI might have a best friend who is an ex-con, a reformed forger,  a stripper, or all three. A schoolgirl heroine might have an entourage consisting of her ninja granny, a male friend who is secretly gay and a mysterious clown who travels the world with a circus. The protagonist’s ‘family’, whether that is genetically determined or a metaphorical family, is often presented as a bunch of weirdoes who gain authority and gravitas by their association with the protagonist. They make the protagonist seem more ‘normal’. They might have special skills that are very useful to the protagonist. They might function as methods of highlighting certain character-traits of the central character, or provide sub-plots to keep the reader interested, particularly in a long novel-sequence.

              However, it isn’t enough to make the characters simply unusual. India’s sidekicks are her husband, Matt [tall, handsome, vulnerable, quick to leap to her defence, a romantic hero who was brought up in the Wild West), Willie (a bi-sexual Calamity Jane living in aristocratic London), Cyclops (a huge black guy with one eye who is a ‘gentle giant’) and Duke (a bit of a nonentity). There is also an outer circle of characters who are still part of India’s ‘family’: Aunt Letitia whose main role seems to be as a social snob who sometimes surprises you with her tolerance; Inspector Brockwell, a police inspector with slightly autistic traits who is Willy’s sometime lover; Lord Farnsworth, apparently a fop and a dandy, though the novels aren’t set in the Regency period, but possibly ,much more intelligent than he seems. The problem is that the central group in particular feel like they were invented for two reasons: 1) to appeal to Archer’s American readers as well her English ones; and 2) to tick various diversity boxes (black, bisexual, cross-dressing). None of them have much in the way of back-story. I’m on book thirteen and I still know virtually nothing about Willy, Cyclops or Duke in terms of their upbringing and previous adventures. I’m not sure how they became involved with Matt, except that Willy is his cousin. Matt’s own previous life in California is alluded to but rarely explored further. And they are, frankly, extremely dull. Willy sounds interesting in summary: a Victorian young woman who wears men’s clothing, carries a Colt, and lives a wildly unconventional life full of gambling, extra-marital sex with all genders, self-assertion, and visiting horse auctions, bare-knucklre fights and illicit poker games. But in fact mostly we see her sulking or threatening people or refusing to answer questions about her personal life. She has the attention span and emotional complexity of a toddler, and her schtick rapidly grows boring. Cyclops, too, though he is likeable, seems to become less compelling as the books progress. He started with lots of potential, particularly as he becomes involved in a love-subplot with a friend of India’s, but the obstacles between him and the object of his affections are easily overcome and never fully explored. Duke seems to eat, make the occasional wisecrack, bicker with Willy and occasionally spends the night with his mistress, a rich widow, but we never really find out what he's like beyond the fact that he's good-humoured, kind and loyal. These three are essentially Matt’s body guard, and they are as interesting as this sounds. They have so much unfulfilled potential as characters. Some of them return in the spin-off series set in the next generation, but they are just as dull in those books.

              CONCLUSION: it isn’t enough to just give second-tier characters, the ones who form the protagonist’s Scooby Gang, some freakish or unusual traits or experiences. They have to be believable, likeable, compelling characters. They have to have reasonably complex back stories and, in a long series, they need to be at the centre of gripping sub-plots which intersect with the main plot. The reader has to at least find them engaging. Otherwise, why are they there? If Duke, for instance,  was removed from Archer’s stories, I don’t think the readers would notice. That can’t be a good thing, can it?

 

 

 

9.      Plot Exposition

Another thing writers risk when they are writing novel-series happens when they are under pressure to produce the next book as quickly as possible, so they resort to lazy ways of letting the reader know what’s going on. If a reader jumps on the train halfway through the journey, they need to be informed somehow of what’s gone before. You don’t want readers getting confused and jumping off, never to return. What you need to do, ideally, is make each episode as enjoyable as possible so that a reader can follow the story but is also sufficiently intrigued to decide to find out what the first book is called and start from there.

              Consider the following extract:

 

                         “Confront Sir Charles Whittaker?”

                     “Oh dear,” Aunt Letitia muttered.

                     I gasped.  “Is this about Sir Charles setting a thug

           upon him in the lane on the day Lord Coyle married Hope?” 

 

This is unnatural dialogue, intended to give the reader information. It is expositional speech, not the sort of thing people tend to say in real life. All three characters present are fully aware of the incident where Oscar is attacked by a thug sent by Sir Charles. They know it was on Lord Coyle’s wedding day and they know Lord Coyle married Hope. It is a bit of clumsy writing that many readers will accept as an occasional thing in a novel-series, but writers should avoid doing it too often. Readers are surprisingly tolerant of such devices, possibly because they understand the necessity of letting new readers know plot information and this is one of the quickest ways to do this. Nevertheless, if repeated too often, such techniques can soon grow wearying.

If you are thinking of writing a novel-sequence, there are lots of How To... books on the market that deal with the subject. The best thing to do is to read as many examples of  ovel sequences from your chosen genre as you can, then plan very thoroughly. 

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