Lately the publishing (and movie) world has been overtaken by what seems to be a plague of series. It seems that I can’t go to the bookstore without finding the “tenth book of the claw of honor” series. The Fifth book of the Immensely Overblown Epic Fantasy series. And in theaters, well…
I’m glad I went to see Avengers. I liked it. I’m glad we decided to buy all the prequels. But – mama, don’t let your daughters grow up to marry mathematicians – must we watch them all in order? Even The Incredible Hulk. (Okay, miles better than The Hulk, but can’t they tweak that story to give the poor critter a happy ending, or at least a semi-happy-ending? And if they can’t, then why do the movie at all. he’s okay as a secondary character, but… main? The emotional arc is all wrong.)
Actually the Avengers is a good example of what I’m talking about with series. I was a super-hero movie virgin when I went to see it. At least, I hadn’t seen any since the Amazing Spider man what… eight? Years ago?
The closest thing I watched to a superhero movie before the avengers was The Incredibles. Oh, and I haven’t read comics since Portugal in the sixties, except for Disney comics, which are different. (Very, very different at times.)
But I walked into that theater and sat down, and GOT everything. The story worked. There was no need for my husband to lean over – as he’s done with other movie series – and whisper, “he and she had this thing. That’s why she’s upset.” No, there was full context right there on he screen for me to get the emotional and plot impact of everything. Yes, even the Hulk, who IS a very powerful secondary character. You get the feeling of a man watching himself ALL the time, and afraid of what’s within him. That’s one of my favorite things to write, read and watch. (For reasons I’ll figure out, should I ever be able to afford a psychiatrist. Meanwhile, deal.)
Look, I love Dave Weber. But I came to Honor Harrington late. And I find I have to read the series in small increments because otherwise I tire out. (This is true with all series, for me.) The problem is that six months later, when I resume on book eight, I can’t remember the details that went before, and keep getting the feeling I’m missing something. He’s not alone. There are more series I’ve abandoned mid-read than those I’ve followed to the bitter end. No, I can’t tell you why. I just get to the point I feel I’m missing too much info to stay with it. Heck, I have that problem with my own writing, too. After a while I need a “bible” just to figure out if this character likes black or yellow.
Part of this is the story that follows one character throughout. In the old days when you got out a book a year, tops, this meant that you were requiring readers to remember to buy that book. Miss it, and, two years later, get it out of order, and the reader is screwed. Or more likely, you are, as they toss the book aside and go in search of something else. If you EVER get to the point people need a glossary, list of characters AND past history in the middle… you’re really screwed.
There is an escape from this – the episodic series. What I call “bring your characters to their upright and locked position” series. In the end of each book, we’re back to the beginning, sort of. The world and the characters change but very slowly, and you can enjoy each book on its own without a reference on how things work in this world and what she did to him in the second book.
Most mystery series are like that, thereby skimming the best of the series – people come back for the group of characters and the feel for the world – but avoiding the worst: the necessity to know what happened in every other book, which becomes onerous as the series goes on.
I figured out early on that I can’t write series that aren’t mystery series. Once I’ve solved the character’s main emotional arc, I’m done, and I want to go and play with someone else. The Shakespeare trilogy suffers from this. The exception, I’d say is the Shifters series, and that’s because in some ways it IS a mystery series.
So faced with the need to make Heart of Light into a trilogy (no, it wasn’t, long story) I thought I invented something completely new: I did the series by moving the “main” character to a new head every time. This made the series flow better, for me. I thought I was a genius… It took me years to figure out this is how romance series are done. (Because you don’t want to undo the happy ever after, but you still want to stay with that group of characters.)
Of course, Pratchett does the same. His characters are different every book, and he might come back to one, but it’s a whole new problem/relationship, yet in each book we get to see the same group of characters. And you can start at any point.
So… Darkship Thieves, now has a second book, Darkship Renegades. This was semi-difficult since the series is not only one character, but it is restricted to Thena’s head. I think I can keep it going – and keep it interesting – by treating it more like a mystery series. Yet it is – in structure – closer to romance. So, not having sketched the third one yet, I make no promises. It might very well move to her kids’ heads. (In fact, I know it will eventually.) And I suspect the next one of the Darkships will be in the head of a character you have never seen before. (Evil grin.) There might be ONE MORE from Thena’s perspective. You can go three books without a map and a guidebook. After that… well… things get complex.
Meanwhile, and because I needed to do the revolution on Earth and couldn’t do it from Thena’s perspective – she’s moved on. Her “home” is now Eden – I started the Earth Revolution series. You get to see some old friends – all the broomers – but each book has a new main character whose problems (well, the main ones) get more or less resolved at the end of his or her book. And who come back as secondary characters in other books. This also allows me a wide-angle perspective that covers the entire Earth and dips into the places of trouble with a fresh perspective.
The first of these is A Few Good Men, coming out this spring, and your returning character is Nat from the broomers in DST – though he’s not the main or voice character. (Though Fuse is also there. He didn’t die at the end of DST. Thena just thought so.) The next book either involves Jan Rainer or Simon. (Not sure which, yet.) I know by book four or five (Blood of Heroes) we’ll be well into the second generation. Unfortunately that’s the missy who is VERY loud in my head right now. No, you don’t want to know.
And meanwhile I have a whole future history sketched to around 3500 and space colonization, and I reserve the right to dip and swoop wherever I feel like.
I hope thus to harness the best of series. You get to see all your old friends. You’ll just never believe the twists life takes on them!
Tighten your seatbelts and trust me. It’s gonna be a wild ride.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “Menage A Many”
I could never understand those series that keep going forever with the same main characters. In the series I’m about to finish one of the main characters is an amoral troll with absolutely no honor. At the end of book 4 (they aren’t stand alones) he has grown out of that, so I have no idea what I’d do with him next. Same with all the other characters, in one way or another.
It can be a puzzler.
Very Good.
It might be best to watch Iron Man before Iron Man 2, but they’d probably make just as much sense in the other direction, too.
I don’t really want to read repeated information too much, while I’m being brought up to speed. Oh, I just thought of a good (but backward) analogy.
Television flash-back episodes.
We’ve all seen them. Someone will get injured or something else will happen to frame the flashbacks and the entire episode will be footage from previous shows, remembering those shows. Problem is, if you’ve seen those shows it’s a cheat.
Firefly did it right. Mal was shot and alone on firefly, how did he get there? So the show followed two series of flashbacks, the things immediately leading up to his getting shot, and flashbacks to the acquisition of the ship and introduction of each member of the original crew. All new footage. All of it.
Okay then, to get just a little bit personal…
I don’t think I’ll read any more “tie-ins” to the Honor Harrington universe. (I might look at the YA ones about the cats, maybe.) And the reason is that I do not remember who the multitude of minor characters and what their histories are. And of the books that I’ve read I’m left feeling as though I’m having my nose rubbed in what I’m missing. The thing is, if I recognize a character from the original series, I can probably feel clever and enjoy finding out what their story is. But what I come up against is allusions to other, extraneous, events that exist out there, somewhere, but aren’t part of the story I’m reading and aren’t explained.
My own personal opinion on this is that while the author has to have complete and intimate knowledge of other events in order not to mess up time-lines or character history, it should be completely opaque to the reader.
Which brings me to the refinishing mysteries. So far, at least, I think that someone reading them “cold” would find absolutely nothing distracting in the stories. So far (I’m about half-way through the second) I don’t think that anything mentioned, disposing of bodies in a shark tank or mass murder sprees in Goldport, I don’t think that those would have the “ha, ha, you’re missing an in-joke” effect that bothered me so much in the couple of Honor Harrington side-universe tie-ins that I read. I think they’d be entirely opaque to a reader that hadn’t read the shape changer books.
I have though. Only it was a bit ago and the books happen to be in a box somewhere because we did work on the house and moved my office/guest-room, so I’m stuck wondering if I’m remembering what I think I’m remembering. It’s all highly distracting, thank you! I keep wondering if Dyce will ever discover she’s surrounded by shapechangers and find out what is going on around her, and what the reactions of readers would be if she ever did find out, when those are just not “that kind of book.”
My intentions are to keep those series in their own spheres. There might be fewer allusions in the future. I confess part of them were pique at the mystery house. I mean, you’ll still see Rafiel, and hear jokes about his love life — though in the third book he finds a nice girl 😉 — but that’s you know, the sort of thing that gives it a small town flavor.
On the future history — AFGM, DSR and that whole cluster are related, so characters will walk in and out, but I treat them all as new to the reader, with little clues and saying as much as you need to enjoy THAT book. The others… In The Brave And The Free there’s a monument to some of the people in AFGM. But if you don’t know who they are, all you need to know is that they were responsible for the second founding of the USA, which has since moved off-world.
Treating it as new to the reader is the trick, I think. At least for me.
LOL. Maybe an author should ask her or himself… if someone was stranded on a desert island and had only this one volume to read… to what depth of hell would they curse me for it?
My favorite David Weber story is the novella, Service of the Sword, which is a spinoff, but is a complete standalone. Of course it later became the beginning of the Saganami Island spinoff series/storyline, which sort of standalone, but are better if you have read the main HH novels. What has begun irritating me is how the last few novels have ended on cliffhangers, mainly so that they don’t give away the climax of the next book in one of the side-universes.
I hate books that don’t standalone, or have cliffhanger endings, luckily I had already read all the HH books before I read Crown of Slaves, I very much like the Cachat spinoff, but if I hadn’t read the rest first, I am sure I wouldn’t have. And I have a habit of picking books up without paying attention to any order in a series, and expect them to standalone, David and Eric just got lucky that I read the others first, so it didn’t bother me like it would have if I had followed my usual habit.
I can relate to trying to read horribly long series and remembering details years later when you finally get around to reading #15 in the series. I can’t do it. I can’t even write like that. I managed two books with the same main character but only because I was told my YA novel was too long and I had to break it into 2 books because I couldn’t cut out 150 pages and still make it work as one. Although the novel I’m working on now is still from the series, the time period is different and the main character is the daughter of the first one. With brief references to the original story, I’m hoping it will work. Wishing you the best of luck with your series, too. 🙂