Do you write a long series with lots and lots of characters? Well, take pity on your long-suffering readers and consider making that a little easier on their aging memories.
Today’s example of what I’m talking about is a compare-and-contrast between two different series as examples of different ways of dealing with the situation. I won’t identify the authors, ’cause that doesn’t really matter.
So… here’s the situation. You’re a historical Romance writer, and at the moment you’ve got a long series going, involving families with lots of siblings in multiple generations and (well) more than half a dozen books with no end in sight, with new entries coming out on a regular basis. (These authors have other series, too, but this seems to be the currently active one for each of them.)
Let me briefly discuss the setup for the author I call “The More the Merrier”. She’s created pretty much a single stage (one town) and most of the action comes there. The primary setup is a huge family who, age group by age group as they mature, take advantage of the neighbors or the visitors from (near or far) elsewhere for partners. The problems for a reader arise from two sources.
First, the introduction to the base family and neighbors (which are easily twenty or more people) doesn’t really get refreshed from book to book, not to mention the people they’ve managed to marry or the dwellings they’ve acquired. And yet this doesn’t stop them from figuring in the next story’s plot. When the next entry comes out months later, the memory is dimmer yet, and unrefreshed, but there they are.
This really came to a head in the latest entry I read, where the elaborate set piece party that ended the prior book made a surprise reappearance from the remembered POV of the current book’s characters who apparently were there, too. But the fan-service of “oh look, that gag again” falls short if you can’t remember it, or the individual POVs (or even names) from the prior book. (Which irritation made me chose this topic today.)
Now, by contrast, let me present the second author who I’ll call “One Ensemble at a Time.” Her unifying gimmick is amusing — in the first series entry, the local lord is married by a clergyman who turns out (after many years have passed and it’s far too late, (and he’s been murdered)) never to have actually been officially ordained. Thus the marriages he’s officiated at, and the resulting children and inherited titles, are all illegitimate. The folks who think they’re married need to do it again or not (a bit late), and the inheritances and titles they’ve counted on (and in some cases assumed) are… evanescent, or newly available.
Each subsequent entry concentrates on one of the affected resultant families, each of which is impacted in its own way. The premise of each plot includes a reminder of why that family has to scramble or make alternative arrangements, why their inheritance rights have improved (or not), and so forth.
The cast of characters in each entry is limited, we are reminded how they got into their situation, and characters from the other entries are put into context when they appear.
So… take pity on your poor readers, and consider that all those characters that live so indelibly in your own memory in all their glorious situations may not be quite so readily to hand in your readers’ minds. They may remember your last entry as enjoyable, but the details might be a little, um, dim. Give ’em a hand.
Got any clever tips for helping out your readers?
Mad Genius Club 
15 responses to “A Cast of Thousands”
I assume that if I have to go back to a previous book to check something that my readers would like me to write down whatever I had to check so that they, too, may be reminded. Also, when I read, I need helpful reminders even when it’s information from the same book, so I try to drop little parenthetical reminders in if we haven’t seen someone for many chapters.
Even main characters get described afresh each book.
On a related topic, I’ve long noted that series writers are a little fuzzy about giving a plot summation of a previous book. Prior to kindle and indie with readers always having immediate access to first in series, and before becoming a writer myself, I always figured it was so that I’d go read the other book if I’d missed it. As a tactic, it worked.
In my first and second books, I just kept the cast of characters very small and the books were standalone. Now, I’m struggling to keep a large cast in order in just one single book. If there’s a sequel, that’ll be a new problem. So, no clever tips, just recognition that it’s a problem I’ve got to solve.
Character lists are the one list I find vital for all stories.
I always include a Cast List at the beginning with a two line description of the character! Relationships to others (full name helps here), motives, goals, etc.
It’s amazing what you can summarize to jog the memory. I first saw these in Agatha Christie novels and they’re really useful. I’m a slow reader, easily distracted, so a cast list I can refer to is really useful even for a standalone novel if there’s more than three main characters not to mention all the secondary ones.
A character must be critical to moderately important (i.e. they influence the plot rather than providing background color and verisimilitude) to be included.
I have a very mixed reaction to character lists in general, and Agatha Christie lists in particular. I can tell you that the book I’m writing takes place in a school. I’m not going to write the kind of list you mention (“the character must be moderately important”) but I might try to add a list of teachers in the form of an in-building “phone” list. I’m pretty sure there are just under thirty staff members — way too much for a reader to keep track of, but I don’t want a reader flipping back to the beginning of the book looking for that character list to see if someone is important or forgettable. I’m sure I’m supposed to manage that problem some other way. Even if I’m not sure how…
My cast list is given in order of appearance. As I’ve gotten better at it AND I’ve developed the larger world of Steppes of Mars I’ve listed characters by their full name, showing interlocking families.
Should someone appear? It’s a judgement call.
Cast lists help me because as I age, my brain is turning into mashed turnips and I can’t remember.
Well, I totally get the age part of not remembering things, and order of appearance is a way to avoid the problem I imagined. I guess the thing is to finish the book and then worry, because otherwise it won’t matter at all. 😉
Order of Appearance seems the most logical way to me. Since I write the cast list as I go, if someone doesn’t show up often enough later on (after their first appearance), I delete them from the cast list.
I also, when I’m being organized, write my style sheet as I go along and update my series style sheet. It’s easier but only if I’m being organized.
But I still have to finish writing the book.
Sometimes, updating the cast list or the style sheet or the series bible helps me break a writing block because seeing other names stimulates ideas or I remember what I’d planned to do.
Whatever works!
Thanks!
Bujold was my gold standard for how to handle long series. Nearly every book assumes that this is the first book you’ve picked up, and introduces the characters, and *only* the characters you need to know for that book. And only the part of them you need to know.
There was a pair of scenes that really drove home how excellent a method that was.
In one of the lighter stories, Miles. Is going on a date with a very nice lady. Through a humorous series of little mishaps, she ends up falling off the foot bridge into the duck pond. He has a flashback tries to catch her, and because he’s a dwarf, gets pulled into the pond after her. He starts laughing. She wonders what just happened, and tells her there was someone else who’d fallen, and he couldn’t save them. And now he knows if he’d actually caught them, he would gone out the airlock too.
It is a beautiful scene. And even though it is referencing prior events, it doesn’t matter which order you’re reading them in. The relevant details are described when they are relevant, and only those details, and only when they are relevant.
I’ve done the “cast of thousands” two ways: the Luna City series is contemporary comedy, with about a dozen main characters and another thirty or forty reoccurring. The reoccurring characters are still relevant, and a few of them have merited their own back-stories. So – there is a “cast” list at the beginning of each book.
The historical novels are kind of a series, in that there are related characters who are the main focus in one book, but rate a brief “guest appearance” or just a mention in others. I have made each book in that series relatively free-standing, but I included a family tree at the very end, which shows exactly how the various characters are linked.
I prefer free-standing volumes in a series, though. There is a cliff-hanger at the end of every Luna City – but that is basically a teaser for the next volumn.
Yeah, I have this problem, best handled by having the relevant characters for this story go somewhere else so the other three hundred don’t have to be mentioned.
Or something like that.
I try to keep the core characters consistent, then mention important things about returning minor characters so new-ish readers can keep track. Having base settings (usually the MC’s place of employment) also helps in some cases. I can tie people to this or that place, and help readers keep track.
Yes – Context. Context is a big help. You can tie them to anything that unites them: place, accent, language, profession, etc.
An author like More the Merrier would probably benefit from family trees and maps.
My first couple of series were more or less standalones that cross-referenced previous characters in passing. The third was a duology, and the first scene of book 2 was “here’s what happened after the survivors from Book 1 cleaned up the mess left by the final showdown.” Book 2 had a lot more semi-important characters who drift in and out, but the only POV character who is not in that opening scene is the father of one of the characters who is.
Current trilogy-in-progress is three books with standalone-ish adventures with a character relationship arc spread out over all three books, along with one of those “character gains in status/social capital due to adventures” arcs. I do what I can to keep people up to speed on what happened last time, but books 2 and 3 are not really meant to be read “cold” with no prior familiarity with the series.