Thoughts on Series

I was reading Emily Guido’s post titled, “The Next Big Thing” And you can find her post here…

For those that don’t know, Emily is the author of  “The Light-Bearer” series.

And Alastair asked, “How do you carry on the story across novels?”

It’s easy. Most novels have a beginning, middle, and an end. Yes, they lived happily ever after, done. But did they? Even though you think your story is done and most stories have the characters ending their story when they are in, let’s say their thirties, Does that mean life just stops for them? It doesn’t for us, so why should it for our beloved characters?  Even after Stephen King wrote “The End” for his Dark Tower series, he still had a story to tell in, “The Wind Through The Keyhole” Which was a story within a story, within a story 🙂 But it was like touching base with old friends and seeing what they were up to.

Take one of the characters from one of your books and create a new adventure for them. Or how about making a separate story for one of your minor characters. A spinoff so to speak.

Take “Chris’ Journey Turning Different Corners” for example. In the first book of Chris’ journey starts out when she’s 12 and takes her to the age of 22. In book one she meets Sue, who becomes her best friend, but book 1, as well as books 2, 3, and 4, are about Chris’ life, even though Sue is in all 4 books, the story doesn’t really talk about Sue’s life before she met Chris, so that’s one option.

    The reason I decided to make Chris’ Journey a series is because I wrote the 4th book first as a stand alone and when I was finished, I found that there were questions that could be answered if I wrote books 1, 2, and 3.

What makes you decide to make your stand alone novel into a series?

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• Tagged: emily guido, novel, questions, series, stand alone