SHARON WILDWIND

Keeping a Series Going

SHARON WILDWIND is a Canadian mystery writer, writing teacher, and journal-keeper. Her first mystery series featured two female Vietnam veterans, Elizabeth Pepperhawk and Avivah Rosen.

 

 

Agents and publishers ask, “Is it a series?” The most common answers are (a) “If the first book is well received, I might consider a series”; and (b) “I hope it will be a series that goes forever.” Neither answer is what an agent or publisher wants to hear from an author. They want to know market potential: How many books, how often, over what period of time? The author wonders, How many stories do my characters have to tell?

When considering a series, ask yourself four questions:

1. How healthy am I?

2. What are my current commitments?

3. What are my potential commitments over the next five years?

4. What is my vision for devoting the next five to ten years of my life to this series?

If you are already heavily committed, or think you might be, you might choose a three-book series instead of five books, or anticipate more time between each book.

Writing a series is akin to raising children, with a new child coming along every twelve to fifteen months. You not only have to produce the new child, but also need to care for the previous children. Keeping a series going involves writing new books and marketing and promoting the previous books.

An unending series of books, published year after year by the same house, is gone. Series have changed, become shorter. Sometimes there are different publishers or different formats for each book. A successful series now runs three to five books. Anything past five is gravy. Think of the first three to five books as your series starter kit. This gets you into the market and gives you a chance to figure out where you want to go next.

Every series needs a time arc. How far apart will your books take place in character time? Some readers find characters discovering a body (mystery) or saving the world (thriller) every two weeks tiresome. Some don’t care. They just want good stories. At the other end of the scale, if a long time passes between books, how will you handle your characters aging?

Some characters don’t age. Between 1956 and 2005, Ed McBain kept the 87th Precinct series going for fifty-six books, as well as through numerous movie, TV, and comic book spin-offs. The squad room changed around them; the wars the detectives had fought in changed, but they remained pretty much the same age through the entire series.

For my own series, I wanted to do five books. I picked the date for the first one—July 1971—for a personal reason. That was the date I returned from Vietnam. I knew that the last one would be immediately after the fall of Saigon. Four years would pass from book one to book five, and I decided that the characters would age real-time. When I looked at those time bookends, 1971 and 1975, it seemed logical to aim for one book a year in character time.

EXERCISE

Step 1. How many books in the starter series?

 

Step 2. How long, in character time, will the series cover?

 

Step 3. How long will you need to write the series?

 

Step 4. What is your series arc?

Every series needs an arc. What problems beset the characters? How do they change? Is the underlying situation strong and complex enough to sustain multiple story lines and create multiple changes in fate? Here are some examples of series arcs in long-running series.

• William Monk / Hester Latterly series by Anne Perry: Monk slowly recovers from amnesia and has to come to terms with the differences between the man he was before his accident and the man he wants to be now.

• Benni Harper series by Earlene Fowler: A young widow remarries and gradually accepts that her second marriage is not at all like the first, and is all the sweeter for that.

• Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series by Faye Kellerman: An Orthodox Jewish woman and a technically Jewish but not especially religious man negotiate a balance between their very different religious and secular worlds.

Step 5. What real life-experience do you have that ties into these books?

This is known as your platform.

Step 6. Put this information together into a series synopsis.

Aim for a series synopsis of fewer than 500 words. Here’s an example.

 

Women of the New West Mystery Series

 

This is a proposed three-book mystery series set in Tucumcari, New Mexico. The protagonists are independent western women: Ramona Sandoval, a divorced ex-con, who is determined to regain custody of her two teenage daughters; Betty (Whip) Sandoval, her aunt; and Lois Hanna, a rancher turned agricultural teacher. The time frame covered by the series is nine to ten months. I anticipate completing one book every fourteen months.

I am the daughter and wife of ranchers. My mother, like Lois, is a past president of New Mexico CowBelles, the state chapter of American National CattleWomen, Inc. Being around those women has been an education in itself.

 

Working titles for this series are:

• Mesa Women, completed, and submitted for your consideration

• Who Owns the Wind?—in progress

• Fire Mesa—in planning

In Mesa Women, Ramona is convinced that her ex-husband is up to no good, but who believes an ex-con? Whip and Lois do. When the ex disappears from a murder scene, leaving Ramona’s daughters in trouble with juvenile authorities, Ramona breaks parole and risks going back to jail to find out what’s going on.

 

Water rights disputes have always been part of the West, but can anyone own the wind? In Who Owns the Wind? a large corporation brings a lawsuit against Lois, accusing her college of industrial espionage. Can Ramona risk being at the center of a nasty murder investigation just when her daughters’ custody petition is going to court?

 

Why is Whip sneaking off at night to meet an old man on Tucumcari Mountain? Why does Lois stop speaking to Whip when the old man turns up dead? In Fire Mesa, there’s more than a range fire threatening the mesa and Ramona’s daughters. As the characters discover, old secrets are the worst secrets.

How locked are you into your synopsis? In this example, you’ve made a general commitment to setting characters and the underlying theme of whether Ramona will get custody of her daughters. You’ve also made a general commitment to complete a book about every fourteen months. After that you have tons of wiggle room.

If “Is it a series?” is the first question, the last one—discussed ad infinitum—is, “Is the series dead?” The answer is, “Not likely.” Go for it!