Larry A. Winters's Blog, page 3

What makes a good plot twist?

I don’t just write thrillers. I am also a voracious reader of them. There is a lot to love about the genre—fast-paced stories, larger-than-life characters, sky-high stakes. But one of my favorite things about a good thriller is a perfectly executed twist.

As thriller fans, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about—the shocking reveal, the abrupt reversal, the twist that you never saw coming, but that you should have.

In today’s blog, I thought it might be interesting to dig into this subject and try to dissect what makes a good twist work.

What are some elements that separate a good twist—one that brings a huge smile to your face—from a bad one that makes you roll your eyes? I would offer the following rules:

A good twist needs to be fair to the reader. The truth is right there in the pages all along, if only the reader is alert enough to see it.
A good twist is true to the characters. A very common twist is that a good guy turns out to be a bad guy or vice versa. This twist can be very effective, but only if the character was believably “faking” his or her prior role and if he or she was sufficiently motivated to do so.
A good twist enhances the story, but isn’t the point of the story. Some stories are like jokes, in that they exist solely to support the punchline. This can work on rare occasions—The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense are two examples that come to mind—but usually a story told purely as the setup for a twist will not be a satisfying story in and of itself.

Digging even deeper than these general rules, how, exactly, does a twist work? I consider myself to be intelligent. You’re probably pretty smart, too (most book readers are, in my experience). So how is it that these twists fool us, again and again? How are these writers outsmarting us?

Here, I’m going to take off my reader hat, put on my writer hat, and give you a glimpse behind the curtain. Because, while some twists occur naturally in the writing, surprising the writer as much as the reader, most twists are deliberately constructed according to a method that is similar to methods magicians use while performing magic tricks.

The secret is that twists exploit assumptions. All people—even highly intelligent ones—supplement their actual observations with assumptions about how the world works. If you look at a person from behind and the person has a diminutive frame and long hair, you will probably think the person is a woman. This conclusion is based on your actual observation—body type, long hair—and an assumption—most people with small frames and long hair are female. Now the person turns around and you see it’s a man. You experience a moment of surprise as your brain readjusts.

Take that simple example and use it in the context of a thriller. You observe a well-organized group of foreign men with assault rifles, explosives, and other weapons infiltrate and hold hostage an office building in LA. You probably think they are terrorists. But this conclusion is based on assumptions. When it turns out that these men are actually thieves trying to steal bearer bonds, you have the awesome twist in the third act of Die Hard. (Sorry for the spoiler, but hey, the movie is almost 30 years old.)

I’ve tried to use twists in my own books. Some of them have been more effective than others, but overall I think I’ve done a good job. (I often see reviews praising the surprising twists and turns in the stories, which I take as a sign I’m doing something right.) And because I enjoy reading a good plot twist so much, I’m always eager to learn more about how and why they work.

Do you have ideas about what makes a good twist? If so, please share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

Tips for Writers—Scene Structure

As I mentioned before, this isn’t a writing blog. However, because this blog is about me, and I write books, it is somewhat inevitable that the subject of writing will come up from time to time. Today I’m going to talk about structure. Not the structure of a novel as a whole (we’ll cover that another time), but the structure of an individual section within a novel. (I am resisting using the word “scene” for reasons that will be clear in a moment—bear with me.)

Often, we writers focus on the big picture—characters, plot, setting—but when it comes down to actually writing a specific section of the story, sometimes we draw a blank. When I’m in this situation, I find it helpful to remember a basic structure that can be applied in most situations in a novel.

I did not come up with the following structure. I learned it from a book by Jack Bickham, an American author and writing teacher who, in addition to writing a bunch of novels (75 of them, according to Wikipedia), also wrote a book called Scene & Structure, which was published by Writers Digest Books in 1993. I’m only going to touch on Bickham’s ideas here. For more depth, you’ll need to pick up his book. (And I do recommend it. Scene & Structure is one of the more practical craft books out there, covering the nitty gritty of writing, right down to sentence structure.)

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Scene & Structure, one of the more practical craft books out there

In his book, Bickham describes a structure he calls “scene and sequel.” (This is why I have avoided using the word “scene” throughout this blog post—Bickham assigns a specific meaning to that word that differs from its common use.) To very roughly paraphrase Bickham, a “scene” is the section in which a character acts, and a “sequel” is the section following the scene, in which the character reflects on what happened in the scene. Bickham maintains that you need both, and that one follows the other, alternating throughout the book.

Bickham breaks down the components of a scene and sequel as follows:

Components of a Scene:

Goal: As the scene begins, the reader is told the viewpoint character’s goal. There should be no ambiguity. Just go ahead and say it: “Jessie needed to reach her gun before the man in her apartment could kill her.”

Conflict: The character seeks the goal but encounters an obstacle. The conflict is the character’s struggle to overcome the obstacle and reach his or her goal. In my Jessie example, the gun is on a high shelf in the bedroom closet, and the killer stands between Jessie and the closet. She tries to get around him.

Disaster: Unless this is the end of the story, the character’s struggle ends in disaster. The writer has a handful of options here. For example, the character can fail to reach the goal, or reach the goal but discover that the goal presents even greater problems. Example: Jessie gets past the man, races to the closet, and gets the gun—but the man takes it away from her. Now she’s in an even worse position than when she started, because her attacker now has a gun.

Usually, a scene flows immediately into a sequel.

Components of a Sequel:

Emotion: The character is reeling from the disaster. There’s no logic or reasoning yet, just pure emotional turmoil. In my example, Jessie would be feeling terror as she looks down the barrel of the gun.

Thoughts: The character gets past the emotion stage and starts to think, applying logic and reasoning. Jessie would start thinking about how to survive against an armed attacker. Maybe if she could shut off the lights, plunging the apartment into darkness, she could escape.

Decision: Thoughts lead to a plan, which the main character decides to pursue. The light switch is only two feet to her right. She could lunge for it.

Action: The character takes the first step in the new plan. Jessie makes a move for the light switch.

From here, you cycle to the next scene. The character states his or her goal, and so on.

Obviously, this is a very clinical way to approach writing. I DO NOT suggest that writers consciously apply this structure as they write, filling in the proper pieces step by step. It’s better to give your creativity more freedom than that.

However, if you get stuck in the middle of a section, or if you’ve written a section but it doesn’t seem to be working, Bickham’s structure can be a very useful map to help you find your way forward. That’s how I use it.

Here’s an excerise: Pick a random book and open it to a random section. Does the author follow Bickham’s basic structure? I’ve done this exercise and been surprised by how often the answer is yes.

Let me know your results in the comments section below.

Thoughts on the Fatal Defense book launch

Fatal Defense, the new book in the Jessie Black Legal Thriller series, launched on Friday, April 7. It’s still a little early to evaluate the success of the launch, but I thought it might be interesting to share some of my thoughts.

I’m writing this blog post on Friday, April 14, 2017. As of that date, Fatal Defense is in the top 100 legal thriller bestsellers on Amazon. (Hopefully that’s still the case when you read this.) For me, this is a good result. I am hopeful that the book will “get sticky” and remain in the top 100 Kindle legal thrillers for a while, where it will be visible to legal thriller fans browsing Amazon for their next read.

One of my other hopes was that the launch of Fatal Defense would pull the other books in the series back into the top 100 as well. Although this did occur briefly for one night, it didn’t last. Burnout remains in the top 100, but Informant and Deadly Evidence seem to have dropped out of the list. (Again, this may have changed by the time this blog post goes live.)

Here I am climbing the ranks of Amazon’s “Hot New Releases” list for Legal Thrillers (April 7, 2017)

Ultimately, I’d love to be able to launch a book into the top 10 legal thrillers, or maybe even the top 10 books on Amazon (one can dream). Obviously, I have a long way to go before either of those goals is achieved! So far, I’m happy with this launch. A lot of readers picked up Fatal Defense, and feedback on the book has been very positive. It took about a year of writing and revising to get this book into shape. Hearing from happy readers is one of the most rewarding parts of this career.

For anyone wondering what happens behind the scenes of a book launch, the answer is a lot of work. The weeks immediately preceding and following the publication date were especially hectic. During the ramp-up to release, I juggled last minute changes to the manuscript, writing and polishing the book description that appears on the Amazon page, formatting the book for Kindle devices, and a bunch of other tasks I’m probably forgetting. In the days following publication, I went into promotion mode, advertising the book at a special launch price and generally trying to get the word out to existing fans and new readers.

The paperback is coming soon!

I’m hesitant to offer advice on this subject because I don’t believe there is one “correct” method for launching a book. I’ve done it differently every time. But one thing is constant—you must publish the best book you can, and then make it as visible as possible. For advice on the craft of writing, check out my series of blog posts I call Tips for Writers. You can achieve visibility through social media, email, advertising, and—most powerful of all—word of mouth as happy readers tell their friends about the book. Whatever you do, the launch process is always exciting (and exhausting).

I will continue to promote Fatal Defense, especially during the thirty-day period in which Amazon considers a book to be a new release. I also need to format the paperback version and make that available for purchase, which is the next task on my To Do list. But most of the work for the launch is done.

And that means it’s time to start the whole process again by jumping into the next project….

If you purchased a copy of Fatal Defense, thank you. I appreciate your support and enthusiasm. Without readers like you, I wouldn’t be able to do this!
If you’re a fan of legal thrillers and haven’t picked up the book, please take a look. It’s available here.

If you need to catch up on the earlier Jessie Black novels, here is a list in chronological order:

Burnout (Jessie Black Legal Thrillers, Book 1)

Informant (Jessie Black Legal Thrillers, Book 2)

Deadly Evidence (Jessie Black Legal Thrillers, Book 3)

Fatal Defense (Jessie Black Legal Thrillers, Book 4)

Jessie also appears as a character in my standalone legal thriller Web of Lies

Thank you and happy reading!

Two good reasons you should post book reviews

If you’ve read my books, you know that at the end of each book, I ask readers to post an honest review on Amazon. I make this request because reviews can be critically important to a book’s success. Here are some thoughts on why that’s the case.

Social Proof

If you see two books with catchy titles, great covers, and intriguing descriptions, and one of the books has two reviews (mostly positive), while the other has two-hundred reviews (mostly positive), chances are you’ll pick up the book with two-hundred reviews. This seems to be true even if the average review score of the book with two-hundred reviews is slightly lower than that of the book with only two reviews.

This reader preference for numerous reviews ties back to a concept called social proof. According to Wikipedia, social proof is “a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation.” The thought process is: If two-hundred people liked this book, I’ll probably like this book.

Amazon knows this, and has trained its software algorithm accordingly. If a customer enters a search, and the algorithm identifies two books that meet the search criteria, one of which has two reviews, and the other two-hundred, the algorithm is likely to place the book with two-hundred reviews above the other one in the search results listing.

The more reviews a book has (assuming they are reasonably positive when averaged), the more social proof attaches to that book. Social proof influences not only what a potential reader is likely to buy, but also which books an online marketplace such as Amazon is likely to show the reader.

Feedback

Another reason reviews are important is that they provide writers with feedback from a wide range of readers. Some writers avoid reading their own reviews, and I’ve come across books and websites for writers recommending this practice. Personally, I think doing so is a mistake and a missed opportunity for both the writer and his or her readers. I try to read all my reviews.

Reviews, taken collectively, often highlight the aspects of a book that are connecting with readers and the flaws of a book that are turning readers off. Reviews can also help a writer, and other readers, see a book from a different perspective.

One of my favorite reviews of Burnout included the following statement: “I like Jessie because she is strong, smart, intelligent, not afraid to follow her intuition and push for the chance that will allow her to follow through and bring justice for the victims and their loved ones.” Wow! Aside from being very flattered, I was floored by how concisely this reader pinpointed the core of Jessie’s character. I wrote this sentence down and I keep it on my desk. It’s a handy guide when I’m outlining a plot for a new Jessie Black book, or even when I’m writing a scene and trying to figure out how Jessie would speak or act.

In other words, by posting this thoughtful review, this reader subtly influenced my writing. Think about that. It’s powerful. Readers should not overlook the opportunity to use reviews as a feedback mechanism, and writers should not overlook the value of such feedback. (Of course, negative feedback is more painful for a writer to read, but a bad review, if specific and thoughtfully written, can also be useful.)

Have you reviewed the books you’ve recently enjoyed? If not, consider going to the book’s Amazon page, clicking on the “Write a customer review” button, and posting a short review. The author (whether it’s me or someone else) will be thankful!

Shameless plug: If you’ve read and enjoyed my new book Fatal Defense, please consider posting a review. Click here to post a review of Fatal Defense. Thanks—I truly appreciate it!

Fatal Defense (A Jessie Black Legal Thriller) Available This Friday!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since I published the previous book in the Jessie Black series, Deadly Evidence, but the fourth book is finally ready. Fatal Defense will be published for Kindle this Friday, April 7, 2017.

If you hurry, you can pre-order your copy at a special launch price by clicking here!

A paperback version will also be available in the next few weeks.

Here’s the cover and book description:

After years prosecuting murderers, assistant district attorney Jessica Black doesn’t think there’s anything that can truly disturb her. She’s wrong.

When a distraught teenage girl shows up out of nowhere, demanding to talk, Jessie thinks the girl looks familiar but can’t quite place her. She claims her father was murdered and the police are letting the killer get away with it. Jessie feels for the girl, but investigating murders is the role of the police department. Jessie is an assistant DA.

Then she realizes why Carrie looks familiar, and what homicide she’s talking about.

Reluctantly drawn into a politically explosive case the police and the DA’s office don’t want her to touch, Jessie finds herself face-to-face with terrifying questions of law and morality in an upside-down world where the line between victim and killer is dangerously blurred. But like Carrie, she won’t stop searching for the truth, even if it means risking her career, her values, and her life.

Jessie Black returns in the acclaimed legal thriller series readers are calling “fast paced and totally spellbinding.” Fatal Defense is the fourth book in the Jessie Black Legal Thrillers series. If you like great characters and surprises that keep you guessing until the end, you’ll love the novels of Larry A. Winters.

Click here to pre-order Fatal Defense today!

Quick Update

I’m currently neck-deep in the final edits to the next Jessie Black book, so I don’t have time for a full-length blog post this week. However, I wanted to check in, if for no other reason than to maintain my streak of posting to this blog every week since the beginning of the year. Here are some thoughts about where I’m at with the book.

The thing about editing, which I touched on last week, is that even though every editing pass through the manuscript tends to improve the work, there comes a point where you need to stop—or else the book will never be finished. This morning, as I stared at Chapter 1 for the hundredth time, I realized I’m probably at that point.

I’m going to allow myself one more run through the manuscript, because I want to give you my best work. But I’m going to try to limit my edits to sharpening a bit of dialogue here, or smoothing an awkward phrase there. No major changes to story or characters, even if I think of something really cool. Any new cool ideas will need to be saved for the next book.

Thank you for being patient! Watch this blog or your inbox (sign up here to receive emails) for big news soon!

The Pain and the Glory of Editing

Forgive me the melodramatic blog title. I’ve been editing the fourth Jessie Black legal thriller since December of 2016, when I finished the first draft. At this point, I’m a little punch-drunk.

Does over three months of editing seem like a long time to you? It feels like an eternity to me. I hate editing. But I would never consider shortchanging this critical part of the writing process.

The term “editing” can mean different things in different contexts to different people, so let me start off with some quick explanations. First, this isn’t one of those situations where an author has received comments from an editor. I don’t use a developmental editor. I self-edit. So I have no one to curse and complain about other than myself.

Second, I’m not talking about correcting typos (although that’s important, too). I’m talking about making substantive changes to the manuscript—reworking whole scenes, changing a character’s personality or motivation, putting events into a different order, changing the ending (and/or the beginning). These are large-scale, time-intensive edits, which often have effects that ripple backward and forward through the story, requiring even more edits. It’s a lot of work. At times, it feels overwhelming.

Writing a first draft can be fun—even exhilarating when I’m in the zone—with moments of spontaneous brilliance and the sheer joy of telling a story. Editing, on the other hand, is slower, often tedious, often excruciating work. But minute-for-minute, I’ve found that editing actually provides more value per time spent. At least for me, it’s in the editing phase when I see a story move from something I’m hopeful but not quite sure about, to something I can’t wait to show the world.

It’s during editing when I usually find the emotional heart of the story, the element that has the power, if fully developed, to elevate the book from a fun read to a fun and powerful read. I may sense the emotional heart of the story during the planning or initial drafting of the book, but it’s rare that I identify it with certainty until well into the editing stage.

I’ll give you a recent example. In Deadly Evidence, it took me a long time to realize that the emotional heart of that story isn’t the school shooting or the romance subplot, but the friendship between Jessie and Detective Emily Graham, which had not been emphasized in the book’s original outline or first draft. Once I realized the importance of that subplot, other elements of the book came to life in a way they had not before.

Other aspects of my books that seem to improve exponentially through editing are pacing, structure, time and chronology issues, characterization, and overall narrative voice. I use a software app called Scrivener, which makes it easy to move chapters and scenes around. It’s surprising how frequently moving a scene forward or backward in the story can dramatically enhance pacing, believability, or both, but I usually won’t think of these “big picture” changes until I’m editing.

Sometimes a character can go from a cardboard cutout to an interesting person in the editing phase. A setting may change from a dull, expected location to a fresh one. You get the idea.

No matter how vital a part of the process editing may be, at some point, it needs to end or the book will never be finished. How do I know when that point has been reached? I don’t, really. I rely on a gut instinct, a combination of pride in the work, the need to get the book into stores from a business perspective, and my own physical and mental exhaustion.

The fourth Jessie Black novel is just about at this point. I think it’s really good. I think I found and developed its emotional heart. And I’m really excited to publish it.

Just let me edit a little bit more….

Tips for Writers—How to Use Weather to Enhance a Story

Here on the east coast, Winter Storm Stella poured over a foot of snow onto my town yesterday. We had impassable roads, blizzard conditions, accumulating ice, and intense winds. The governor declared a state of emergency, so most businesses closed, kids stayed home from school, the only vehicles on the roads were snowplows and the occasional adventurer, and the snow fell for most of the day in a steady white curtain, occasionally whipped around by a vicious gust of wind.

You don’t visit this blog for weather updates, so let me bring things around to our favorite subject: thrillers. Watching the snow through the window of my writing room got me thinking about the role weather can play in a story. Seems like a good topic for my Writing Tips series.

Weather as mood-setter

One way a writer can use weather is to help set the mood. Like a soundtrack in a movie, a few well-chosen details about the weather can put readers in a specific emotional frame of mind without interrupting the story. For example, yesterday there was a blizzard outside my window, but I was warm and safe inside my house. Imagine a scene in which a character goes through a familiar breakfast routine with his family, while outside, the wind and snow beat against the walls. Juxtaposing the family’s safe, familiar routine with the wild, dangerous world of nature beyond their walls creates a mood of cozy intimacy.

By contrast, imagine if the storm brought down the power lines and the house lost electricity. The heater stopped working. The internet and the phones went down. Now, instead of cozy intimacy, we have isolation and fear. Stephen King used weather to create this type of mood in The Shining, in which the members of the Torrance family found themselves alone and isolated in an empty hotel during a winter storm. King did it so well that weather is one of the most memorable parts of a very memorable novel. (Seriously, if you haven’t read The Shining, get it now!)

Weather as an active antagonist

When weather moves from background to foreground, it can serve as an antagonist in the story. To use Winter Storm Stella as an example again, imagine if our character needs to drive in the storm. His car gets stranded, and he is forced to leave its warm confines and face the elements. This is a conflict known as man versus nature, in which nature becomes the bad guy. Our character faces pain, frostbite, and the threat of a slow, terrifying death by freezing, if he cannot overcome the weather through his skill, ingenuity, and perseverance. Many disaster movies use weather as an antagonist. The Perfect Storm, for example, dramatized the conflict between a deadly storm at sea and people on a ship trying to survive.

Weather in the real world

In the real world, all the weather meant for me yesterday was that I had to bundle myself up in snow pants, coat, and hat, fire up the snow blower, and dig us out. It was a chore. Mundane and unpleasant. Not fun. As with so much in life, the real world is rarely as exciting as a thriller.

But that’s a good thing. I’d rather curl up on the couch with my wife and kids than battle frostbite in a high-stakes battle of life and death. I’ll save that scenario for my Kindle.

Nervous Laughter—Humor in Thriller Novels

One reason thrillers are often compared to roller coaster rides is that a great thriller grabs hold of your heart and mind and rockets you through many emotions at a whiplash-inducing pace. A great thriller hits several emotions at once—excitement, anxiety, anticipation, fear, hope, sadness, and glee, among others.

For me, humor is one emotion that is often excluded, but that can really make a thriller stand out. Even when I’m on the edge of my seat, rapidly turning the pages of a tense thriller, a laugh can be as welcome—sometimes more welcome—than a scare.

Humor comes in many forms, and not all of them are good fits for the thriller genre. For example, satire uses irony and exaggeration to make fun of real-world social or political issues. Parody targets a different fictional work and creates humor for people familiar with that work by imitating and subverting it. Slapstick comedy draws its laughs from exaggerated physical activity, often involving clumsy people getting hurt or embarrassed in ridiculous ways. Surreal humor envisions a world of fantasy, closer to a dream or a nightmare than to the real world. While these forms of humor can be hilarious and entertaining (think Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, Weird Al), they don’t tend to work well in the thriller genre because they achieve their effects by breaking the “fourth wall”—in other words, drawing the reader’s attention outside the story and interrupting immersion.

Two types of humor that do work well with the thriller genre are situational humor and character humor. Situational humor finds comedy in situations that arise in everyday life. Sometimes these can be ridiculous (think Seinfeld), but even so, they remain anchored in reality. The reason we find them funny is because we’ve all been there. Situational humor can work in a thriller because, even though the characters are thrust into a funny situation, the reader’s suspension of disbelief is not broken because it is believable that the characters would find themselves in that situation.

Another type of humor that works well in a thriller is character humor. Some people are just naturally funny. Whether because of an off-kilter worldview, a knack for witty one-liners, or humorous habits or traits, these are characters who make us laugh just by being themselves.

As a writer, I enjoy putting character humor into my books. For examples in my work, look at Jack Ackerman in Burnout (a defense attorney who, after suffering a nervous breakdown, views the world through a skewed, humorous lens), Reggie Tuck in Informant (a witty con artist), Toby Novak in Deadly Evidence (a cop with a possibly unhealthy addiction to Facebook), and Noah Snyder in Web of Lies and Deadly Evidence (a bottom-feeding lawyer with a highly questionable moral code). I enjoyed writing these characters, and based on feedback, readers have enjoyed them, too.

Shameless plug: I think Reggie Tuck is my funniest character. If you like humor, action, and suspense, check out Informant!

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The right type of humor can bring a lot to a thriller—a moment of relief between tense scenes, an element of unpredictability that can surprise and delight, and/or a closer bond to the characters. Humor also enables the exploration of dark subject matter that might otherwise be so grim that it ceases to be entertaining.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know one of my favorite writers is Stephen King. Among his other gifts, King is a master of situational and character humor. Most of King’s characters are almost instantly lovable—even many of the bad guys—and I believe one reason is King imbues them with a humor that helps make them likeable and relatable.

Do you like to laugh while you read a gripping page-turner, or do you prefer to keep your comedies and your thrillers separate? Is there a thriller you’d recommend that uses humor to great effect? Please let me know in the comments!

A Thriller Writer’s Thoughts on Book Series

I’ve written both series and standalone books. The series books are more popular. A quick look at Amazon shows that this is a general trend. The bestseller charts are dominated by series books across most genres, including romance, mystery/thriller, and science fiction and fantasy. Readers seem to love series. But writing them presents some challenges. A series book has some limitations and drawbacks that a standalone novel does not. As a writer, one of my goals is to write good series books while navigating around these potential pitfalls.

Familiarity versus Character Growth

One reason readers return to a favorite series because they enjoy a familiarity with the recurring characters, usually the main character in particular. Maintaining this familiarity requires keeping the main character mostly consistent from book to book. However, doing so risks sacrificing one of storytelling’s most potentially powerful devices: the character arc.

A self-contained, standalone novel can easily feature a strong character arc. The protagonist begins the story as one type of person, and ends the story as a significantly changed person. The reader experiences the change over the course of the novel alongside the character. If handled well, the arc can be incredibly moving and bring a satisfying feeling of finality and closure.

This type of arc is more difficult to pull off in a series novel because too much closure would cut off the possibility of future installments in the series. Also, if the character arc changes the main character too much, you jeopardize the sense of familiarity and connection that draws readers to the series.

In the Jessie Black books, I’ve tried to strike a balance by including a character arc for at least one secondary character in each book. Jessie herself doesn’t change significantly from book to book, and I don’t want her to. Readers return to the series because they like her as she is—smart and determined, ethical and compassionate. By including character arcs for other characters to experience with Jessie’s help, I’ve hopefully added emotional depth without sacrificing familiarity. For example, Kristen Dillard in Burnout undergoes an emotionally-charged character arc, as does Reggie Tuck in Informant. These side characters only appear in individual books, so giving them complete arcs does not impact other books in the series.

Plausibility

Another risk of the series book is plausibility. Readers will suspend their disbelief in exchange for a good story, but there is a limit to what even the more generous reader will believe. Especially in the thriller genre, every book in a series represents another high-stakes, life-or-death conflict for the main character. Pile up too many of these in one character’s life, and things start to feel contrived.

The best way I’ve come up with to avoid this risk is to give the main character an occupation that believably places them in high-stakes situations on a regular basis. Jessie is a homicide prosecutor. Dealing with murderers is her job. This seems a lot more plausible than a florist who routinely encounters murderers (that setup can work in a cozy mystery series, but some believability is sacrificed). And even with Jessie’s legitimately dangerous career as justification for her series of life-and-death encounters, I still received one review from a reader questioning why Jessie wasn’t suffering from PTSD after all she’s been through. A valid point.

Stagnation

One final risk of a series is creative stagnation. When every book features the same character, and follows a similar story structure, there is a risk that the series will begin to feel rote. I’m only three books into the Jessie Black series so far (with number four coming soon), and I haven’t really faced this problem yet. However, I can imagine that nine or ten books into the series, keeping things fresh could become more of a challenge. I don’t want the series to ever become boring or predictable (as opposed to familiar), so this is a risk I will need to be vigilant about.

Even with these drawbacks, I’ll continue to write (and read) series books. The bond between a reader and a series character is kind of amazing when you think about it, a friendship based solely on words on a page. It thrills me when I hear from a reader who’s formed a connection with one of my characters. I plan to keep writing about Jessie for as long as fans want to read about her. (And I’ll probably start some new series as well.)

What do you think? Do you prefer series or standalone novels? Please let me know in the comments!