On Series

So.

Series.

I mostly write in series, because that’s how I like my fiction.  Open-ended and ongoing.  It’s always… sad, when a favorite TV show or a series of novels works its way to a natural close, because I know that I won’t get to live in that world again, or if I do, it’ll be because an unexpected demand drafted the creators into making more content that they had no plan for – often the worse outcome.  I don’t have any issue with creators who decide they want to end a series, and I can think of several who did a remarkable job at it, but my preference is for worlds that are a bit more realistic in that, after the final word in the book, those characters still exist, the things that they have struggled against still exist (I write non-romance novels; this is a *huge* difference between romance and non-romance, because romance really does have the potential for an HEA), and their willingness to engage with those conflicts is presumably still there.  Even if a cast of characters manages to permanently defeat a specific antagonist (yay!), the world – or universe – is still teeming with people – or non-people – who will jump at the opportunity to lay claim to power.  Evil still exists, even after the villain is dead.

So, yeah, my series don’t have an ending, any more than they (mostly) have chapters.  I don’t get why books want or need them.  They need a conclusion to the conflict arc (sorry about how that worked out in the first four books of Sam & Sam – it really is more like a huge story broken into four parts…  live and learn.) but they don’t have to be *done* at ‘the end’.  I always have loose threads, characters who have incomplete agendas, and room for the main cast to continue to evolve.  I love that about the worlds that I write.

Someone referred to the end of my School of Magic Survival series as a slip-knot, in a review.  I have *no* idea if she considers that a good thing or a bad thing (someone clue me in, in the comments?) and I’m not 100% sure what it means, as a technical term assessing the series, but what it *feels* like is that she’s noting that the series *ended*, but it isn’t tied off in a firm knot.  I could write another book in that series if I wanted to, or if I needed to in order to service plot going on elsewhere in that universe.  I know that other authors may make different decisions, but that’s how I prefer to leave my stories.  Ready for the next fight.

That said, I do try very hard to write a complete ‘origin’ story.  In order for my readers to get introduced to a world, there must be a sequence of exploring that world, which I usually do through the eyes of an uninitiated character of some kind.  That character needs to discover the world, needs to fight to secure a place in that world, and then must demonstrate how he or she works in the context of that world.  In many cases, there’s another element where the character is fighting against the world that he finds himself in.  It’s not a universal structure for action/adventure plots, but it’s pretty common, and for me it is central (not a rule, but a guideline) on how to fit a world to a character and create a system out of a universe that is capable of fighting off the bad guy, whatever form he may take.  From there, anything is possible, and what I’ve effectively done is create a playground where I can build anything I want.  It’s great fun, but getting to that moment, where the MC flexes the world around them and understands their role in it at some meaningful level, I try really hard to get my series to that point as quickly as possible (in the calendar sense) so that I don’t leave readers waiting on the completion of this really important milestone.

After that?  The series can be *done*, if I never come back to it.  That’s okay.

I can come back to it much later because I’ve had an idea I can’t shake or because the character starts inserting herself into other series completely without warning.

Or I can come back because readers can’t stand that a series is done and they must have more.

There are very few series that I’ve written where I don’t have some idea where I would go next, with them.

So.

If you want another book?  Have a favorite character?

Speak up.  I’m listening.