A Switch from Writing Standalones to Continuing Story Arcs
By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I used to be a big fan of writing each book in my different series as a standalone. I liked the fact that readers could pick up any book in my series and understand what was going on. If you have continuing stories throughout your series, then obviously the reader has to find the first book in the series if they want to make sense of the subplots.
And, with mysteries, you really don’t need to have a continuing subplot or continuing plot. Each book is a single mystery—a murder or two for the sleuth and reader to figure out together.
My main concern, when I started writing for Penguin, was that the first books in my series wouldn’t stay on the shelves in bookstores—that the stores would stock only the latest book in the series and new readers would be lost if I wrote an episodic storyline.
I write to an older demographic and readers do email me if they can’t find a book in print. But I now feel a lot more comfortable about writing a story arc over the course of a series. The way bookstores are reducing shelf space to make room for non-book products (Nooks, café space, notebooks, toys), I believe that older readers, even those more set in their ways, will venture into the world of online ordering.
I’ve also noticed that I’ve gotten fewer emails lately from readers asking me to help them track down printed copies of older books. My ebook sales figures and royalties have grown, too. It seems clear to me that I’m getting more readers purchasing digital copies of my books than printed ones.
With ebooks, it’s a piece of cake getting an earlier book in a series. All the books are available, at all times, with no end date in sight.
Over the last six months, I started reading in my customer reviews that readers were looking for some character growth or change shown in relationships between characters. I guess that’s natural, since they were reviewing the 4th or 5th book in a series. At that point, they wanted the characters to develop more than they could in a typical standalone mystery (where the plot is mainly centered on the mystery itself).
As a reader, I can find continuing storylines frustrating, if there isn’t enough of the story’s conflict resolved in the book. It just gives a very unfinished feel, or lends a teaser-like quality to the story. But for these mysteries, it’s easier to manage—the main plot, the whodunit, is always neatly tied up at the end in cozy/traditional mysteries. So the only threads I leave dangling have to do with the characters’ subplots and their relationships. I’m hoping that gives readers enough of a sense of story completion/resolution while piquing their interest in upcoming books in the series and future character growth.
This has resulted in a big shift for me with my writing. I’ve also carefully listed the order of books in my series on my website to eliminate any confusion there (and that list was also in response to reader request).
What about you? As a reader, do you enjoy reading episodic storylines? As a writer, do you write them? Have you changed your approach, like I have?
Image: MorgueFile: VeggieGretz
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