Planning a series that holds together
A series is not several books that share characters. It is one story told in installments, and each installment has to work both ways: on its own, and as part of the whole. That double obligation is the difficulty, and it is structural.
The series bible, and what it saves you is about holding on to decisions once they are made. This guide is about making them, which happens earlier and is harder to undo.
Two stories are running at once
The book-level story starts and finishes between two covers: a case, a campaign, a season. The reader closes the book having been given something.
The series-level story finishes only at the end of the last volume: what the protagonist is really facing, what the world is really doing. Every book moves it and none completes it until the end.
Both layers are live in every volume. Neither can be the only thing happening.
The two ways the balance goes wrong
They are opposite failures, and between them they account for most of what goes structurally wrong in a series.
A book that resolves nothing reads as a fragment. The reader reaches the last page, finds that what they were following has simply stopped, and writes that this is not a book, it is part one. A cliffhanger is different: it closes the current question before opening a new one. The frustration is arriving at an end with nothing concluded.
A book that resolves everything fails more quietly and costs more. Nobody complains. They just do not buy the next one, because the story they were reading is over and volume two has to build a reason to care from cold.
The test on a draft: name the thing that finished in this book, and name the thing that got bigger. If you cannot do both, a layer is missing.
Plan the ends, not the middles
A series improvised book by book produces two predictable results. It sags in the middle, because the story sits between an opening and an ending nobody has chosen yet. And it contradicts itself, because a decision in book two forecloses something book four needed.
So plan enough to know the destination and the major turns: the ending of the series, the point at which each volume's own story closes, and the two or three moments where the series-level story changes state — the reversal, the reveal, the loss that cannot be undone.
That is not planning everything. A series worked out to the scene cannot respond to itself. Book two will turn out to be about something slightly different from what you intended — a secondary character takes it over, a theme surfaces — and book four has to be free to answer the book you actually wrote. Fix the ending and the turns; leave the route between them loose.
The questions to answer before book two
Book two is the decision point. After it, the shape is largely set by what is already in print.
- How many books? A number, even a provisional one. "Three" and "as many as it takes" produce different second books.
- What changes for the protagonist across the whole run? Not per volume. From the first page of book one to the last page of the last. If the answer is "not much", you have a series of episodes, which is a legitimate form but has to earn continuation some other way.
- What is the reader promised? A series makes a standing offer: this kind of story, this tone, this satisfaction, every time. Readers given something else feel misled even when the book is better than the one they expected.
- What is the last page of the last book? Write it down now, roughly. It is the most useful thing to know: everything else is the route to it, and without it you cannot tell whether a volume is advancing or circling.
The series that keeps expanding
A trilogy that becomes five books, then seven, usually shows it. The middle volumes take on subplots that fill the space between the ending you promised and the ending you keep postponing, the pace slackens, and readers reach for the word filler.
Sometimes the extra books are the real story and you were wrong about the length. More often the series grows because the ending was never decided. If the number keeps rising, the question is whether the last page has been chosen.
The books have to look like a set
Story continuity is invisible work, caught by the few readers comparing volumes. Design continuity is caught by everyone at a glance: a different trim size, body face or spine layout reads as a different publisher.
In the tools. My Books can duplicate a finished book into a new book id, carrying its design and settings over, so volume two starts from volume one's trim, interior style and cover layout rather than from your memory of them. You replace the manuscript and the title. Start your book → · about the tools
Record those settings as you make them. Series covers: the same shelf, three books along covers what stays fixed and what varies.
Readers arrive out of order
Someone will read book three first, because it was on sale or it was the one the library had. Others read book one and come back eleven months later.
Both need orienting and neither will sit through a recap. Rebuild only what the current book needs, inside the current book's action: a relationship restated in how two people speak to each other, a past event mentioned the way people mention things they both remember. Chapter one of book four is not the place for a summary of books one to three.
Make the order findable outside the text as well — the number on the cover, the series fields in the store listing, the also-by list at the back. Series numbering, and getting the books to find each other covers where it has to appear.
Make your book
The tools are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: The series bible, and what it saves you · More: Series covers: the same shelf, three books along · Series numbering, and getting the books to find each other · Box sets and omnibus editions