These thoughts are aimed at those who are writing a series, as I have been. It’s begun to feel like I’m writing the same book over and over! Why? Because the characters and their sitz im leben need to be reintroduced each time, in case (a very likely case) someone picks up Book Three without having read Books One or Two.
Just how much grounding in the continuum of the series is necessary for each episode?
That depends on the genre, of course, and how deep a backstory it’s important to give. A lot of truths about the personages will emerge in the course of the telling, naturally. And it will matter whether there is a strong continuing story arc throughout the series (Harry Potter) or whether each book is pretty much independent (Nancy Drew).
Continuing Arc: The Series that Lived
In the Harry Potter model, there’s such a pronounced overarching plot that you cannot read the books out of order. Things happen in a given volume that change everything subsequent. In a sense, that makes the assignment easier. It isn’t necessary to reintroduce everyone and every circumstance again in each book. We hear over and over about Harry’s miraculous survival because everybody’s talking about it, but we aren’t told repeatedly that he lived in his aunt’s understairs closet. It only comes up in books where we see him living at home. Hogwarts’ geography is pretty much taken for granted in later volumes, although it is described as needed to set the current scene. In a sense, the seven books of the series are like volumes of a single long story, and so no reintroduction is needed for each book.
Independent Plots: The Secret of the Second Volume
You former girls out there have probably read the Nancy Drew series, either the original or one of the updated ones. Although each book has its separate adventure, we know who Nancy and her friends are because they occur regularly, and it’s that familiarity that makes us feel at home. There’s plump, feminine Bess and tomboyish George, Ned Nickerson, Nancy’s flame, and Nancy’s lawyer father. Likewise, the upper-class more-or-less white world she inhabits is a recurring factor. But things change somewhat—she ages arbitrarily by only two years over the course of the stories, while her world changes from the 1920s into the twenty-first century!
Janet Evanovitch’s wonderful Stephanie Plum stories come to mind here as a modern example of this second category. Plot-wise, each book is completely independent—I can’t think of any trailing pieces of storyline that drift from one to another. But Stephanie and her motley gang of family and associates, her particular employment and its dangers, and the star role her seedy town of Trenton, New Jersey, plays in the books must be explained at least minimally in every adventure or newly arrived readers will be left rolling in the dust. We are told her relationship to Ranger, for example—and its history—whenever he enters a book. So, a lot of retelling gets done in each story, although it’s skillful and fits well with the first-person voice.
What’s the takeaway?
Know which kind of series you’re writing and resay everything necessary to bring new readers up to speed—but only what is necessary. Insert it organically—no information dumps. Avoid Nancy-Drew style jumps and breaks in what faithful readers are expecting. And don’t let yourself be bored by these necessary repetitions, or else the reader will be bored as well!
