5 Tips to Writing a Series

1  Create a lead character you want to get to know. You’re asking your readers to invest time and money into this fictional person, so make them someone you care about. Unless you’re writing a romance novel, give your protagonist at least one gnarly flaw. One that really causes them trouble. Or give them multiple flaws – so many we don’t see how they make it through a day, let alone a life, but make sure they have something we can like about them. Maybe it’s just that they never give up. You want your readers to be in your protagonist’s court. We have to want them to win.

2  Give your protagonist room to grow. They either will or they won’t, and even you may not know how they’re going to deal with whatever situation you put them in, but give them something to struggle against: a person, themselves, a crisis. It’s the growth of the lead character we come back to with each new novel. The secondary plots are often the most satisfying. Yes, they catch the bad guy, but we’re almost more interested in how they handle their overbearing boss, conniving coworker, unfaithful spouse, or boredom with their job.

3  Sprinkle secondary characters into the mix. This is where you get to have fun. Iona Slattery with the painted-on hot pink jeans. Tava’e, the Samoan chess queen, and Purgatory, Ben’s sausauge-loving, Greater Swiss Mountain dog with the lethal farts are a few I enjoyed creating. Your main character can be normal, but her friends, neighbors and co-workers don’t have to be! Think of Lula, Stephanie Plum’s former-prostitute sidekick and her one-dimensional but hot sometime-love-interest, Ranger. Secondary characters give your main character dimension, your stories continuity, and you can feature or fade them at will.

4  Give your series a strong sense of place. William Kent Kreuger does this well, and even though Nevada Barr takes us to a different National Park with every new book, we know we’re going to be in some kind of Spartan living arrangements involving immature roommates and hiking. In the Logan McKenna series, the first novel is set in the fictional, coastal town of Jasper in Southern California. Logan’s second adventure takes her to Portland, but she maintains ties to her hometown and the third book will be set there again.

5  Take a vacation. Just like in real life, sometimes we need a break. Patterson does it by writing a new series: Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, Michael Bennett…how the man finds time, I’ll never know. He sets the bar high and has a lot of support new authors don’t have, I’m sure. So…if you don’t want to take on quite that much, write a poem or a short story when you’re feeling stuck– shake up your creative juices. When you come back to your series, ideas will flow!