Posted: May 16, 2024

How Series Go Wrong

I've been reading some of the last few of Anne Perry's 32 Thomas Pitt mysteries, centered around the late 19th century detective. (Sadly, Ms. Perry died in April of last year. She will be missed.) It's been fun to watch how Ms. Perry developed her skills over the course of the run. For instance, she did eventually kick the habit of describing faces as a way to convey emotion . But these last few books show a problem common to a lot of longer series – feature creep.

At the start, Pitt solved murders as a police detective in London. As the series went on, he tracked serial killers, then battled conspiracies within the government. This got him kicked out of the police, but he was picked up by Special Branch, where he continued the fight. Toward the end, he saved the reputation of the Crown Prince, the life of Queen Victoria, and ultimately the Empire. And while Ms. Perry's skills as a writer made much of this plausible, mostly by rooting it in Pitt's character, I still wonder, if the series had continued for a few more volumes, would Pitt have prevented WW1?

There are lot of good reasons for writing a series. One of the pitfalls is, how do you keep from repeating yourself – the Bond books get formulaic pretty quickly -- without pushing your stories to increasingly high stakes? A lot of great series run into this problem. After Doyle tried unsuccessfully to kill off Sherlock Holmes, the stories grew more unfocused. Watson's wife disappeared, a lot of stories were nostalgic looks back at decades-old cases, and Holmes eventually retires and raises bees. The series ends with Holmes and Watson coming out of retirement to shut down a German spy operation on the eve of WW1.

One way to keep a series fresh is to introduce a nemesis – an ongoing villain to give the villain's side of the story as much continuity and growth as the hero's. A nemesis lets you reveal new details of how deeply they have their tendrils into society, giving the hero new and deeper flavors of evil to overcome with each book. In Pitt's battle with the secret society within the halls of government, he uncovers links to colleagues around him he wouldn't have expected. Rex Stout gave Nero Wolfe a nemesis in the form of criminal mastermind Arnold Zeck, whom Wolfe pursued over the course of three novels. Even Doyle helped speed Holmes to his death by introducing Moriarty.

But nemeses rarely last for long without themselves becoming formulaic. The existence of SMERSH didn't keep the Bond books from repeating themselves. Arnold Zeck only lasted for three novels before Wolfe managed to take him out and return to mysteries with a smaller, often more personal focus.

Another way to keep a series from falling apart is introducing new characters or new revelations about old characters. Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody Emerson series, which runs from late Victorian days to the thirties, is primarily centered around Amelia, her husband Radcliff, and their immediate family, all Egyptologists. But the cast eventually grows to hard-to-manage proportions. We meet various distant cousins and friends, both English and Egyptian. Their son Ramses marries a young woman they found in a surviving enclave of ancient Egyptians right out of H. Rider Haggard. Sethos, the nemesis for several of the novels, turns out to be Radcliff's long lost half-brother. The new relationships that the new characters bring into the mix, and the way other characters mature, keeps the series fresh and fun until the end. But the dramatis personae does eventually get a bit crowded.

By far, though, the best way to keep a series fresh is through quality characterization of the core characters. I've talked before about how high-quality, complex characterization can keep readers coming back far more effectively than anything else. I haven't read to the end of the series, but from what I've read, Kinsey Milhone's character doesn't go through any major transformations. Yet Sue Grafton's books continue to delight because Kinsey is such a pleasure to spend time with, mostly because of Grafton's fresh prose.

Over the course of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin books, Jack Aubrey advances in his career in the Royal Navy at the time of the Napoleonic wars, but his character and the character of his friend Dr. Maturin don't really change. Yet their friendship is deep and improbable enough that it always feels fresh, even 20 books in.

As I said, there are a lot of good reasons to write series. You fall in love with your characters and want to keep telling their stories. You make acquisitions editors happy because they know there will be a steady supply of popular books. You make readers happy for much the same reason. It's natural to be drawn toward starting a series.

If you do, pay attention to what engages your readers in the early books. A given plot structure can be fun at first but wear out quickly (looking at you, Dirk Pitt). A single quirk of character can draw readers in – in the earlier Wolfe novels, Wolfe and Archie are mostly made up of quirks. These features may be enough to get your series started. But if you really want to keep readers reading for ten, fifteen, twenty books without disappointment, work to develop characters who are more than their quirks. Give them complexity, serious flaws, layers they might not even be aware of. If you can, create characters readers will deeply love. Then. readers will want to keep coming back just to spend time with them.