I don’t write series. Not that my intention was to always write standalones; I suppose I never really thought about it that much. I just get ideas for an entirely new story and jump right in. Looking back after ten published novels, this all seems very organic, but the truth is every author has that one thought when starting a new book:
Should I make this a series?
And then the real questions begin:
Do I have enough ideas to sustain three or more books in a series?
What if I write three books and they don’t sell?
Do I have a character I like enough to keep writing about?
And the biggest question of all:
How is it possible all this stuff keeps happening to one character?
I’d probably have a lot more money if I wrote a successful series. I look in awe (and jealously) at my friends who can take a character on a ten-book journey, and the voracious readers who will read every volume. But when I think about it, and sometimes I do think about it, the mere act of consideration feels too artificial. Too inorganic. Like I’d be writing to the market and not for myself, which is a huge error for any writer to commit.
Also, I know in a series I couldn’t easily kill off a major character, and I just love doing that.
I once asked my editor if she’d ever be interested in a series from me, and her answer was spot on. “I don’t think that would make you happy.” I needed to hear that.
So I write standalones, and it’s joyful. I travel somewhere new every book, maybe even to a place I simply made up. And I have a whole new cast of characters, each with their own problems, motivations, and desperate search for their own truth and happiness. Writing the standalone is how my brain works best, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in more than two decades slugging away at the keyboard, it’s to be true to yourself. To trust your instinct. To tell the story YOU want to tell, not the story you think has the best shot in the marketplace. Honor yourself, and good things will happen.
Over time, I noticed I started placing Easter eggs in my standalones. This started just to amuse myself, and maybe my agent, but readers started picking up on these things, letting me know they noticed. Turns out I was world building.
Example: my fourth book, Revelation, takes place on the campus of fictitious Wyland University in upstate New York. Since then, an improbably high number of my characters also went to Wyland. Usually it’s a one-sentence reference, nothing more. Nearly all readers won’t make the connection, but I smile thinking about the few who do.
If you can’t amuse yourself while writing, why bother?
I’d sometimes make mention of characters from other books, or overlapping locations from time to time. But I finally went all-in with my connections after writing The Dead Husband. I finished that book and thought, I want to keep writing about that house. The house in that story was a major character. A malevolent force that I simply loved. So rather than having a sequel, I wrote an entirely different story that takes place in that same house, six months after the previous story ended. New characters, same house. The trick was writing in a way that made both books standalone stories, but giving the readers of both some added enjoyment.
In the case of my new release, Tell Me What You Did, I took things a bit further and brought back my protagonist, Alice, from Mister Tender’s Girl (my fifth novel) to play a secondary character. I had a blast crafting the scenes with Alice and my current protagonist, Poe. I loved writing Alice again, and for the first time I had a real glimpse of what writing a series must feel like. How ya doin’, Alice? Been awhile…it’s really good to see you again. But bringing back old characters comes with risk: would readers realize this was a character from another book? Would it feel like a stunt? And does bringing back that character truly service the story? All these things need to be considered and written (and rewritten) accordingly.
The other joy of this kind of world building is to move the story beyond words and introduce visual elements, again, planted as Easter eggs that the reader may not even notice. In Mister Tender’s Girl, I wrote a scene where Alice stumbles upon a password-protected website that turned out to be a message board for the people stalking her. Well, I just had to make that website–complete with photos and dozens of posts–but I never once directed readers to it. And if they did bother to see if the URL printed in the book was, in fact, an actual website, they would also need the password, which was contained in the pages of the book. Probably less than a hundred people took the time to unlock this little mystery, but those who did were rewarded for their efforts.
With my new book, I wanted to introduce video. In Tell Me What You Did, my protagonist Poe is a famous podcaster who always uses her iPhone to record her side of every interview. I decided I wanted to see what that looked like, so I hired an actress to record the scenes. Then I dropped a QR code into the pages, so if the reader is curious, they can scan the code and watch the very scene they just read (all packaged as recovered evidence from the Vermont State Police).
All of this to say I write for myself. Period. Yes, I want a publisher to buy the books. Yes, I want to sell as many copies as possible. But the joy of writing comes in the discovery process, all those hours alone with my laptop, figuring out how best to tell the story I want to tell, and not worrying about market trends or what I’m afraid my agent or editor might say. Because if you’re true to your own vision as a writer, and you find a way to extract the most amount of fun in a terribly difficult job, the universe will sit up and pay attention.
Honor yourself, and good things will happen.
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