Thirteen Things For Creating a Long-Running Series

1. Create a place or a world readers want to come back to whether it’s a mythological kingdom or down home community. Make it someplace that can contain and atmospherically echo the tone of the series. I chose New Orleans for my shape-shifter setting because the sultry, sometimes eerie ambiance establishes a personality of its own. Make it someplace memorable.

2. Create a heroine readers can relate to. Whether she’s kick ass or a science nerd, build a heroine whose traits exemplify the genre and the world you’re creating. By varying the female archetype, you get a richer feel to the overall story because it’s being revealed through different eyes and expectations. Strength, vulnerability and goals will keep readers enthralled and rooting for the women who populate your stories. The matriarchs in my series are tough edged cops, geneticists, assassins, spoiled heiresses, and determined single moms. There’s even a nun!

3. Create a hero readers want to run away with. Hunky, hot, courageous, with a little bad boy on the side, he’s the one the readers will dream about even when they’re not between the pages of your books. Don’t get stuck using a stereotype. Quirky, loyal, tortured, wisecracking or strong and silent, tough guys in leather, thugs with hearts of gold or executives in Armani, give the ladies what they want: variety and uniqueness.

4. Create a romance readers can sigh over and cheer for. Make them long for it, work for it, sacrifice for it, nearly walk away from it, but the happily-ever-after is inevitable. The pairing has to be one readers can get behind. If it’s an odd couple, the writer has to make it believable and satisfying. My Moonlight and Shadows books push together a thug and a sophisticate, a bartender and a scientist, a cop and a killer, a bully and a delicate beauty. Finding that middle ground is what makes the sparks.

5. Create immediate obstacles with no obvious resolution. If there’s no risk, there’s no reward. If there’s no struggle, there’s no victory. Push those characters to the wall to where they have no choice but to go over, under, around or through. And then handcuff them, lock them in a box with a ticking bomb and push them off a cliff.

6. Create underlying conflict big enough to arc the story. My By Moonlight series is based upon several levels of conflict: between classes, between occupations, between goals, between families and friends and even between species. Those strong divisions can provide continued strife and struggles that remain fresh when seen through the eyes of different characters.

7. Create strong secondary characters and villains flashy enough to warrant their own book. I never develop a secondary character without first thinking of what kind of hero or heroine they could make. Or how determined a villain. Populating your stories with best friends, partners, estranged family members, business rivals, enemies, or former lovers gives you an endless supply of new twists and turns and romantic complications. Jacques LaRoche, the Shifter club owning right-hand to Max was my editors favorite, so my jut released Book 6 in the series, SEEKER OF SHADOWS is all his. Meet him at: http://www.nancygideon.com/books/on-the-shelf.html

8. Create a layered mythology that incorporates a variety of issues and communities. Think big. I’ve got class separations, clan rivals, philosophical divides, territorial boundaries to protect and genetic cross overs that can be played like a chessboard. The worst thing you can do in a series is give yourself no place to go.

9. Create characters who return to future stories for a pivotal instead of cameo purpose. I confess, in some of the series I read, I’m in it for my favorite returning character (Bowen MacRieve in Immortals After Dark being one of them). I thumb through to find their scenes. I want to see how they’re doing, what they’re doing and how they’ve changed. Using Max Savoie as a secondary character in my Shadows books was great fun because I got to show him through the eyes of different characters, developing untapped aspects of his personality. Don’t just give them walk-ons. Give them a chance to be active and remind readers why they’re loved and special. And intrigue them enough to go back to find their book.

10. Create a secondary cliff-hanger that leads the reader to the next book. I like to plant seeds that won’t necessarily sprout right away. A broken relationship, a possible betrayal, a secret, a lie, a threat getting ever closer. Careful foreshadowing that all may not be resolved keeps a carrot dangling and the reader chasing after it.

11. Create continuity between books. Make sure all the rules you set and boundaries you build are maintained. If you make major changes, make sure they’re explained and understood. A redhead shouldn’t become a blond or a story thread broken.

12. Create a satisfactory ending . . . for now. Without some sense of closure there is no gratification. Readers want to know that all is right with the world for these characters they adore. Things can come up in later books to test them and their love, but destroying it is risky business.

13. Create stand-alone storylines with over-arching issues. A reader should be able to pick up each book, whether it’s #1 or #9 and get a satisfying read that isn’t confusing or inconclusive. Characters can continue. Threat can stalk from book to book. But the central story, the heart of the book, is completed in that volume . . . but not tied up so neatly that the reader doesn’t want to frantically scramble for all the rest of the books to get a deeper connection to the characters. That’s what makes a series so popular. Expectations met. Fond memories revisited and new horizons to cross. For more on my “By Moonlight” series visit: http://www.nancygideon.com/moonlight-books.html

What element in a series brings you back for more? Is it the romance, the hero, the heroine, the cliff-hanger? One commenter will be chosen at random to win a copy of SEEKER OF SHADOWS!  Make sure you check back to see if you've won.

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