Inside Scoop

[17] Book Series

What do you think of book series?

Leigh19: Not for everyone.

I love book series as much as the next person but sometimes and not in all cases do I find that it's hard to maintain the same level of admiration when there are several books. Some stories should just not go on. If you look at series like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Vampire Academy etc, they’re amazing stories that needed to be broken down to add all the pieces of the puzzle together to just make you feel that awe factor when you're done reading it. In another instance such asThe Immortals series by Alyson Noel I felt the story just dragged on and there wasn't enough to keep my interest and by the third book I found myselfputting it down.

It's hard to make a second book as good as the first and not all books in a series are going to be equally amazing, but my thoughts are if you have a strong storyline and a world of determination and it's something you really want to do than as far as making a book series it can be satisfying. Myself, I love series that shows the stories beyond the story that make them all connect. If I were to write a series which in time I intend on doing I want to have all the smaller stories in the story come together to make the storyline that much more epic.

Emmiie: The more books, the better!

I’m a person who loves to write and read, so nothing is more frustrating than when you’re getting into a book that seems to end too soon. So it’s always nice to have options, and something extra to read when you’re finished the first book. But of course, like all things, everything must come to an end. And nothing is worse than something that is simply dragged out for the sake of dragging it out.

Each book should have a purpose—and if the main character learns something along the way, even better.

All novels need an introduction (something to get you started), a middle (the plot), the climax (the high point of the story), and the conclusion (something to wrap everything up). And there is only so much one series can have. More than often, during the climax of a story, someone dies. Not saying that that’s a bad thing, when done correctly. But after awhile you run out of characters to kill off, and (in my opinion) nothing is worse than characters that just won’t die. I mean, they die just for the shock value—but really they are still needed, so they come back into the story line for no apparent reason (which is also for shock value).

It’s just plain cruel to toy around with people’s emotions like that!

What’s dead should stay dead, unless there is a bloody good reason behind why this person is still breathing or risen from the dead. I mean, I’m a writer who (as sick as this sounds) is constantly killing off characters. I can’t even count the amount of characters that have died in my stories…and some might even come back, but the reason behind why they are coming back has already been shown or is carefully weaved into the plot. But this very rarely happens. And I mean very rarely. Most of the time, when one of my characters die, they’re never going to be seen or heard of again.

Okay, now that I’m finished my ‘death’ rant, I should probably get back onto topic…

Overall, I think series are a great idea. And just so long as you are having fun writing it, then I say, ‘Why the heck not?’

Vicky_nfs: Plot is important

Some books are just meant to be part of a series, whereas other stories don’t have the potential or the need to.

Personally, I really like series. That’s mainly because I always wonder what will happen next and how the characters will change once a book is finished, or simply because I really like the characters and what to read more about them.

There are books out there that are amazing, but somehow they become part of a series and the characters go through one thing after the other and after a while it can become ‘too much’. These books and characters lose their credibility because they’re too far-stretched and just not interesting anymore. No matter how much I like the characters, when this happens with books in a series, I’ll give up on the series, no matter how sad that really is.

Sometimes it’s better to stop a story ‘at its best’. You have stories that get sequels because the first book became popular, but I think that it’s better to have one amazing book that will leave people talking about it, rather than creating a second, third and fourth story that aren’t nearly as good.

A good way to keep a series alive is to make each book a different story, told by a different person or at a different point in time. But maybe the most important part is: keep your readers entertained, interested and don’t give everything away in the first book. Make sure that by the end of a book the reader has at least a couple of questions that he/she would like to see get answered in the next book.