Post #272 October 4 2021 “Bringing a Fictional Series to a Successful Conclusion” I am currently halfway through my current project, called The Farpool: Diaspora. This is the seventh title in my series The Farpool Stories. With one more to come, I can see the end of this series coming in the spring of 2022. The final title will be The Farpool: Destiny. I have bittersweet feelings about this series coming to an end. With over 6700 downloads across all titles in this series, it’s been fairly successful and I’m grateful to all my readers for that. Still, all things good and bad must come to an end. In this post, I want to discuss how to bring a fictional series to a proper and successful conclusion, one that does justice to the overall story arc across the earlier titles and is satisfying to readers. First, note that not every fictional series has an overall story arc. Some are just a series of independent stories with continuing characters and settings and an overall theme to more or less tie everything together. The Farpool Stories has both. Below are 5 things to consider when bringing your fictional series to a satisfying end. 1. Will the story arc be completed, coming to a satisfying resolution (assuming there is a story arc…see above)? In order to accomplish this, the story arc really should be thought out and planned for from the beginning. Not that ideas can’t change and stories veer off in unexpected directions. A series story arc faces the same needs as any fictional story. There must be characters facing a serious problem. The heroes must want or need to solve this problem. They must struggle against forces and perhaps themselves to achieve this, facing and overcoming obstacles as they do so. And in the end, your heroes must either achieve their goals, vanquish the monsters or fail magnificently while trying. With these ideas in mind, does your series bring the story arc to a satisfying conclusion? Are all these loose ends and hanging plot lines tied up or resolved…not easy over the course of a series. In my own work, there are hundreds of details I’ve had to keep track of. 2. Have your main characters grown or changed in any significant way? Or do they keep facing the same problems with the same approaches every time? Of course, in real life, people actually do this. But in fiction, especially in a series, it’s more believable if your heroes learn something valuable as the story comes to an end. They may learn what their limits are. They may learn they can exceed these limits if they try. They may learn who to trust. They may become smarter about life. They may have learned what’s really important. All these things happen to real people too. It’s just that in a fictional series, to live vicariously in your hero’s shoes and see them overcoming great, even impossible odds, with guile, cunning, wit, endurance or whatever, is particularly gratifying for a reader, who may have invested many hours in following your hero’s exploits. 3. Have you tied up loose ends, different plot lines and maintained continuity to the end? This is particularly important, as readers notice these details. “Whatever happened to Elmo when we left him on that cliff, hanging by his fingernails.” If you forget to at least give the reader an idea of what became of poor Elmo, the reader can only conclude that he wasn’t that important anyway and why the hell was he even in the story? Play fair with your readers and don’t go off gallivanting down different plot lines without providing some way back to the main plot line for the reader. 4. Have you laid the groundwork for future stories? Of course, this is not absolutely necessary, but it is smart not to burn your imaginary world behind you. You never know. I have no plans for any more titles in The Farpool Stories, but I can’t say I’ll never re-join this imaginary world, in which I have invested years of writing, research and outlining and presumably my readers have done the same. We can’t know what the future will bring and it’s just possible that enough readers will demand more stories for you to seriously consider not shutting the door on their hopes. It happened to Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes and it can happen to you. 5. Is there an ultimate moral or lesson here? How is the final story to be guided to this point? Have you laid the foundations in previous stories? If they’re already in print, as mine are, then you’re constrained to follow the tracks of what came before. You don’t want to violate continuity too much or your readers will shake their heads and tsk-tsk at your ineptitude. If you did your homework and planned all this out from the beginning (allowing for unexpected changes or writerly serendipity), that final moral should now be in clear view. You just have to get there. And really, the final story should be largely focused on getting there, still allowing for the requisite plot twists and turns of a readable story in this final episode. It’s a bit of an art contorting your plot and characters to bring them to where they need to be and pull if off believably. Do make the effort. 6. Finally, saying goodbye to people you’ve lived with and suffered with is hard, even if they are imaginary. When it’s all over, give yourself a break. Go to the beach…or the mountains. No, just go to the beach and revel in that feeling of accomplishment. It’s kind of like swimming laps in the pool…it feels so good when it’s over. Take a deep breath, put your worn-down mind on something else and live a little. Then…get back to work on that next project. The next post to The Word Shed comes on October 11. In this post, I’ll let you take a peek behind the curtain on some of my upcoming projects. See you then. Phil B.