Post #253 April 19 2021 “Continuity in Series Fiction” This post covers a subject that is a little more technical and specific than many of my earlier posts. The issue today is stated in the title: how do I deal with continuity when telling a continuing series of stories. Should I even worry about this? What the hell is continuity anyway? One good definition is this: continuity is consistency of plot, characters, settings and other details in a story. Why worry about this? In series fiction, which I have done a lot of, there are three reasons why you should worry about continuity. 1. Believability and credibility. Imagine James Bond ordering a martini that wasn’t ‘shaken not stirred.’ If you write stories with characters that continue from one tale to another, you don’t want Bob to have blond hair in one story and green hair in the next. Flub-ups like that can destroy the connection that the reader makes with the author and damage the verisimilitude (resemblance to the truth) that every storyteller depends on. 2. Familiarity. If you’ve had any kind of success with a series (as an example, the five novels in my series The Farpool Stories have collectively garnered nearly 6600 downloads), you want your readers to feel comfortable with the characters and the settings and plot details if you are adding additional stories to the series (I’m doing this with The Farpool Stories). Being familiar with some of the details from earlier in the series takes some of the cognitive workload off the reader. It’s been said that some of the most successful series are infinite variations on the same theme. Another word for this is formula. Why have they been so successful? Familiarity, especially if your heroes are particularly engaging and likeable and readers can identify with them, is one reason. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to tell a crackling good story too. 3. Early success. I have had several pretty successful series (Tales of the Quantum Corps, Quantum Troopers, Time Jumpers, The Farpool Stories). You don’t necessarily want to mess with success. Maybe just tweak it a little. Sometimes, early success can seem like a straitjacket and you want to breathe a little as an artist. That’s okay. Just remember to attend to the needs and details of story continuity or you’ll lose some of those loyal readers. I’m in the middle of writing the first of three follow-on stories in my series The Farpool Stories. How do I (and or you) go about maintaining continuity in such an endeavor? 1. From the start, I made the decision to review all previous stories in this series. I re-read everything. This helped me get my head back into the story universe I had already created. It also had the secondary benefit of suggesting plot twists and turns I could craft onto my new stories. I even re-read all the character bios and details of settings, to help this process. This has worked well. 2. I had to decide how much my main characters had changed or grown. I saw some of this change in the original five stories. How far should I carry this change? Should I introduce new characters? How are they related to the original characters? What kind of trajectory of change do I envision for the main characters? Consider all these factors when attending to series continuity. 3. Keep copious notes on details. I have dozens of files, even paper notebooks, on all kinds of details involved in The Farpool Stories. Which details should I change or update? Which remain unchanged? Know your details, inside and out. Don’t describe a tropical island one way in Story 1 and a completely different way in Story 5, unless there is a good reason for that change. In series fiction, continuing details populate all the stories and readers notice inconsistencies. Plus your chance of making laughable errors goes up with each new tale. 4. Consider reprising earlier plot scenes. I do this a lot, to avoid re-inventing the wheel and to help maintain consistency. Often, when writing a scene, there will be an earlier scene that is similar. Don’t be afraid to copy and paste, but be sure to modify the new scene to make it fit the new story. You may feel that readers will grow tired of seeing scenes they have read before, slightly updated. While this is undoubtedly true, readers also appreciate familiarity at least as much. And remember, no matter how much you change or update details, and no matter how much current scenes resemble earlier ones, you still have to tell a complete and engaging story anyway. 5. Finally, consider the time frame of your new stories. Do the new ones occur in time right after the end of the original stories? Years or centuries later? This one aspect will affect a lot of what you decide regarding points 1-4 above. In the case of me re-starting The Farpool Stories, my main character in the first of the new tales is actually a granddaughter of my original heroes in the first five stories. The time frame made that necessary, but it also opened up new possibilities. Dealing with and respecting the needs of continuity in series fiction is a balancing act. You’re juggling the need to respect what has gone before and the reader’s desire for some familiarity in order to get into the story with the need to tell a fresh and engaging story in a compelling way. Maybe that’s why they call writing and storytelling an art. The next post to The Word Shed comes on April 26, 2021. See you then. Phil B.