SERIES books or STAND-a-LONES...why one or the other?

In answering a question posed by a reader, I felt this worth sharing with a lot of readers and possibly of interest to many a writer:


Dear Joe et al --- There are too many variables to gain a simple answer to your reflections and questions regarding why an authur chooses to do a series rather than a "series" of stand-a-lone titles. I will give it a stab at some sort of answer(s), and you will see some of the variables and reasons why an author does a stand-alone and why he or she does a series.

First - money. A series is often bought in a crop of two, four, etc. books that have as yet to be written. Publishers seek out characters strong enough to shoulder multiple storylines...plots. Multiple plots to challenge a character or ensemble.

Character + Plots - plots are easy if an author truly establishes what I call a fully-realized character. Take the notion to TV's Star Trek or any TV drama with continuing character or ensemble, say Law & Order, for instance and the situation is thus: We writers establish the bedrock character traits of our principal characters first, as is done with HOUSE, The Sopranos, etc., and once well established, we know what a Jim Kirk, Captain of the Starship Enterprise is all about and capable of. Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke fame - once we know what kind of character we are dealing with, what we have in hand, then we can "attack" that character which is exactly what we do as novelists and storytellers.

Obstacles vs. Goals - We then go about the business of throwing curve balls, brick-a-brack, stormes, obstacles at him--whoever she may be. We know what character X is capable of in the first story established, so now what is he capable of if we perhaps double the threat? My one 11-book series is a model of this type of writing, and each can stand alone, yes....I work to make that so, but in order of 1 to 11 the reader gets all facets and all exploits in the order the character got them.

Love that characters - Writers do fall in love with certain of their characters and without prompting of a contract or a publisher's blessing, they often want to keep exploring the nature of one or more characters, asking WHAT IF Jessica or Alastair or Kirk or Tony or Matt Dillon is put into this position...what if given this to problem to solve (or medical mystery to solve - House). What size hoop to jump through? What will the character do and how will readers react to her being relocated to say Hawaii or London or some back bayou outside of New Orleans? What if I could get Alastair Ransom aboard the good ship Titanic on a clear April night in 1912?  

There are as many reasons to continue with a character as one has storylines or obstacles to throw in front of him her. Often a publisher will stop paying for a series--effectively END an author's series way before the author is finished making life hell for said character. Long before the author is DONE...leaving the author wishing to explore the complexities of a James T. Kirk or a given medical examiner or detective.

Back to Money - When a publisheer's balance sheet says a character or series is over...when this fate occurs and you hold a wake for the series character rather than a book signing, the series typically is dead in the publishing waters, and the author has nowhere to place a new story. No placment, no sell, no money said character is making! Comes back to money and the author's time.

New Life for Dead Characters or Series - However, now with the advent of Indie publishing, the Indie author, thanks again to Kindle technology and Amazon cajunas, we who wish to continue on with a "dead" series can do so at our pleasure. No wake necessary. Rather a RESURRECTION is in order....

As I have done already and am continuing to do--I resurrect out of print books and therefore "dead" characters. In other words my four-book series called EDGE or my trilogy with Ransom, or my 11-book "franchise" with Dr. Jessica Coran can have any number of additional books tacked on now as Kindle books has expanded the possibility of new life in an old series, reaching out to gobs of new readers, young and old.

Stand-a-Lone Titles - I have done a number of stand-a-lones as well as creating eight series characters, and the stabd-a-lones also have their appeal for the writer. Threre is of course much faster CLOSURE. A feeling of beig Done With It! Some stories and characters do not "demand" a repeat performance, and often it has do to with how the plot works out...what kind of an ending do you have here? And ending that does not lend itself to a sequel.

While many stories end with little desire left on the part of the author to continue with this particular set of characters, setting, circumstance, etc. "Desire" on my part to go forward without incentive, reader interest, publihser's check makes it easier to step away from a book finiished and put to bed. I typically find myself going back to those characters I loved from the outset but a stand-a-lone doesn't fuel that kind of interest. The alone titles either come to a frutiful end and no sequel makes sense, or the characters are either exhausted by the author or hold no more allure for the author to explore, and sometimes it is the storyline, as in my historical fiction thrillers, it ends where history tells me it ends. If the storyline follows closely the time line of say the Salem witchcraft episode or the Titanic episode, yeah, it just ends where history says it ends. But sometimes a story just claims a finale, finis, end. The Thorn Birds jumps to mind. Moby Dick jumps to mind. Sea Wolf jumps to mind.

So you see the complexity of answering such a question...Wow...I think this is going to make for a series of blogs for me, Joe. Thanks!

Rob Walker
50 books that shall remain in circulation thanks to Amazon.com/Kindle technology

Titanic 2012 - Curse of RMS Titanic
Children of Salem - A Bad Time to Be in Love
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/

Characters that Change, Characters that Don't

Characters That Take Jobs as Strippers....paint strippers between detective gigs

                                             by Robert W. Walker

Do you like your main POV characters to remain the same throughout a series? Or do you prefer for a main character to discover new facets of character as he/she goes and undergoes changes?

This topic came up recently among friends on a chat group and the preferences vary widely. Some of the longest running series appear to please on the basis of the character NOT changing a wit, a character that to me is 'static' as I prefer both to read about and to write about characters that evolve, grown, learn from their experiences, and become more adept at life as they go.

Apparently, there is room for both kinds of books and for both kinds of readers, which is fine with me.  There are, after all, many rivers to the ocean. However, as I have my prejudice and this is my blog day at Acme, I am going to discuss why I write characters who change and react differently to different stimuli at different times.

First I write books that aspire to a world that is as near mirror image of life as I can make it.  Painters differ in this as well as writers; many aspire to capture life as it appears, some so close it is like looking out a window, whereas many other artists paint terrific paintings that look nothing like real life. I can appreciate a Wyeth and I can appreciate a Van Gogh. But for me, in real life, people do change, they age, their surroundings/settings age as with peeling house paint, rusting cars, etc.

So here goes --

Let me be the first to ask who will be the "last writer standing" and the "last character remembered"?  With regard to those who do not want their favorite characters to change:  I think what you reallly mean is that you do not want to see them go against type - the type of character they are...as in if suddenly the character you felt polite and intelligent has a breakdown at a dinner party or in a public place and suddenly acts OUT of character to the point of kickiing a dog or getting drunk or making a fool of herself, or decidiing out of the blue to become a Lesbian, etc. For me that is significantly different from saying a character should never change or grow or stretch or learn.

Allow me to play Devil's Advocate on this subject. For instance some say they love Watson and Holmes for who they are and never want to see a changed Holmes; great example for both sides of this argument because Sherlock did sink to drugs-- The Seven Percent Solution. And while Sherlock seems not to change or alter, this is an illusion; he has many moods and we see them all; in his down time, between cases, he is depressed to the point of being bipolar, as when on a case his mood swings entirely away. Does he change over time or even in the individual story?

We who write fiction start with a BEDROCK of character, which we challenge, throw rocks at, tease, place into hot and cold situations, test and test again and while the bedrock remains firm, our characters learn and grow and thank God. Perhaps in the real world people don't always change but I believe people capable of changing even as they hold onto their bedrock beliefs and gestalt. In every book that I have ever loved as a kid, there was a character ARC...as in a coming of age, a loss of innocence, a stripping away of illusions and a realization on the part of the main character that appearances were seldom the same as reality. A good character grows in this sense, else you have a Woody Allen film (has Woody's main character ever learned anything?)

I PUT the book DOWN if there is no evidence of growth, learning, evolving. Look at our classics....the books which are penned by the "last writer standing" from his era -- Mark Twain's Huck Finn has completely changed from his appearance in Tom Sawyer. Victor Hugo's Hunchback changes and man what changes come in his Le Misrables. Our best writers from Hemingway to Faulkner may be world's apart stylistically but both authors are interested in point of view characters who are not going to be victims but who are going to take action when some train or other comes at them be it a phsyical triain or an emotional train. Ismael in Moby Dick - change, growth, going from ignorance to experience and know-how. Two Years Before the Mast...you name your favorite.

Now perhaps in a mystery series Reacher is always Reacher and Repairman Jack is always Repairman Jack as the author knows these fully-realized characters require bedrock characterization, but the most memorable for me are characters who do go through crisis and heroes that do often fail, and leads who do make adjustments in their thinking and lifestyle as when a character is scarred both physically and mentally and begins to use a cane and feels self-doubt where it didn't exist before, and in a followup story/book, he regains his self-confidence and power and skills.

This interests me about real people; people who are down to nothing and somehow go from homelessness to riches for instance, or a maimed person who goes from a horrible loss of limbs for instance and overcomes this, or a person who has overcome a bad upbringing or a terrible environment. I want my main characters to be 'real life-like' heroes.

This is certainly the case with my main characters from Abe Stroud, archeologist to Lucas Stonecoat, Texas Cherokee detective, to Jessica Coran, FBI ME whose arc is rich with growth, ups, downs, swings, depressions, highs, lows, you name it. I left her in a happy state in the end because damn it, she deserved some rest and peace and harmony after all I had put her through. Plans are to now shatter that peace in a new book with Jess back on the trail of another 'monstrous' killer --of course as an ebook.

Rob Walker
Free opening chapters of Children of Salem and/or Titanic 2012 found at
http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/
Do leave a comment - would love to know your preference?  Do you like some characters to stay as is and others not?  Doesn't it depend on the execution of the story and what the author intends?