Series

Writing a series of books, especially a long series, is an idea that, at best, fills me with pants-knotting terror. The Robert Jordan model- that is, spending over 20 years of my life on a single narrative project that grows progressively more detailed with each work- is frankly my idea of Hell. And yet, I recognize that if I want to be a successful genre author in the long form, somebody's going to want at least a trilogy out of me.

And yet, as a reader, there's certainly series I like, and would pick up a new book in their succession rather than something completely new. The same holds even more true for serial formats like TV and comics. I did a quick, sloppy tally, and I'm pretty sure I've read more series books than non-series books throughout my life, and not all of them with the excuse of being 14 (though that accounts for a lot of it). That said, I have two favorites that have been in a series: The Lord of the Rings (which was written as one book, albeit a sequel) and Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, which has only the barest links to the other books in its series. It's set in the same universe, and they invent a technology that other books make a passing mention of. All of the other books I can think of that I'll rave about are self-contained*. Which isn't to say I didn't enjoy Harry Potter, or Discworld, or Song of Ice and Fire, just that with the exception of my friends who have come to me specifically looking for series, I've never pushed them at anyone and gone "you have to read this!"

I think a lot of the appeal of series in fantasy and science fiction is that you only have to surmount the steep learning curve of the world once. After that you know how things work, and you can fill nearly the whole book with story, much the way you could in a novel set in the real world.

Then too, there are particular strong characters you'll want to hang a series off of: Hercule Poirot, James Bond, and what have you. Batman. Sherlock Holmes, Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

On the flip side, it's been my experience that the longer the form, the less excited I tend to get about it, which may in part just be me. Several of my friends know from experience that if I find a short story I enjoy, there will be links to it in their inboxes within a few hours of me reading it, and I'll often grin like an idiot throughout the whole of something short that I enjoy. I have that same reaction to scenes within a novel, but very rarely am I making a happy face the whole way through (Tom Robbins and Nabakov have both come close for me though). I guess it's sort of the equivalent of getting an undeserved ice cream sundae vs. getting an ice cream sundae after you've eaten all your vegetables. The latter perhaps has a greater sense of accomplishment and is certainly the clear nutritional champion, but you've still got broccoli in your teeth and the ice cream doesn't give you that sweet filling sensation because you've already got a stomach full of plant matter. This dilution is multiplied across a series.

Series also seem to fall prey to two very particular and obnoxious traps. The first is selective amnesia, where in the previous book the characters come to some amicable agreement on what had been a major problem. Lessons are learned, people grow, relationships are strengthened, and it's been put to bed with a happy ending. Then you open the next book and the exact same problem (or some very minor twist thereof) pops up with the characters behaving as if they've not matured in the slightest since about the middle of the previous book. Anything with a romantic element is particularly bad about this, though it's also a problem for books whose main character has some sort of defining emotional hurdle.

The other trap is shark-jumping. As each new threat has to be bigger than the last, characters get blown out of proportion, or reduced to caricatures of themselves, ninjas begin to kick in doors just for something to do, passages begin to feel like nothing but stalling for time and money, and (and, oh how I detest this) the characters who have for the last six books been "just the regular guy" are suddenly and without any advanced warning, revealed to have scarring tragic backstories or kung fu training they failed until now to mention. Stories, like pole dancers' careers, have a natural end point beyond which their efforts get kind of painful to watch unless you came specifically for a cruel point and laugh.

I know there are people (quite a lot of them) who are planning seven and eight book epics from the get go. It's always boggled my mind. I wish I had that kind of zeal about any one story I've ever tried to tell, but really, past about seven thousand words, I'm already making eyes at the next handsome bit of short fiction walking by.

Maybe it's just me.



(* Edit: It occurs to me Ender's Game was eventually part of a series, but I never read the rest of it. I heard it went a bit off the rails. I would still call the initial book self-contained.)