Series

How To Write A Character Who Can Carry A Series

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I really believe that the best way to get noticed as an author is to have a series. But not all characters or stories are up to being series worthy. Here is a post to help you come up with a series worthy character.

How To Write A Character Who Can Carry A Series

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Construction working triplets by day, ballet dancing crime solvers at night!

Launching a series is golden. It’s that moment in Minesweeper when you hit the right square and a safety zone unfurls. You have eager readers for your next book. You have an agent waiting to read your manuscript. You have characters and backdrops for a long, long time. Or… do you?

It’s not easy to create a protagonist – or even a small cluster of central characters – who can keep readers’ interest and flex and grow through all the plot variations your series will take.

Characterization is already tough. We write characters and wonder if anyone will like them/care about them/appropriately loathe them/accept them as realistic. Creating a compelling series character is all of this and more. It requires a lot of foresight and (ugh) record-keeping. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to it.

Read the full post on Stand Out Books!

Quick Link: The Ingredients of a Great Series Character

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

One of the ways to boost your success as an indie writer these days is to write a series.  But not every character has the strength or depth to carry a series. James Scott Bell at Kill Zone wrote a great list on what makes a character right for a series. What would you add?

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The Ingredients of a Great Series Character

by James Scott Bell

Many pulp writers of old made good bank with a hit series character.

Edgar Rice Burroughs created Tarzan.

Erle Stanley Gardner gave us Perry Mason.

Dashiell Hammett penned the Continental Op.

The ladies were represented as well. An obvious pen name “Lars Anderson” wrote a series featuring college-educated Ellen Patrick, who fought corruption in 1930s Los Angeles as “the Domino Lady.” The pulp magazine she appeared in was Saucy Romantic Adventures, and wouldn’t you like to have a few original copies of that?

Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most famous example of the hit series character. So popular was Holmes that his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, couldn’t get out from under him. At one point Doyle killed off his detective, but the public demanded he be brought back. His resurrection was by way of the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. When it was first published in The Strand magazine, the circulation of that periodical went up by about thirty thousand.

In other words, Doyle, though feeling a bit trapped, took that feeling all the way to the bank.

What Makes a Great Series Character?

 

Read the full post on Kill Zone.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

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Quick Link: How to Transform Your Single Story Into a Complete Series

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Gone are the days of the one hit wonders for authors. You have to build your audience and if you don’t already have a built audience you a great strategy is to write a series. This allows you to start building a following and do clever marketing such as pricing your first book for free to get people hooked. At Write To Done, Sandra Haven has some great hints on how to build on a story to make a series.

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How to Transform Your Single Story Into a Complete Series

By Sandra Haven

Okay, so your single book story jumped to an idea for a nifty book series but … now what?

Even the best of series ideas can miss the mark after only one book.

Ever come to a screeching halt while reading a series because the story just fell apart? Or the character changed? Maybe you moaned, “What is this author doing?”

Not everyone will love every book in a series. There will always be some readers who set your series to the side as times goes on. But readership can also take a plunge and no author wants that to happen.

Good news:

Scary as that is, there are some basic reasons a series fails—and there are ways to avoid them.

Read the full post on Write To Done

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: How to Boost Your Career as a Writer by Creating an Irresistible Series

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

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How to Boost Your Career as a Writer by Creating an Irresistible Series

By Sandra Haven

Excited about your writing career?

About expanding your story’s potential?

Yet after writing, maybe publishing, even marketing a book, you realize that’s just ONE book. And a career author writes LOTS of books.

Which means tomorrow…

You’ll face a mind-numbing, blinking cursor on a blank white page.

Again.

Fresh Shortcut on Familiar Ground

Do visions haunt you of your single book atop a “free” pile in front of a Goodwill store as you flip burgers to buy printer ink, while trying to come up with something fresh for your next book?

And that’s what you need, right? Another new, fresh story? Then another and another?

Nope.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.