Episode 210 - Constructing a Compelling Series with Sara Rosett
October 31, 2023
Sara Rosett discusses Constructing a Compelling Series, including the three types of series; how to extend your series beyond your original plan; preparing your readers for changes in your series; what happens when the flat arc protagonist is overshadowed by the antagonist; using a spin-off to extend a series; supplementing a series with short stories, or using a short story to experiment with a series concept; dealing with the challenges of being locked into your story world; and bringing a series to an end.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of 30 mysteries for readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling whodunits. She hosts two podcasts: MYSTERY BOOKS PODCAST for readers and, for writers, the WISH I’D KNOWN THEN PODCAST with Jami Albright. Sara also writes nonfiction for authors, including HOW TO OUTLINE A COZY MYSTERY and HOW TO WRITE A SERIES.
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Links
Sara's Links:
Author website: https://www.SaraRosett.com
Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/sararosett/
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
Author website: https://www.SaraRosett.com
Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/sararosett/
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sara! Do you write a series, or are you thinking of writing one? Which of the types of series that Sara described most appeals to you?
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Sara Rosette. Hey, Sara, how are you doing?
[00:00:05] Sara: Good, how are you?
[00:00:07] Matty: I'm doing great. Thank you.
Meet Sara Rosett
[00:00:08] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Sara Rosette is the USA Today bestselling author of 30 mysteries for readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling whodunits.
She hosts two podcasts, the Mystery Book Podcast, that sounds good, for readers and for writers. The Wish I'd Known Then podcast, which I love, she co-hosts that with Jami Albright, and she also writes nonfiction for authors, including "How to Outline a Cozy Mystery" and "How to Write a Series."
Sara's background as a series author
[00:00:33] Matty: I was very intrigued with the "How to Write a Series" topic, so I invited Sara to the podcast to talk about that very topic.
And I thought it would be helpful, Sara, to just start out, give us a little background on your own series, so we have some context for the conversation.
[00:00:48] Sara: Sure. Yeah. I started out writing cozy mysteries. I was traditionally published first, and I wrote a 10-book cozy mystery series about a military spouse, which is what I was. Somehow, I thought this could be the hook for the series, that it's about a person who moves around a lot and is involved in military life, because that's something people don't know about.
And then, I transitioned into a hybrid author, still doing traditional cozies. I also did some indie books. So, I have a series that is a throwback to classic romantic suspense. It's more in the style of Mary Stewart and Elizabeth Peters, if you're familiar with those authors. It involves travel, mystery, intrigue, some murders, some not, and art theft. It's a mix of all the things I love. These books are cozy-ish but not purely cozy. They have mysteries, but they're not straight mysteries. They don't fit neatly into any one category. It's my first foray into indie publishing.
Then, I thought I might do better if I wrote a straight cozy as an indie author. So, I wrote a series about a location scout who's working in England, trying to find locations for a Jane Austen adaptation. It's a modern mystery set in England, and I got to indulge my love for all things Jane Austen and country houses. I got to explore these locations, and it did well. After that, I was really into reading 1920s and 1930s Golden Age mysteries, and I thought it would be great to write a series set in that time period.
So, I took the same location from the series about the location scout in England and went back to the 1920s, setting a series in that village. That's how my "High Society Lady Detective" series came about. It's by far the most popular series I have, and I'm continuing to write it. The other two series, I've kind of tapered off, and I'm not writing novels in them anymore. I might write short stories or do some special projects with the other series. But for now, I'm focused on the 1920s country house mystery genre.
[00:03:21] Matty: Oh, my goodness. We have hours and hours worth of conversation to have here. We'll have to try to control ourselves.
Complying (or not) with Genre Expectations
[00:03:28] Matty: So, the one you mentioned had some murder, some not. Is that a series or was it? A series, were those standalones.
[00:03:35] Sara: I originally thought, okay, this will be a trilogy. It'll consist of three books. And I wrote those three books. It's one of those series that, once it finds its reader, the readers are super passionate about it, but it doesn't have a really big audience. However, the readers who love it, really love it.
So they would email me, asking, "Can you write more?" And I thought, okay, I could do another book. So I wrote another book. We may talk about this later in the context of extending a series. Because when I got to the end of that fourth book, I thought, "Oh, I have an idea for how I could continue the series in a new story arc." A new story arc, like the first story arc was complete in the first three books. The fourth book is a transition. Then I continued the series for a couple more books because I found a new direction for my character to explore. So it turned into a longer series than I had originally plAnnd.
[00:04:28] Matty: That's really interesting and something, I don't know if this is just a one-shot answer or something that maybe we can, as you mentioned, weave through the rest of our conversation, is the idea that some have murder, some do not. I was just at a book club where they were reading my Ann Kinnear suspense novel, "The Falcon and the Owl," and it's the first one that has a whodunit aspect. But there's a murder right at the beginning, and the whodunit is not related to the murder at the beginning. It's a death that doesn't appear to be a murder until later, spoiler alert, later in the story. And we had this whole conversation, as I often do on this podcast, about the trickiness of maintaining consistency in a series, such as characters, tone, and theme, but not consistency in the sense of whether it's a whodunit or not.
[00:05:15] Sara: The dead body?
[00:05:16] Matty: Yeah, where's the dead body? I'd be curious as we're talking to discuss how consistent one has to be throughout the series and those kinds of things. Any initial thoughts about that?
[00:05:26] Sara: Well, I think I'm always very clear in my mysteries, especially the ones that are whodunits. I make sure to introduce the murder and the cast of suspects right from the start, so readers know that these are definitely whodunits and that's the type of story they are. With these other ones, I try to convey through the blurb and the cover that they're not cozy mysteries, but they do have elements of mystery and intrigue in them. Some of the books do involve murder, but not all of them. The murder isn't the main focus. The main focus is, in the beginning, she's trying to find her ex who has disappeared, and she's involved in this more conspiratorial type of plot. That's the primary storyline. Hopefully, the cover, blurb, and the way the book starts convey that it's not a whodunit. It's more about suspense, possibly with intrigue and travel. There are more travel cozies now, but because this one includes travel and international settings, people realize it may not be a Small Town Cozy.
The three types of series
[00:07:12] Matty: So in your book, "How to Write a Series," you talk about three basic types of series. So what are those?
[00:07:17] Sara: Okay, so you've got the multi-protagonist series, which is like this: you have a new protagonist with each book, and the books are linked somehow. This is very common in romance; a lot of times, it'll be like a family or a group of friends, and each book is about a different friend.
Then you have a single-protagonist series where you follow one protagonist throughout the series. These can be broken down into two different types. You've got the flat-arc protagonist who doesn't change a whole lot. This is like, for example, James Bond or Mary Poppins; people who don't undergo a significant change throughout the story, but because they're in the story, things change. I mean, if Poirot hadn't been on the Orient Express, it would be a completely different story, right? So because he's there, he causes things to happen, and things change. A lot of times, there will be small character arcs throughout the series, but it's not a massive change.
That's what you get in the third type, which I think of as the robust character arc, where you've got a significant change. It's kind of the classic hero's journey. You start out, go through a big adventure or quest, and then at the end, your character has changed, and that type has a natural endpoint.
If you think about Harry Potter, he goes through all these adventures, and at the end, there's a resolution, and it's complete, usually marking the end of that series. So, the robust character arc series lends itself well to trilogies, fantasy, and sci-fi. The flat arc, which is more episodic, is seen more in mystery series, especially those that can go on for a long time because they're more episodic. So that's a high-level overview of the different types.
[00:09:16] Matty: And I suppose a benefit of that first type with the multi-protagonist is that if you get bored with one, you can switch to another.
[00:09:24] Sara: That is right.
[00:09:25] Matty: And you could go almost endlessly with that, I suppose.
Creating variations in a multi-protagonist series
[00:09:28] Sara: and you can keep creating variations. For example, if it's a small town, you can just keep writing about different characters in your town, or you can have new people move in. Or if it's a family, it could be like, well, guess what? We've heard the stories of all the sisters. Now we've got cousins moving in, you know, to explore their stories. So yeah, it can be endless. Focus on getting the first book written before worrying about what type of series it might be a part of
[00:09:50] Matty: So in the authors that you speak with and work with, do you find that people usually know what they're going to write as they're writing their first book? Even if they don't know or aren't sophisticated enough to refer to it in the terminology that you use, do they already have a sense?
Or are there cases where somebody wants to write a series and they're thinking through it, and are there flats that would make you say, "Oh, I would point you here, I would point you there," based on what they want to accomplish or what they, either creatively or from a business point of view.
[00:10:25] Sara: Yeah, I think that's really hard because when you're first starting out, you're just trying to get the book finished. And for me, I read mysteries. I loved mystery. That was what I knew I wanted to write, and that was pretty much what I was familiar with. So I've learned all this and figured it out in my mind. I've categorized these things this way to help me figure things out as I've learned more about genres, different types of stories, story arcs, and characters. So I think a lot of that may come as you learn more. So, I think probably, in the beginning, you're just worried about finishing the first book, but I do think it is good to have a plan. For me, I knew my book was going to be a cozy, and cozies are always part of a series.
I mean, it's not like I've never seen cozies. They're not marketed that way anyway. So I knew it was going to be a series, and I had some vague ideas for my first series about the next books, like what the mystery plots could be about. But I did not think at all about my character, and she was a flat character. I look back now and go, "Okay, so she was a flat character." That's why a lot of the advice about the hero's journey, I was like, "This doesn't really work for Cozy." I mean, you can make it work, but she doesn't have a big "aha" moment at the end of book one and then have another "aha" moment at the end of book two. It just doesn't work like that. So yeah, I think a lot of it, you kind of work your way into it. You get the book done, and especially if you know, "Okay, my genre normally has trilogies or normally has five books," then you know that's what readers expect. That's probably what you're going to write toward anyway.
Are there trends in flat- versus robust-arc series?
[00:12:08] Matty: Do you think there are fashions or trends in that? Because on the surface, a flat arc sounds like an insult. And, I think that if one had been able to go back in time and ask the authors what their plan was, they would probably have said, "Oh, yeah, I don't plan to have this character change over time. Like it was intentional."
[00:12:30] Sara: It wasn't like a craft failure on their part. Do you think that's still true? Are either the robust character arc or the flat character arc still desirable among readers? Or is one more popular currently? Well, I think a lot of it depends on the genre because in mystery, readers expect mystery series to go on for like 10, 15, 20 books. They're like, "This is great." I think, and in thriller too, like Jack Reacher, that's, I would say, more of a flat character arc. He doesn't change that much, but that's a long series.
And then I think readers like going back to that world if they enjoy whatever world it is, fantasy, mystery, whatever. They enjoy going back to it. There's a comfort and familiarity of going, "Okay, I know who this character is. I know what I'm going to get," even if it's book 17 or whatever. The drawback is you can get bored with that as an author. You may be like, "Huh, I've written everything I can think of in this world or this series or this character."
And I do think modern readers expect a little bit of a character arc. Like I was reading the books from the twenties and thirties; those mysteries were basically puzzle mysteries. And you didn't really learn a whole lot about the sleuths' personal lives, just little tidbits here and there, but it wasn't like they changed and grew that much. It was more like, "here's a mystery, can you solve it?"
And I feel like readers want more than that now. They want something extra. They need a little bit more. They still want a good puzzle; in my genre, they want a good puzzle, but they want a little bit extra, even if it's an episodic series. I think the through-line for your episodic series, your flat arc, is really what's happening in the main character's life and all the subplots that are going on, all the other relationships. People get heavily invested in those.
[00:14:29] Matty: Well, I would think that if you're writing more of a flat arc series, then you have to rely more heavily on the other characters, not the secondary characters, but whoever are kind of the co-protagonists of that particular book. The cast, yeah, exactly, because, like, I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't admit this, but my only exposure to Jack Reacher is I watched one of the TV shows, and I was really more interested in the characters that were surrounding Jack Reacher than I was in Jack Reacher himself, which I thought was very interesting.
Now, I'll see if I get angry emails about this, but I was really not compelled by the Jack Reacher character, and then somehow I happened upon an interview with the actor who played him, and he was very engaging and entertaining, you know, seemed like the kind of guy you'd want to go out to a bar for a beer with, and I thought, man, I would have liked it a lot better if more of that had come through in the characterization. But then I said that to someone who's more familiar with the books, and they said, well, yeah, but that really wouldn't be true to the books then; that's not the kind of character he is. So, um, yeah, but I was relying on what was going on with the other characters more to retain my interest in the show.
[00:15:39] Sara: Yeah. And I think that happens. I mean, with a flat arc character that's compelling, you're interested in that. Hopefully, you're interested in what's going on with them, but then all the other things that are going on in the world around them, that's the thread that's going to pull people through, I think, because you're not only ready to find out what happens to Poirot or Mary Poppins; you want to know what's going on in the family or the relationships.
[00:16:09] Sara: And a lot of times, the flat arc characters, if they have an antagonist, sometimes the antagonist is way more interesting and fun than the protagonists. You think about James Bond and the villains; those are the fun ones that you're like, "Oh, this is interesting, what's going on here?" Sometimes the antagonist can almost overshadow the protagonist in some ways, like Moriarty and Holmes, you know, Moriarty is fascinating, Holmes is fascinating too, but you're interested in Moriarty as well.
[00:16:44] Matty: Yeah, well, it does seem as if I'm relying on unreliable memory a little bit for this. Holmes was fascinating right from the get-go because of his idiosyncrasies, and then after a while, you know that he's going to do whatever the things that Holmes does, but then Moriarty gets added to the mix. So, I wonder if Conan Doyle was doing that because he was kind of tired of leaning on Holmes's idiosyncrasies to keep it interesting. He's throwing in this new person to kind of shake things up.
[00:17:22] Sara: Yeah, and that's a great way to keep things fresh. As you bring in somebody new, you introduce a different variable. Because after a couple of books, you kind of know what your character is like, your flat character. You know their reactions and their quirky little habits that are entertaining. But after six or seven books, after all these books, or even after three books, maybe you're ready for something new as a writer and a reader.
How to extend your series beyond your original plan
[00:17:49] Matty: Well, that's kind of a nice lead into one of the other things I wanted to talk about, which is extending your series beyond your original plan. So I guess some of this also goes back to the character arc. Let's say you've started out, and you think you're going to have three books, and then you and the readers continue to be interested. So you're extending it, but now maybe you have to not only adjust the idea for additional books but also the arc.
Can you talk a little bit about extending your series beyond the original plan?
[00:18:15] Sara: Yeah. So if you have a plan, and you're like, um, like that series I had, the first three books were like a quest. Could she figure out what had happened and unravel this conspiracy? So when that was done, and they were called "On the Run," I was like, okay, if I'm going to extend this, I can't have them being on the run indefinitely. That's just crazy. So I had to figure out something else. Sometimes you have to tie off one arc and then come up with something new. So with that series, I was like, okay, what if she went to work for somebody, and she gets involved in art recovery? So it's an entrepreneurial arc after that. It's like, can she get the job? Can she solve her first case? That's the next arc. Sometimes you have to figure out how your character retires. And then what are they going to do in retirement? Maybe they're a retired police detective or a magician, and they have to figure out what's going to happen next.
If you have a transition point, you can maybe find a new jumping-off storyline from that. There's a new challenge somehow. Maybe there's a new rival or competition. Something happens that gives you a new mix of challenges. Maybe they have a backstory you haven't explored, or maybe one of the side characters has a backstory that somehow your character is involved in, and it's a quest, like at the end, instead of the beginning, like my book. So you can just I think, you take your world you have, and you go, what have I not explored in here? And, if it's a town, are there people in the town, are there locations that you haven't delved into? For my 1920s series, it's set in different country homes in England. In the most recent one, "The Eight," I take her to Europe. She goes to Switzerland in the winter, goes to see the Alps, St. Moritz, and all that. So it's just like a whole new area to explore, which will keep you interested as well as the reader, hopefully.
Considering how your readers will react to changes in your series
[00:20:31] Matty: would be interesting, or important, I guess, to track what about the series your characters really like. Because I'm thinking of, I mean, Conan Doyle tried killing Holmes because he was so tired of it, so that's
[00:20:42] Sara: And that was a no-go.
[00:20:43] Matty: That was a no-go, but whoops, but I can imagine he might have said, "Oh, you know, I'm so bored with this. I'm going to mix things up. I'm going to have Watson, you know, move to the country, and I'm going to give Holmes a new partner."
[00:20:56] Sara: Yeah.
[00:20:57] Matty: If people were reading that series in part because they loved Watson, then that was going to be unsuccessful.
And so, those are things that apply to both extending a series and addressing the situation where you yourself are becoming bored with it. Understanding what you can change or extend that isn't going to violate the implicit contract you've made with your readers.
How do you assess those kinds of considerations?
[00:21:21] Sara: Well, for me, whenever I think about it, I know that my readers are reading most of my books because they like the character, they like the setting, and they like the supporting cast. If I'm going to take my character and do something new and different, and maybe she, maybe I'm like, "Oh, she's always been in this little town, but now I want to write a book set in Asia or Europe." If I just take her, my readers are going to be like, "Oh, what's going on with all these other 10 people? I want to know what's happening in their lives." So sometimes that's when you get those books where it's like the whole village goes and travels, you know, and sometimes you can make that happen, but you have to think about why are my readers reading this?
And if they want those interactions in a certain location with a lot of people, it's probably smarter to keep the action where it is, instead of trying to go to a new location, unless you're going to do like a complete reset. And sometimes people do that. They'll take a series and basically end it and have your character move to a totally new location and totally start over.
I wouldn't recommend that. I think that's kind of risky, but I mean, you could do it. Yeah.
[00:22:37] Matty: It's as if you're starting over with a new series, so even if there's a continuing character, the protagonist, you're going to lose some people, but pick up some people. But if you go into it with the expectation that you're not necessarily bringing along all your previous readers, that could be helpful.
Using a spin-off to extend a series
[00:22:54] Sara: Yeah, I think in that case, it might be smarter to do just a spin-off. Just take a character and, if you want to move your story to a new location or have a new tone, especially, you probably want to have a spin-off, but then they'd be linked, and then your readers who found one would probably try the other one or vice versa. If they start with a spin-off, they might go, "Oh, there's more books. Let me go back and read how it all started."
[00:23:25] Matty: When you're thinking about a spin-off, I've occasionally had people say that they like some of the secondary characters in my Ann Kinnear books and ask if I've ever thought about doing a spin-off. When I play it out in my mind, I think some of those characters, they're good in small doses, but I think a whole book of that particular character would be
[00:23:45] Sara: might be a little much.
[00:23:46] Matty: A little much.
Spin-offs are for more than just characters
[00:23:46] Matty: Yeah. So when you're assessing possible characters for a spinoff or maybe it's not just characters. Can you describe when you think of spin-offs, are there other flavors than spinning off a character, like a location, for example?
[00:23:59] Sara: Yeah, I would say you can do the character. You could take a side character, you know, and give them their whole story, but that is the problem. Maybe it's not ideal for a protagonist. Maybe they're better in a side character role. But then, like you could, like I did the location thing where it's this village in modern times, contemporary, and then this is the village in the past.
So that way you're linking the village, at least.
[00:24:25] Matty: Yeah, that's very cool. I've never heard that before, but that's super cool.
[00:24:28] Sara: Yeah, and I don't know how much read-through I get from that, but I mean, I figure it's a way that if people are interested, they might pick up the other series just because of the name. Other ways you could link or spin off would be like, I would think this might work in romance, like maybe you would have a shop or a store, and you would have different, or a hotel. They do that a lot. You know, like you have different stories with different people checking in and out. You know, like you could
[00:24:56] Matty: The Love Boat.
[00:24:57] Sara: Yes. Fantasy Island. There we go.
[00:24:59] Matty: Fantasy Island, exactly.
[00:25:01] Sara: Yeah.
[00:25:03] Matty: And if you're assessing a character as a spinoff, are there any either green flags or red flags that would say this is likely to be a good or not such a good idea?
[00:25:13] Sara: Well, I guess it depends on what type of series you're writing. So if you're doing a flat arc, do you have enough story around that person? Can you create enough story around that person to make it interesting and make it more than one book if you want a series? And if it's a robust character, like what characteristics, what change are they going to go through that's going to make it compelling that readers will want to read?
Because I do know what you're saying, like some of those characters are so fun to write as the comic relief or whatever, but then can you sustain a whole book or a whole series with them being the comic relief? And then are you going to bring in somebody else to be the straight man? You know, like you have to kind of think through these things down the line and can you do that for three, four, or five books?
Supplementing a series with short stories
[00:26:02] Matty: Well, one of the things you said that I love was that you write short stories, and whenever I hear short stories, I'm always immediately intrigued. And I think that's a great way to explore that. So one of the characters that people often say they would like to see in a spinoff is named Garrick Masser. He's in the Ann Kinnear novels. And basically, he's in there to be both Ann's mentor in the early books and then her kind of both colleague and competitor in later books. And he's very gruff and eccentric and won't eat anything but bread and drink water when he's in public, but then someone's in his house one time and notices that there's a pizza box in the garbage can. So, that would be fun for a short story, but not, I think, for a novel-length work.
Talk a little bit about how you've used short stories in conjunction with your series.
[00:26:47] Sara: Well, in my Murder on Location series, the one that's set in contemporary times about the location scout, I feel like it has kind of run its course. I've told the story I wanted to convey between the characters, and it's essentially done. However, my readers are like, "Oh, can you do something else? We want more, you know?" I mean, that's a good thing to have, but I just can't think of a story arc and a plot for a whole novel. But I did have some small ideas like, "Oh, I could do this." So I've written some short stories that continue the story, like taking little baby steps.
And then, recently with my first Kickstarter, I had an idea. I was looking for a short story, and I thought, "What if I turn this into letters?" Because I've seen some mysteries in the mail or these letter subscriptions that you can get. So I thought, "What if I turned it into letters from my main character? She gets involved in this mystery, and it's not big enough for a novel." I wrote eight letters, and that was part of the Kickstarter. They could sign up to get a special edition hardcover, the letters, or both. So they were mailed to you over eight weeks. Each one is like an installment, kind of like a mini-series, you know, like an episodic story. Here's what's happening in this town. This is what happened. This is the mystery. I'll write more when I know more, you know, and then the next one comes a week later. And it's a fun way for me to try a different writing style. I've always written long, so writing short is a challenge. But somehow, writing the letters made it easier and a totally different style of writing.
So, to me, that's a short form that I can explore. The first one was about my main character going to visit her eccentric aunt, who keeps peacocks and such. One of her peacocks had gone missing, and she wanted her niece, who's good at solving problems, to come find it. She's like, "This is not what I do, and I don't know how to do this." It's kind of funny, and you know, it could fit into a shorter form.
[00:29:06] Matty: Yeah, I have found that I'll have ideas. Sometimes I'll get interested in something that's not thematic, but something that's just topical, maybe the opposite. The example I always use is in 2019, I went on a cruise with my husband and some friends, and we cruised around the Hawaiian islands. Then we cruised from Hawaii to Vancouver. I got fascinated with the idea of what happens if somebody goes overboard. I wanted to write a story about what happens if somebody goes overboard, but I didn't want to base a whole novel on it.
So I wrote a short story called "Sea of Troubles" about that, just like four or 5,000 words, maybe 6,000 words about exploring that. But it was a topic, not a theme. When I'm thinking of novel-length works, it's more about how someone balances privacy and celebrity or how someone recovers from the guilt they feel about an act in their past. Those are more thematic, not topical.
[00:30:06] Sara: Right. And then a novel that's, you get to really explore all those levels, and it's much deeper. I think like the short story can be deep in a way, but it's so short. It lets you hit that situation and kind of, it's almost cathartic, you know, like you've got these ideas and you're like, "Oh, I want to write about this, but I don't really want to write a whole book or a whole series on this one thing or this one situation." So yeah, it makes perfect sense.
Using a short story to experiment with a series concept.
[00:30:38] Matty: And, sort of to loop back to the whole spinoff idea, a short story can be nice because you could experiment with a character. And I think that people would enjoy, you know, a short story of Garrick Masser, the character I was talking about from the Ann Kinnear ones, but I think it would confirm my belief that a novel like the work with Garrick is not going to be good.
[00:30:57] Sara: Right. Yeah. It lets you kind of try things out.
[00:31:01] Matty: And I did have the experience recently of having written the three Lizzy Ballard thrillers, and then I was working on the fourth Lizzy Ballard thriller, and I realized that a logistical problem I had is that the thing that happens to Lizzy Ballard after her last scene in book three could be days, weeks, or even months later, but the thing that happens to the antagonist at the end of book three is going to happen seconds after the end of the book.
And so I was really struggling with how to handle that without having the first five chapters of book four be about the antagonist, which I didn't want, and so I ended up writing a novella, kind of a long, short story, short novella, length work that is just taking the antagonist from the end of book three to the beginning of book four, where their chronologies match up.
And that's one where I truly love this antagonist, Louise Mortensen, for anyone who has read the Lizzy Ballard books, but I'm not sure other people would want an entire novel about the bad guy, but I had a lot of fun with it.
[00:32:01] Sara: Yeah. But that's a good solution because you get this. Any of your readers who are very into that can read that and it will bridge for them. Yeah. I think that's a great solution.
[00:32:13] Matty: And I think from a marketing point of view, it'll be sort of a nice tease as I'm leading up to the launch of book four. I can be offering that as something too.
[00:32:21] Sara: Yeah.
Dealing with the challenges of being locked into your story world.
[00:32:22] Matty: To bring people forward, one of the other things you address in your book is how do you deal with the problems that result from being locked into a story world? And I think this is, we probably kind of talked about this a little bit about expanding things in a way that's going to be interesting for you. Any other tips there that we haven't hit yet?
[00:32:38] Sara: Well, for me, I'm a high input person, so if I can just find something that's related to the story world, like the Jane Austen Country House Location Scout, if I can just find a book about it, right? Yeah. Well, thank you. A location scout or about country houses and just start reading it, or you know, watch a documentary or something.
I will get ideas from that. The same thing in the 1920s. If I read some biographies, if I read about something that happened during that time period, like how they traveled, and I mean, that will fire ideas for me. So that may be something that would help other people, for me.
And maybe look at a theme and say, "Okay, so this first part of the series is about X, what else can we explore?" So, maybe it's a very strong romantic subplot in the beginning, and now you want to transition to something else. You know, you just have to think about, I mean, it could be something, like revenge; something happens, and you explore the possibility of revenge or the push-pull of, "Do I want revenge? Will revenge help?" You know, things like that. I'm a murder mystery enthusiast, so, of course, I go to revenge and dark themes like that, but it could be anything, you know? So sometimes it's like maybe a theme could help you figure out something else you could explore.
[00:34:02] Matty: Yeah, I think even rereading your old books can help because I'm realizing that the way this has played out is that Ann Kinnear is a woman who can communicate with the dead. I mentioned in book one that her parents both died in a car crash when she was in college to emphasize the fact that it's her and her brother.
She has, at the beginning, a very insular world. It's basically her, her brother, and her brother's husband, and I didn't want her to have parents or another kind of support structure beyond that. But then I was working on, I don't know, book six or something like that, and I thought, you know, it's weird that a woman who can talk to dead people, we've never addressed this question about, has she ever tried to contact her parents? So I started putting that in; I needed a subplot for Book six because normally, Ann doesn't get involved in a case until later, so I need something else going on to introduce her early, and she's working on that, and so I started using that as a subplot, and then I thought, you know, if you have the protagonist trying to contact her dead mother, that's probably not a story by itself.
[00:35:11] Sara: And isn't that funny? It's something that you didn't explore early on, but it's something that, as you're describing it now, I'm like, of course, people would be curious about that, and they would be interested in that. So, you know, sometimes just going over what drives your characters and motivates them and things that they're involved with can give you new ideas too.
[00:35:36] Matty: So we've talked about ways that we can reignite our own interest and readers' interest, but at some point, it probably has to come to an end. What are the signs that might be happening, and how do you do that gracefully?
[00:35:48] Sara: So this is something I've struggled with a lot because, like I said, mystery readers expect a series to just continue. They want it to go on forever, and I can't write every series forever. So for me, I thought if I become bored with the characters, if you're bored and you don't want to write the books, if you don't want to go back to those characters, then that might be a sign that it's time to wrap things up.
If you're out of ideas on how to make it interesting, if you're like, "Okay, I've written about all the stuff I want to write about with this character." I heard one author one time say she knew she was out of ideas when she was writing the amnesia book. She was like, "Okay, if I'm going to amnesia, then basically it's time to end this thing."
And I was like, "Okay, that is kind of..."
[00:36:38] Matty: It was all a dream!
[00:36:39] Sara: That's right. Yeah.
[00:36:40] Matty: Then it's time to call it quits.
[00:36:42] Sara: Yeah. And then I feel like if there's no more potential for character growth, even in your flat art characters, usually you've got some challenges, some small things that are happening. And if you've kind of reached the end of what you want to write about or what you can explore with that character, then, you know, it's probably time to move on.
And for me, I was very worried about how my readers would react. So there's like the question of, "How will readers react?" And then there's the concern of, "How will it impact my writing, like my income?" Because if you have a workhorse series that, you know, if I release a book, I'll make this much money, that can be stressful to decide to end that. So there's a lot of anxiety around it that I don't think people really talk about.
So what I did was I've done two different things. One time I just kind of quietly stepped away and just didn't really mention the series and started emphasizing my other series. Then another time I said, "Hey, this series is ending." And I think for me, that was better because my readers weren't constantly going, "Oh, is there more?" So I just said, "This series is done. I've pretty much told the story I want to tell, and these characters, they're happy and they're content. They're not discovering any more dead bodies. So we can move on."
And I told my readers that I didn't have any more ideas that would support a novel. And I had so many nice emails from people saying, "Oh, thank you for letting us know. I appreciate that you're not going to basically flog a dead horse." And I was like, "Okay, that's nice."
And then for marketing, I tried to, what I've learned to do is if you can link your new series, if you're writing a new series, if you can link it somehow to the one you're closing off, that's smart. I didn't always do that. But if you can find some way, like through setting or character or some story world, like magic, if you're using some sort of magic, if the magic can continue in another person or setting, you know, then you can keep part of that element going to pull readers onto the next series.
[00:38:55] Matty: And I suppose if your goal is to write one very long series and keep your engagement and the reader's engagement, you could go into it knowing, "I'm going to start out with protagonist A, and I'm going to have secondary protagonist B be a big part, but clearly secondary, but then I'm going to have B's role become larger and larger, so I could kind of fade out A if I get tired of A, and now I can switch it, so it's the 'Life on a Spaceship' series and you're moving from the person who's the captain to the person who's the first officer, I don't know, but having that plan to say, 'Oh, I'm going to have somebody in the wings whose story and character really does support them being, moving into the A position.'
[00:39:35] Sara: Yeah. And I'm seeing more and more books, especially in the mystery genre, that are ensemble cast. And I think that would be a way you could maybe start out with the focus on one character, but you have, you know, four or five other characters that your readers are just as interested in. And, you know, like you can kind of, they can wax and wane as the story goes, and you can highlight somebody's story in maybe book three or book seven that didn't have as big a role in book one. And that can give you different. And, you know, it can just keep you interested, and the readers interested, too.
[00:40:10] Matty: And I think another thing to consider is, are you tired of this for all time, or are you just tired of it now? Because with my two series, I wrote two Ann Kinnear novels, then I wrote three Lizzy Ballard thrillers, and then I wrote four more Ann Kinnear novels. By the time I'd gotten to the sixth Ann Kinnear book, I was missing the Lizzy characters.
And part of it was that I was missing the characters because they do become like your friends. And part of it, too, was that I realized that my books had gotten, well, I don't really want to use the word "cozier," but cozier and cozier, shading toward the cozy end more with each book. I was really looking forward to writing some kick-ass fight scenes and letting people get stabbed and things like that. I thought, I just need to switch back to Lizzy because her world is a little more action-packed. I just needed that as a refresher. I'm going to be going back to the Ann Kinnear books. But if you have something you can switch to, if you can leave one series at a satisfying point but open so that if you want to go back to it, you can, and then switch to something else, then you might go back to it refreshed.
And I think, as you were saying, letting people know, letting your readers know kind of what's going on because I think they appreciate that. They not only appreciate that you're taking the time to let them know, but they kind of enjoy the glimpse behind the scenes of what's going on in a writer's mind and in a writer's life.
[00:41:36] Sara: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot to be said for, like you're talking about switching tones and stuff. It's almost like a palate cleanser. Okay, I'm going to have this one. I'm going to leave it open in case I want to come back to it, but it's on hiatus right now. I'm working on this. And then when you're ready, you can go back to the other.
And I totally understand about writing super cozy. That's why my second series that I wrote was just like, I had everything in it. The first series I wrote had a mom, and she had little kids, so she had to be, you know, she had little kids and had to be, I didn't want to be one of those writers who put kids in danger as a story element.
So I was always having to shuffle all the kids off to the babysitter. So my next series, I was like, she's not going to have any kids. She's going to be impulsive. She's going to do whatever she wants because I wanted that change, you know, to explore something different.
[00:42:29] Matty: So interesting. Well, Sara, this has been such a fun conversation. Thank you so much for joining me to have the conversation. And please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
[00:42:40] Sara: My website is SaraRosett.com. My books, you can find them for sale at Sararosettebooks.com. And then if you're interested in the website, it's the "Wish I'd Known Them" podcast with Jami Albright. And if you're a mystery reader, there's the Mystery Books podcast.
[00:42:56] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:42:58] Sara: Thank you for having me. It's been a lot of fun.
[00:00:05] Sara: Good, how are you?
[00:00:07] Matty: I'm doing great. Thank you.
Meet Sara Rosett
[00:00:08] Matty: To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, Sara Rosette is the USA Today bestselling author of 30 mysteries for readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling whodunits.
She hosts two podcasts, the Mystery Book Podcast, that sounds good, for readers and for writers. The Wish I'd Known Then podcast, which I love, she co-hosts that with Jami Albright, and she also writes nonfiction for authors, including "How to Outline a Cozy Mystery" and "How to Write a Series."
Sara's background as a series author
[00:00:33] Matty: I was very intrigued with the "How to Write a Series" topic, so I invited Sara to the podcast to talk about that very topic.
And I thought it would be helpful, Sara, to just start out, give us a little background on your own series, so we have some context for the conversation.
[00:00:48] Sara: Sure. Yeah. I started out writing cozy mysteries. I was traditionally published first, and I wrote a 10-book cozy mystery series about a military spouse, which is what I was. Somehow, I thought this could be the hook for the series, that it's about a person who moves around a lot and is involved in military life, because that's something people don't know about.
And then, I transitioned into a hybrid author, still doing traditional cozies. I also did some indie books. So, I have a series that is a throwback to classic romantic suspense. It's more in the style of Mary Stewart and Elizabeth Peters, if you're familiar with those authors. It involves travel, mystery, intrigue, some murders, some not, and art theft. It's a mix of all the things I love. These books are cozy-ish but not purely cozy. They have mysteries, but they're not straight mysteries. They don't fit neatly into any one category. It's my first foray into indie publishing.
Then, I thought I might do better if I wrote a straight cozy as an indie author. So, I wrote a series about a location scout who's working in England, trying to find locations for a Jane Austen adaptation. It's a modern mystery set in England, and I got to indulge my love for all things Jane Austen and country houses. I got to explore these locations, and it did well. After that, I was really into reading 1920s and 1930s Golden Age mysteries, and I thought it would be great to write a series set in that time period.
So, I took the same location from the series about the location scout in England and went back to the 1920s, setting a series in that village. That's how my "High Society Lady Detective" series came about. It's by far the most popular series I have, and I'm continuing to write it. The other two series, I've kind of tapered off, and I'm not writing novels in them anymore. I might write short stories or do some special projects with the other series. But for now, I'm focused on the 1920s country house mystery genre.
[00:03:21] Matty: Oh, my goodness. We have hours and hours worth of conversation to have here. We'll have to try to control ourselves.
Complying (or not) with Genre Expectations
[00:03:28] Matty: So, the one you mentioned had some murder, some not. Is that a series or was it? A series, were those standalones.
[00:03:35] Sara: I originally thought, okay, this will be a trilogy. It'll consist of three books. And I wrote those three books. It's one of those series that, once it finds its reader, the readers are super passionate about it, but it doesn't have a really big audience. However, the readers who love it, really love it.
So they would email me, asking, "Can you write more?" And I thought, okay, I could do another book. So I wrote another book. We may talk about this later in the context of extending a series. Because when I got to the end of that fourth book, I thought, "Oh, I have an idea for how I could continue the series in a new story arc." A new story arc, like the first story arc was complete in the first three books. The fourth book is a transition. Then I continued the series for a couple more books because I found a new direction for my character to explore. So it turned into a longer series than I had originally plAnnd.
[00:04:28] Matty: That's really interesting and something, I don't know if this is just a one-shot answer or something that maybe we can, as you mentioned, weave through the rest of our conversation, is the idea that some have murder, some do not. I was just at a book club where they were reading my Ann Kinnear suspense novel, "The Falcon and the Owl," and it's the first one that has a whodunit aspect. But there's a murder right at the beginning, and the whodunit is not related to the murder at the beginning. It's a death that doesn't appear to be a murder until later, spoiler alert, later in the story. And we had this whole conversation, as I often do on this podcast, about the trickiness of maintaining consistency in a series, such as characters, tone, and theme, but not consistency in the sense of whether it's a whodunit or not.
[00:05:15] Sara: The dead body?
[00:05:16] Matty: Yeah, where's the dead body? I'd be curious as we're talking to discuss how consistent one has to be throughout the series and those kinds of things. Any initial thoughts about that?
[00:05:26] Sara: Well, I think I'm always very clear in my mysteries, especially the ones that are whodunits. I make sure to introduce the murder and the cast of suspects right from the start, so readers know that these are definitely whodunits and that's the type of story they are. With these other ones, I try to convey through the blurb and the cover that they're not cozy mysteries, but they do have elements of mystery and intrigue in them. Some of the books do involve murder, but not all of them. The murder isn't the main focus. The main focus is, in the beginning, she's trying to find her ex who has disappeared, and she's involved in this more conspiratorial type of plot. That's the primary storyline. Hopefully, the cover, blurb, and the way the book starts convey that it's not a whodunit. It's more about suspense, possibly with intrigue and travel. There are more travel cozies now, but because this one includes travel and international settings, people realize it may not be a Small Town Cozy.
The three types of series
[00:07:12] Matty: So in your book, "How to Write a Series," you talk about three basic types of series. So what are those?
[00:07:17] Sara: Okay, so you've got the multi-protagonist series, which is like this: you have a new protagonist with each book, and the books are linked somehow. This is very common in romance; a lot of times, it'll be like a family or a group of friends, and each book is about a different friend.
Then you have a single-protagonist series where you follow one protagonist throughout the series. These can be broken down into two different types. You've got the flat-arc protagonist who doesn't change a whole lot. This is like, for example, James Bond or Mary Poppins; people who don't undergo a significant change throughout the story, but because they're in the story, things change. I mean, if Poirot hadn't been on the Orient Express, it would be a completely different story, right? So because he's there, he causes things to happen, and things change. A lot of times, there will be small character arcs throughout the series, but it's not a massive change.
That's what you get in the third type, which I think of as the robust character arc, where you've got a significant change. It's kind of the classic hero's journey. You start out, go through a big adventure or quest, and then at the end, your character has changed, and that type has a natural endpoint.
If you think about Harry Potter, he goes through all these adventures, and at the end, there's a resolution, and it's complete, usually marking the end of that series. So, the robust character arc series lends itself well to trilogies, fantasy, and sci-fi. The flat arc, which is more episodic, is seen more in mystery series, especially those that can go on for a long time because they're more episodic. So that's a high-level overview of the different types.
[00:09:16] Matty: And I suppose a benefit of that first type with the multi-protagonist is that if you get bored with one, you can switch to another.
[00:09:24] Sara: That is right.
[00:09:25] Matty: And you could go almost endlessly with that, I suppose.
Creating variations in a multi-protagonist series
[00:09:28] Sara: and you can keep creating variations. For example, if it's a small town, you can just keep writing about different characters in your town, or you can have new people move in. Or if it's a family, it could be like, well, guess what? We've heard the stories of all the sisters. Now we've got cousins moving in, you know, to explore their stories. So yeah, it can be endless. Focus on getting the first book written before worrying about what type of series it might be a part of
[00:09:50] Matty: So in the authors that you speak with and work with, do you find that people usually know what they're going to write as they're writing their first book? Even if they don't know or aren't sophisticated enough to refer to it in the terminology that you use, do they already have a sense?
Or are there cases where somebody wants to write a series and they're thinking through it, and are there flats that would make you say, "Oh, I would point you here, I would point you there," based on what they want to accomplish or what they, either creatively or from a business point of view.
[00:10:25] Sara: Yeah, I think that's really hard because when you're first starting out, you're just trying to get the book finished. And for me, I read mysteries. I loved mystery. That was what I knew I wanted to write, and that was pretty much what I was familiar with. So I've learned all this and figured it out in my mind. I've categorized these things this way to help me figure things out as I've learned more about genres, different types of stories, story arcs, and characters. So I think a lot of that may come as you learn more. So, I think probably, in the beginning, you're just worried about finishing the first book, but I do think it is good to have a plan. For me, I knew my book was going to be a cozy, and cozies are always part of a series.
I mean, it's not like I've never seen cozies. They're not marketed that way anyway. So I knew it was going to be a series, and I had some vague ideas for my first series about the next books, like what the mystery plots could be about. But I did not think at all about my character, and she was a flat character. I look back now and go, "Okay, so she was a flat character." That's why a lot of the advice about the hero's journey, I was like, "This doesn't really work for Cozy." I mean, you can make it work, but she doesn't have a big "aha" moment at the end of book one and then have another "aha" moment at the end of book two. It just doesn't work like that. So yeah, I think a lot of it, you kind of work your way into it. You get the book done, and especially if you know, "Okay, my genre normally has trilogies or normally has five books," then you know that's what readers expect. That's probably what you're going to write toward anyway.
Are there trends in flat- versus robust-arc series?
[00:12:08] Matty: Do you think there are fashions or trends in that? Because on the surface, a flat arc sounds like an insult. And, I think that if one had been able to go back in time and ask the authors what their plan was, they would probably have said, "Oh, yeah, I don't plan to have this character change over time. Like it was intentional."
[00:12:30] Sara: It wasn't like a craft failure on their part. Do you think that's still true? Are either the robust character arc or the flat character arc still desirable among readers? Or is one more popular currently? Well, I think a lot of it depends on the genre because in mystery, readers expect mystery series to go on for like 10, 15, 20 books. They're like, "This is great." I think, and in thriller too, like Jack Reacher, that's, I would say, more of a flat character arc. He doesn't change that much, but that's a long series.
And then I think readers like going back to that world if they enjoy whatever world it is, fantasy, mystery, whatever. They enjoy going back to it. There's a comfort and familiarity of going, "Okay, I know who this character is. I know what I'm going to get," even if it's book 17 or whatever. The drawback is you can get bored with that as an author. You may be like, "Huh, I've written everything I can think of in this world or this series or this character."
And I do think modern readers expect a little bit of a character arc. Like I was reading the books from the twenties and thirties; those mysteries were basically puzzle mysteries. And you didn't really learn a whole lot about the sleuths' personal lives, just little tidbits here and there, but it wasn't like they changed and grew that much. It was more like, "here's a mystery, can you solve it?"
And I feel like readers want more than that now. They want something extra. They need a little bit more. They still want a good puzzle; in my genre, they want a good puzzle, but they want a little bit extra, even if it's an episodic series. I think the through-line for your episodic series, your flat arc, is really what's happening in the main character's life and all the subplots that are going on, all the other relationships. People get heavily invested in those.
[00:14:29] Matty: Well, I would think that if you're writing more of a flat arc series, then you have to rely more heavily on the other characters, not the secondary characters, but whoever are kind of the co-protagonists of that particular book. The cast, yeah, exactly, because, like, I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't admit this, but my only exposure to Jack Reacher is I watched one of the TV shows, and I was really more interested in the characters that were surrounding Jack Reacher than I was in Jack Reacher himself, which I thought was very interesting.
Now, I'll see if I get angry emails about this, but I was really not compelled by the Jack Reacher character, and then somehow I happened upon an interview with the actor who played him, and he was very engaging and entertaining, you know, seemed like the kind of guy you'd want to go out to a bar for a beer with, and I thought, man, I would have liked it a lot better if more of that had come through in the characterization. But then I said that to someone who's more familiar with the books, and they said, well, yeah, but that really wouldn't be true to the books then; that's not the kind of character he is. So, um, yeah, but I was relying on what was going on with the other characters more to retain my interest in the show.
[00:15:39] Sara: Yeah. And I think that happens. I mean, with a flat arc character that's compelling, you're interested in that. Hopefully, you're interested in what's going on with them, but then all the other things that are going on in the world around them, that's the thread that's going to pull people through, I think, because you're not only ready to find out what happens to Poirot or Mary Poppins; you want to know what's going on in the family or the relationships.
[00:16:09] Sara: And a lot of times, the flat arc characters, if they have an antagonist, sometimes the antagonist is way more interesting and fun than the protagonists. You think about James Bond and the villains; those are the fun ones that you're like, "Oh, this is interesting, what's going on here?" Sometimes the antagonist can almost overshadow the protagonist in some ways, like Moriarty and Holmes, you know, Moriarty is fascinating, Holmes is fascinating too, but you're interested in Moriarty as well.
[00:16:44] Matty: Yeah, well, it does seem as if I'm relying on unreliable memory a little bit for this. Holmes was fascinating right from the get-go because of his idiosyncrasies, and then after a while, you know that he's going to do whatever the things that Holmes does, but then Moriarty gets added to the mix. So, I wonder if Conan Doyle was doing that because he was kind of tired of leaning on Holmes's idiosyncrasies to keep it interesting. He's throwing in this new person to kind of shake things up.
[00:17:22] Sara: Yeah, and that's a great way to keep things fresh. As you bring in somebody new, you introduce a different variable. Because after a couple of books, you kind of know what your character is like, your flat character. You know their reactions and their quirky little habits that are entertaining. But after six or seven books, after all these books, or even after three books, maybe you're ready for something new as a writer and a reader.
How to extend your series beyond your original plan
[00:17:49] Matty: Well, that's kind of a nice lead into one of the other things I wanted to talk about, which is extending your series beyond your original plan. So I guess some of this also goes back to the character arc. Let's say you've started out, and you think you're going to have three books, and then you and the readers continue to be interested. So you're extending it, but now maybe you have to not only adjust the idea for additional books but also the arc.
Can you talk a little bit about extending your series beyond the original plan?
[00:18:15] Sara: Yeah. So if you have a plan, and you're like, um, like that series I had, the first three books were like a quest. Could she figure out what had happened and unravel this conspiracy? So when that was done, and they were called "On the Run," I was like, okay, if I'm going to extend this, I can't have them being on the run indefinitely. That's just crazy. So I had to figure out something else. Sometimes you have to tie off one arc and then come up with something new. So with that series, I was like, okay, what if she went to work for somebody, and she gets involved in art recovery? So it's an entrepreneurial arc after that. It's like, can she get the job? Can she solve her first case? That's the next arc. Sometimes you have to figure out how your character retires. And then what are they going to do in retirement? Maybe they're a retired police detective or a magician, and they have to figure out what's going to happen next.
If you have a transition point, you can maybe find a new jumping-off storyline from that. There's a new challenge somehow. Maybe there's a new rival or competition. Something happens that gives you a new mix of challenges. Maybe they have a backstory you haven't explored, or maybe one of the side characters has a backstory that somehow your character is involved in, and it's a quest, like at the end, instead of the beginning, like my book. So you can just I think, you take your world you have, and you go, what have I not explored in here? And, if it's a town, are there people in the town, are there locations that you haven't delved into? For my 1920s series, it's set in different country homes in England. In the most recent one, "The Eight," I take her to Europe. She goes to Switzerland in the winter, goes to see the Alps, St. Moritz, and all that. So it's just like a whole new area to explore, which will keep you interested as well as the reader, hopefully.
Considering how your readers will react to changes in your series
[00:20:31] Matty: would be interesting, or important, I guess, to track what about the series your characters really like. Because I'm thinking of, I mean, Conan Doyle tried killing Holmes because he was so tired of it, so that's
[00:20:42] Sara: And that was a no-go.
[00:20:43] Matty: That was a no-go, but whoops, but I can imagine he might have said, "Oh, you know, I'm so bored with this. I'm going to mix things up. I'm going to have Watson, you know, move to the country, and I'm going to give Holmes a new partner."
[00:20:56] Sara: Yeah.
[00:20:57] Matty: If people were reading that series in part because they loved Watson, then that was going to be unsuccessful.
And so, those are things that apply to both extending a series and addressing the situation where you yourself are becoming bored with it. Understanding what you can change or extend that isn't going to violate the implicit contract you've made with your readers.
How do you assess those kinds of considerations?
[00:21:21] Sara: Well, for me, whenever I think about it, I know that my readers are reading most of my books because they like the character, they like the setting, and they like the supporting cast. If I'm going to take my character and do something new and different, and maybe she, maybe I'm like, "Oh, she's always been in this little town, but now I want to write a book set in Asia or Europe." If I just take her, my readers are going to be like, "Oh, what's going on with all these other 10 people? I want to know what's happening in their lives." So sometimes that's when you get those books where it's like the whole village goes and travels, you know, and sometimes you can make that happen, but you have to think about why are my readers reading this?
And if they want those interactions in a certain location with a lot of people, it's probably smarter to keep the action where it is, instead of trying to go to a new location, unless you're going to do like a complete reset. And sometimes people do that. They'll take a series and basically end it and have your character move to a totally new location and totally start over.
I wouldn't recommend that. I think that's kind of risky, but I mean, you could do it. Yeah.
[00:22:37] Matty: It's as if you're starting over with a new series, so even if there's a continuing character, the protagonist, you're going to lose some people, but pick up some people. But if you go into it with the expectation that you're not necessarily bringing along all your previous readers, that could be helpful.
Using a spin-off to extend a series
[00:22:54] Sara: Yeah, I think in that case, it might be smarter to do just a spin-off. Just take a character and, if you want to move your story to a new location or have a new tone, especially, you probably want to have a spin-off, but then they'd be linked, and then your readers who found one would probably try the other one or vice versa. If they start with a spin-off, they might go, "Oh, there's more books. Let me go back and read how it all started."
[00:23:25] Matty: When you're thinking about a spin-off, I've occasionally had people say that they like some of the secondary characters in my Ann Kinnear books and ask if I've ever thought about doing a spin-off. When I play it out in my mind, I think some of those characters, they're good in small doses, but I think a whole book of that particular character would be
[00:23:45] Sara: might be a little much.
[00:23:46] Matty: A little much.
Spin-offs are for more than just characters
[00:23:46] Matty: Yeah. So when you're assessing possible characters for a spinoff or maybe it's not just characters. Can you describe when you think of spin-offs, are there other flavors than spinning off a character, like a location, for example?
[00:23:59] Sara: Yeah, I would say you can do the character. You could take a side character, you know, and give them their whole story, but that is the problem. Maybe it's not ideal for a protagonist. Maybe they're better in a side character role. But then, like you could, like I did the location thing where it's this village in modern times, contemporary, and then this is the village in the past.
So that way you're linking the village, at least.
[00:24:25] Matty: Yeah, that's very cool. I've never heard that before, but that's super cool.
[00:24:28] Sara: Yeah, and I don't know how much read-through I get from that, but I mean, I figure it's a way that if people are interested, they might pick up the other series just because of the name. Other ways you could link or spin off would be like, I would think this might work in romance, like maybe you would have a shop or a store, and you would have different, or a hotel. They do that a lot. You know, like you have different stories with different people checking in and out. You know, like you could
[00:24:56] Matty: The Love Boat.
[00:24:57] Sara: Yes. Fantasy Island. There we go.
[00:24:59] Matty: Fantasy Island, exactly.
[00:25:01] Sara: Yeah.
[00:25:03] Matty: And if you're assessing a character as a spinoff, are there any either green flags or red flags that would say this is likely to be a good or not such a good idea?
[00:25:13] Sara: Well, I guess it depends on what type of series you're writing. So if you're doing a flat arc, do you have enough story around that person? Can you create enough story around that person to make it interesting and make it more than one book if you want a series? And if it's a robust character, like what characteristics, what change are they going to go through that's going to make it compelling that readers will want to read?
Because I do know what you're saying, like some of those characters are so fun to write as the comic relief or whatever, but then can you sustain a whole book or a whole series with them being the comic relief? And then are you going to bring in somebody else to be the straight man? You know, like you have to kind of think through these things down the line and can you do that for three, four, or five books?
Supplementing a series with short stories
[00:26:02] Matty: Well, one of the things you said that I love was that you write short stories, and whenever I hear short stories, I'm always immediately intrigued. And I think that's a great way to explore that. So one of the characters that people often say they would like to see in a spinoff is named Garrick Masser. He's in the Ann Kinnear novels. And basically, he's in there to be both Ann's mentor in the early books and then her kind of both colleague and competitor in later books. And he's very gruff and eccentric and won't eat anything but bread and drink water when he's in public, but then someone's in his house one time and notices that there's a pizza box in the garbage can. So, that would be fun for a short story, but not, I think, for a novel-length work.
Talk a little bit about how you've used short stories in conjunction with your series.
[00:26:47] Sara: Well, in my Murder on Location series, the one that's set in contemporary times about the location scout, I feel like it has kind of run its course. I've told the story I wanted to convey between the characters, and it's essentially done. However, my readers are like, "Oh, can you do something else? We want more, you know?" I mean, that's a good thing to have, but I just can't think of a story arc and a plot for a whole novel. But I did have some small ideas like, "Oh, I could do this." So I've written some short stories that continue the story, like taking little baby steps.
And then, recently with my first Kickstarter, I had an idea. I was looking for a short story, and I thought, "What if I turn this into letters?" Because I've seen some mysteries in the mail or these letter subscriptions that you can get. So I thought, "What if I turned it into letters from my main character? She gets involved in this mystery, and it's not big enough for a novel." I wrote eight letters, and that was part of the Kickstarter. They could sign up to get a special edition hardcover, the letters, or both. So they were mailed to you over eight weeks. Each one is like an installment, kind of like a mini-series, you know, like an episodic story. Here's what's happening in this town. This is what happened. This is the mystery. I'll write more when I know more, you know, and then the next one comes a week later. And it's a fun way for me to try a different writing style. I've always written long, so writing short is a challenge. But somehow, writing the letters made it easier and a totally different style of writing.
So, to me, that's a short form that I can explore. The first one was about my main character going to visit her eccentric aunt, who keeps peacocks and such. One of her peacocks had gone missing, and she wanted her niece, who's good at solving problems, to come find it. She's like, "This is not what I do, and I don't know how to do this." It's kind of funny, and you know, it could fit into a shorter form.
[00:29:06] Matty: Yeah, I have found that I'll have ideas. Sometimes I'll get interested in something that's not thematic, but something that's just topical, maybe the opposite. The example I always use is in 2019, I went on a cruise with my husband and some friends, and we cruised around the Hawaiian islands. Then we cruised from Hawaii to Vancouver. I got fascinated with the idea of what happens if somebody goes overboard. I wanted to write a story about what happens if somebody goes overboard, but I didn't want to base a whole novel on it.
So I wrote a short story called "Sea of Troubles" about that, just like four or 5,000 words, maybe 6,000 words about exploring that. But it was a topic, not a theme. When I'm thinking of novel-length works, it's more about how someone balances privacy and celebrity or how someone recovers from the guilt they feel about an act in their past. Those are more thematic, not topical.
[00:30:06] Sara: Right. And then a novel that's, you get to really explore all those levels, and it's much deeper. I think like the short story can be deep in a way, but it's so short. It lets you hit that situation and kind of, it's almost cathartic, you know, like you've got these ideas and you're like, "Oh, I want to write about this, but I don't really want to write a whole book or a whole series on this one thing or this one situation." So yeah, it makes perfect sense.
Using a short story to experiment with a series concept.
[00:30:38] Matty: And, sort of to loop back to the whole spinoff idea, a short story can be nice because you could experiment with a character. And I think that people would enjoy, you know, a short story of Garrick Masser, the character I was talking about from the Ann Kinnear ones, but I think it would confirm my belief that a novel like the work with Garrick is not going to be good.
[00:30:57] Sara: Right. Yeah. It lets you kind of try things out.
[00:31:01] Matty: And I did have the experience recently of having written the three Lizzy Ballard thrillers, and then I was working on the fourth Lizzy Ballard thriller, and I realized that a logistical problem I had is that the thing that happens to Lizzy Ballard after her last scene in book three could be days, weeks, or even months later, but the thing that happens to the antagonist at the end of book three is going to happen seconds after the end of the book.
And so I was really struggling with how to handle that without having the first five chapters of book four be about the antagonist, which I didn't want, and so I ended up writing a novella, kind of a long, short story, short novella, length work that is just taking the antagonist from the end of book three to the beginning of book four, where their chronologies match up.
And that's one where I truly love this antagonist, Louise Mortensen, for anyone who has read the Lizzy Ballard books, but I'm not sure other people would want an entire novel about the bad guy, but I had a lot of fun with it.
[00:32:01] Sara: Yeah. But that's a good solution because you get this. Any of your readers who are very into that can read that and it will bridge for them. Yeah. I think that's a great solution.
[00:32:13] Matty: And I think from a marketing point of view, it'll be sort of a nice tease as I'm leading up to the launch of book four. I can be offering that as something too.
[00:32:21] Sara: Yeah.
Dealing with the challenges of being locked into your story world.
[00:32:22] Matty: To bring people forward, one of the other things you address in your book is how do you deal with the problems that result from being locked into a story world? And I think this is, we probably kind of talked about this a little bit about expanding things in a way that's going to be interesting for you. Any other tips there that we haven't hit yet?
[00:32:38] Sara: Well, for me, I'm a high input person, so if I can just find something that's related to the story world, like the Jane Austen Country House Location Scout, if I can just find a book about it, right? Yeah. Well, thank you. A location scout or about country houses and just start reading it, or you know, watch a documentary or something.
I will get ideas from that. The same thing in the 1920s. If I read some biographies, if I read about something that happened during that time period, like how they traveled, and I mean, that will fire ideas for me. So that may be something that would help other people, for me.
And maybe look at a theme and say, "Okay, so this first part of the series is about X, what else can we explore?" So, maybe it's a very strong romantic subplot in the beginning, and now you want to transition to something else. You know, you just have to think about, I mean, it could be something, like revenge; something happens, and you explore the possibility of revenge or the push-pull of, "Do I want revenge? Will revenge help?" You know, things like that. I'm a murder mystery enthusiast, so, of course, I go to revenge and dark themes like that, but it could be anything, you know? So sometimes it's like maybe a theme could help you figure out something else you could explore.
[00:34:02] Matty: Yeah, I think even rereading your old books can help because I'm realizing that the way this has played out is that Ann Kinnear is a woman who can communicate with the dead. I mentioned in book one that her parents both died in a car crash when she was in college to emphasize the fact that it's her and her brother.
She has, at the beginning, a very insular world. It's basically her, her brother, and her brother's husband, and I didn't want her to have parents or another kind of support structure beyond that. But then I was working on, I don't know, book six or something like that, and I thought, you know, it's weird that a woman who can talk to dead people, we've never addressed this question about, has she ever tried to contact her parents? So I started putting that in; I needed a subplot for Book six because normally, Ann doesn't get involved in a case until later, so I need something else going on to introduce her early, and she's working on that, and so I started using that as a subplot, and then I thought, you know, if you have the protagonist trying to contact her dead mother, that's probably not a story by itself.
[00:35:11] Sara: And isn't that funny? It's something that you didn't explore early on, but it's something that, as you're describing it now, I'm like, of course, people would be curious about that, and they would be interested in that. So, you know, sometimes just going over what drives your characters and motivates them and things that they're involved with can give you new ideas too.
[00:35:36] Matty: So we've talked about ways that we can reignite our own interest and readers' interest, but at some point, it probably has to come to an end. What are the signs that might be happening, and how do you do that gracefully?
[00:35:48] Sara: So this is something I've struggled with a lot because, like I said, mystery readers expect a series to just continue. They want it to go on forever, and I can't write every series forever. So for me, I thought if I become bored with the characters, if you're bored and you don't want to write the books, if you don't want to go back to those characters, then that might be a sign that it's time to wrap things up.
If you're out of ideas on how to make it interesting, if you're like, "Okay, I've written about all the stuff I want to write about with this character." I heard one author one time say she knew she was out of ideas when she was writing the amnesia book. She was like, "Okay, if I'm going to amnesia, then basically it's time to end this thing."
And I was like, "Okay, that is kind of..."
[00:36:38] Matty: It was all a dream!
[00:36:39] Sara: That's right. Yeah.
[00:36:40] Matty: Then it's time to call it quits.
[00:36:42] Sara: Yeah. And then I feel like if there's no more potential for character growth, even in your flat art characters, usually you've got some challenges, some small things that are happening. And if you've kind of reached the end of what you want to write about or what you can explore with that character, then, you know, it's probably time to move on.
And for me, I was very worried about how my readers would react. So there's like the question of, "How will readers react?" And then there's the concern of, "How will it impact my writing, like my income?" Because if you have a workhorse series that, you know, if I release a book, I'll make this much money, that can be stressful to decide to end that. So there's a lot of anxiety around it that I don't think people really talk about.
So what I did was I've done two different things. One time I just kind of quietly stepped away and just didn't really mention the series and started emphasizing my other series. Then another time I said, "Hey, this series is ending." And I think for me, that was better because my readers weren't constantly going, "Oh, is there more?" So I just said, "This series is done. I've pretty much told the story I want to tell, and these characters, they're happy and they're content. They're not discovering any more dead bodies. So we can move on."
And I told my readers that I didn't have any more ideas that would support a novel. And I had so many nice emails from people saying, "Oh, thank you for letting us know. I appreciate that you're not going to basically flog a dead horse." And I was like, "Okay, that's nice."
And then for marketing, I tried to, what I've learned to do is if you can link your new series, if you're writing a new series, if you can link it somehow to the one you're closing off, that's smart. I didn't always do that. But if you can find some way, like through setting or character or some story world, like magic, if you're using some sort of magic, if the magic can continue in another person or setting, you know, then you can keep part of that element going to pull readers onto the next series.
[00:38:55] Matty: And I suppose if your goal is to write one very long series and keep your engagement and the reader's engagement, you could go into it knowing, "I'm going to start out with protagonist A, and I'm going to have secondary protagonist B be a big part, but clearly secondary, but then I'm going to have B's role become larger and larger, so I could kind of fade out A if I get tired of A, and now I can switch it, so it's the 'Life on a Spaceship' series and you're moving from the person who's the captain to the person who's the first officer, I don't know, but having that plan to say, 'Oh, I'm going to have somebody in the wings whose story and character really does support them being, moving into the A position.'
[00:39:35] Sara: Yeah. And I'm seeing more and more books, especially in the mystery genre, that are ensemble cast. And I think that would be a way you could maybe start out with the focus on one character, but you have, you know, four or five other characters that your readers are just as interested in. And, you know, like you can kind of, they can wax and wane as the story goes, and you can highlight somebody's story in maybe book three or book seven that didn't have as big a role in book one. And that can give you different. And, you know, it can just keep you interested, and the readers interested, too.
[00:40:10] Matty: And I think another thing to consider is, are you tired of this for all time, or are you just tired of it now? Because with my two series, I wrote two Ann Kinnear novels, then I wrote three Lizzy Ballard thrillers, and then I wrote four more Ann Kinnear novels. By the time I'd gotten to the sixth Ann Kinnear book, I was missing the Lizzy characters.
And part of it was that I was missing the characters because they do become like your friends. And part of it, too, was that I realized that my books had gotten, well, I don't really want to use the word "cozier," but cozier and cozier, shading toward the cozy end more with each book. I was really looking forward to writing some kick-ass fight scenes and letting people get stabbed and things like that. I thought, I just need to switch back to Lizzy because her world is a little more action-packed. I just needed that as a refresher. I'm going to be going back to the Ann Kinnear books. But if you have something you can switch to, if you can leave one series at a satisfying point but open so that if you want to go back to it, you can, and then switch to something else, then you might go back to it refreshed.
And I think, as you were saying, letting people know, letting your readers know kind of what's going on because I think they appreciate that. They not only appreciate that you're taking the time to let them know, but they kind of enjoy the glimpse behind the scenes of what's going on in a writer's mind and in a writer's life.
[00:41:36] Sara: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot to be said for, like you're talking about switching tones and stuff. It's almost like a palate cleanser. Okay, I'm going to have this one. I'm going to leave it open in case I want to come back to it, but it's on hiatus right now. I'm working on this. And then when you're ready, you can go back to the other.
And I totally understand about writing super cozy. That's why my second series that I wrote was just like, I had everything in it. The first series I wrote had a mom, and she had little kids, so she had to be, you know, she had little kids and had to be, I didn't want to be one of those writers who put kids in danger as a story element.
So I was always having to shuffle all the kids off to the babysitter. So my next series, I was like, she's not going to have any kids. She's going to be impulsive. She's going to do whatever she wants because I wanted that change, you know, to explore something different.
[00:42:29] Matty: So interesting. Well, Sara, this has been such a fun conversation. Thank you so much for joining me to have the conversation. And please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
[00:42:40] Sara: My website is SaraRosett.com. My books, you can find them for sale at Sararosettebooks.com. And then if you're interested in the website, it's the "Wish I'd Known Them" podcast with Jami Albright. And if you're a mystery reader, there's the Mystery Books podcast.
[00:42:56] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:42:58] Sara: Thank you for having me. It's been a lot of fun.
