Arcs are, of course, essential. The reader must follow a character’s journey through each story and that journey must somehow create change around, and more importantly within the character. He may even end up coming full circle, but there must always be a curve of some description – linear characters invariably lose the reader’s interest.

The problem arises in writing multiple books in a series. One must develop plausible arcs for the main characters within each book while maintaining a much broader arc across the entire series.

Letting it all out too early

The first book seems to be the toughest in this respect. The inclination is to develop a thoroughly gripping character arc for the tortured primary protagonist just as with any standalone novel. But it is vital not to play all the cards too early, leaving so few options across the remaining stories that our protagonist might need a dramatic personality change in order to remain interesting! This seems to happen frequently in long running soaps.

Holding too much back

On the flipside, there’s the danger of keeping too much back. Playing out the character arc across so many books in the series that it becomes flattened with each individual story dulled and uninteresting.

What about a book series with no absolute final number of stories? Without understanding the end, how can you develop a character arc that will find completion and not leave your readers dangling in the dark?

Dimensions are everything

To offer the broadest opportunities to develop smaller character arcs within the overall arc, fully formed characters, it seems to me, are the key. Characters do not need to be complex, but they do need to have realistic, multiple dimensions – sometimes conflicting dimensions are the most interesting to write.

Such characters merely need a situation thrown at them and they take on a life of their own. Writing their actions and reactions to a situation is much more straightforward with a well defined character.

I’m no expert, of course, I’m merely on my first novel, but it seems clear that to sustain my characters across an undefined number of books, they must have a great deal of substance.

Early thoughts in early days. Ask me in ten years if these ideas worked!

I am currently reading Algernon Blackwood’s The Damned (1914), which Wikipedia describes as “A highly original haunted house tale in which the haunting results from the intolerant religious beliefs of a series of previous residents”, and which I can say is gripping, unnerving, and just what a classic spooky story should be.

But it’s a bit of a mouthful… OK, so what can one expect written in 1914?

Reading the 90-page story, I have the urge to modernise it, to bring the situation and characters right up to date while retaining the underlying original story. I cannot say I have ever reacted to a story in this way. The beauty of The Damned is it’s now out of copyright and freely available (pop over to Project Gunteberg for a copy).

It got me thinking as to why this notion modernising and reworking of classic movies has not (as far as I am aware, please re-educate me if I am mistaken) appeared in the publishing world. It seems more acceptable to revision an idea in the movies than in print. Sometimes these reworks fail, sometimes they improve on the original. Some stories at their core are timeless.

This may be an interesting project to accomplish after the completion of Persistent Spirit and before getting fully imersed in A Shot in Time (the second TableRappers novel).