Lynne Patrick
A week or three ago I posted about series fiction, a topic in which I have more than a passing interest. When I was publishing, the potential for a series was a criterion I found myself applying to every debut novel I was offered; as a result I’ve copy-edited eight series and done a deeper development job on five. Now I have more time to read for pleasure, at least half the books on my shelves (and there are many, both books and shelves) form parts of series. And as recently as last week when offered a choice of books to review for a mystery website, I leapt on the much-delayed latest in a series I’ve been following since it began seven years ago. If I listed the authors whose latest-in-series I actively seek, I could probably fill my usual Dead Guy space with nothing but their names.
Start looking at long-running series and some of the greatest names in crime and thriller writing come up. Rebus was finally laid to rest after book seventeen, and reappeared (by public demand?) five years later. Jack Reacher is eighteen not out, and that’s if you don’t count the Kindle novellas. Dalziel and Pascoe made it to twenty-four plus a short story or two, and would surely have continued into the uncharted future had the grim reaper not intervened.
And I don’t even need to mention the authors’ names, do I?
These three have something in common aside from writing best-selling series. Their careers all began some years ago, when publishing was a different world: a world which laid less emphasis on instant gratification and short-term planning. A world in which series weren’t cancelled after book two if they didn’t sell in six figures, but were given a chance to take root in readers’ minds and build a following.
Last time I delved into this topic I expressed reservations about the credibility of some series. I stand by that; four murders a week in a civilized university city takes some swallowing, a series set against the kind of photogenic backdrop where shoplifting makes headlines in real life even more so. But ground a series in sound common sense, as did all three of the above masters of the art, and it can run and run.
If it’s allowed to.
And thereby hangs today’s mini-rant, as much on the state of the world as on the state of publishing.
In another post a week or two ago I shared a snippet of advice I was given years ago, and which I’ve passed on whenever the occasion arose: when a piece of writing is ‘finished’, put it away in a drawer for six months, and when you revisit it you’ll find it’s not finished at all.
These days that’s impractical on several levels – but most importantly because everything has to happen now! Warp speed is the order of the day; no one wants to wait, to allow success to build.
One publishing convention that seemed to work for a long time was the one book a year principle; now, though, some publishers want the next in a series after a few months. But it’s still a rare piece of writing that doesn’t benefit from, if not six months in a drawer, then at least a little distance between first draft and final version. Some authors can pull it off, but speed and quality don’t always go hand in hand.
My concern is not about smelling the roses, though that’s important too. It’s about giving things time to grow. The instant gratification approach may pay in the short term, but it’s built on flimsy foundations.
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