Wednesday's Writer's Tip = Looking at Types of Series. #MFRWauthor

Still reading  Writing Fiction Series by Karen Wiesner and pulling out tidbits to share. The breakdown of the kind of series is what I'm reading now. And looking at my own writing while doing so. I may have written or attempted to write many of these "book bundles" without realizing that's what I was doing. How about you? Have you ever thought about what kind of series your connected books fall into?

A basic look at series shows there has to be some connection between the books. This can be a character, a world, a theme, a plot, something that holds the books together and that the reader can realize there is a connection.

What's the difference between a series and a serial. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be a difference in the two, but there is. A serial is more like a collection of parts of an entire book released in segments. When I was writing All Our Yesterdays, I knew I was writing a serial. There was a connection between all the major characters, hero, heroine, support characters, villain and villainess that ran through the stories. Each segment of the story was leading to the ending in the final segment of the story. While each of the segments is a story complete in itself, the plot isn't solved until the last segment is written. Writing this story was fun but the end goal was always kept in mind and that was a happy ever after for the star crossed lovers through time. Rather reminded me of "The Perils of Pauline" something watched as a child during Saturday movie marathons at the local theater.

Among the stories that fit the picture of  a series are prequels and sequels. Sometimes while writing a story, the writer realizes there needs to be something else told of the story that happened in the past that needs to be shown to readers to make the created world characters make sense. Or the writer realizes that the final book in the series needs to have an ending that shows there is or was a future for the characters or the world. These stories are generally written after the original book.

Next time, there will be a look at other kinds of series. Have you ever wondered what kind of series you've written? I know I have.