When & How Should Series End? — Guest: Kassandra Lamb

/ Kassandra Lamb

Hi, All! I’m guest posting today over at Jami Gold’s cyber home. She has an awesome following of authors for her writing oriented blog. Thought you all might be interested in this topic…

When (And How) To End A Series?

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I’m currently writing Book 9—what I thought would be the last book—in my Kate Huntington Mystery series (Note to my readers: don’t panic; I think I’ve changed my mind—more on this in a bit).

When a writer sets out to write a series, often there’s no set number of books in mind. The vague thought is that we’ll keep writing as long as readers are reading and we’re still coming up with story ideas.

But everything has to come to an end some time.

When Should We End a Series?

When should a writer stop a series? Here are my thoughts on possible reasons to say “the end,” based on my own ruminations about winding down the Kate series. Read more…

 

6 thoughts on “When & How Should Series End? — Guest: Kassandra Lamb”

  1. Thanks for sharing this, Kass. I really enjoyed your thoughts on an issue I’ve considered already, myself. I never intended either of my first two books to become series, yet, due to emails asking (in a few cases, begging) me to continue the stories, I’m now writing two series at the same time. I’ve been thinking about how I want to end them, and my thoughts are similar to what you’ve mentioned in this post. And OH, do I agree that series can last waaaaay beyond their “Sell By” date. I’ve dropped out of a couple of favorites for that reason, alone. There was just no more oomph to be had from the series, and it was beginning to feel contrived.

    I’ve also dropped out of one very popular series when the characters suddenly turned into completely different people than they’d been in earlier books. My feeling is, you can’t tell readers who these people are, heart and soul, and then ten books in, decide the series needs a change of pace, and rewrite the general make-up of each one. I not only dropped out of that series, but I find I no longer trust the author with her newer ones.

    Obviously, as you say, all good things must come to an end, but for a writer, that ending can be tricky territory to navigate. Great post, and I heartily encourage everyone to check it out.

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    • Glad you found the post so helpful, Marcia. Good point about the trust issue. Even if the author doesn’t change things in ways the readers don’t like, just the fact that the series has gone stale can lead them to give up on that author. Not just that series but others as well.

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