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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34205
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34205
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It's not a bad idea, especially across books. Consider a story like _Roots_, incredibly successful, but it has to cover a few centuries!

Obviously that story has to change POV characters all the damn time, but it is done successfully, and the "thread" used is: Follow a child/teen until they have a child, then skip forward ten or fifteen years. Rinse, Wash, Repeat.

Your thread does not have to be genealogy, of course, but it would help if you had some kind of thread and plausible reason WHY this next character carries the new flag. For Roots and following an ancestral line, the reason is obvious, but absent that you need a different good reason. In the first book, you need to make her stand out somehow and be memorable. Super competent, courageous, self-sacrificing, funny. Perhaps she does complete a partial character arc that puts her in a new position, of wealth, power, ability, fame or responsibility, one that is an interesting **start** to a new character arc.

You may have done that already and not have to change a thing, but my point is I don't want to pick up the second book and say, "Allison? Who the hell was Allison?" You want the reader that bought your last book to say, "Allison! Awesome, I love her!"

Original score: 2