How to tell or retell basic character and setting information in a series?
I am writing a short children's novel and I want to expand this into a series made of several short novels. I intend to write the whole series at once so that the internal universe is consistent and so that I can add an arc across the books. This arc though is not the focus of the story and I hope that readers will be able to pick up any of the books and start reading it without needing to read through them in order.
- What is a good technique for placing basic information about the characters and setting so that readers who started in the middle of the series are not lost and readers who started at the beginning do not feel bored seeing the same information again?
- Is there any series that has used this technique well?
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From a story standpoint, you have, more or less, two choices: Recount what's come before the current book, or embed critical information in the narrative itself. The more realistic it is for characters to talk about past events, the less need there'll be for a summary of events at the beginning of the book. But if you want the book to seem like a grand retelling of important historical events, placing the reader in time might suit your story very well.
Summaries:
By including a summary of previous books before the story starts, the reader will be firmly oriented before starting the current book. However, this also makes it obvious that the book is part of a series, and makes it appear to be less self-contained.
This sort of structure is useful in a series meant to evoke a feel of a chronicle of real events, or to create a sense of being part of a larger picture.
Example: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
Self-contained books:
Embedding critical information in the book itself can be difficult to do well without seeming clumsy. It will make the manuscript slightly longer. It can make the book more accesible, in that one doesn't have to pick up previous books to read it. Common ways of doing this include having the characters talk about recent events, but this can easily become clumsy.
While the risk of losing readers in the plot is real, this can be mitigated by keeping the plot of the current book reasonably independent or at least interesting whether or not one understands the background.
Example: Dan Simmons' Hyperion books, Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
Other issues:
Of course, there are cases in-between these two extremes. For example, Asimov's Foundation books include summaries of the book in broad strokes, then rely on either contextual clues or characters recounting events in-story. This sort of thing is more believable in a context like this - sections take place years or even generations apart. Family sagas, and historical fiction can do this, as can fiction in other arenas where recounting events is common.
And let's not forget the strategy of using a narrator. While this has fallen out of fashion along with the cinematic voiceover, it's still a valid technique - even if it tends to be cheesy and obvious.
Which one of these strategies you use will be determined by personal preference and hoe complicated and interdependent your books are. For example, if the books have independent stories and the plots are fairly simple, making them stand on their own will be less complicated.
Another question to ask yourself: How large is your cast of characters? The larger it is, the more time you'll spend on character introductions in each book. Including a list of characters can be a way around this. If it's fun to read, and the descriptions are brief, it can even add to the book. However, it will add to the "series" feel if you include one.
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If you want to have a series of books which tell an ongoing story, but you want readers to be able to drop in midway, you will of necessity need to recap something in the beginning. How you do it depends on your skill and comfort level.
In the Harry Potter books, it was basically just narration in the opening chapter. This does run the risk of being boring, but it's all in the execution.
In the Belgariad and Mallorean series from David and Leigh Eddings, each book had a prologue of some kind. Sometimes it was a recap, sometimes it told a different part of the mythological backstory.
Anne McCaffrey used a recap prologue for her original dragon trilogy; I don't recall if she did it for the Dragonsinger set.
The first book in CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series was admittedly so challenging that she just outright explained what happened in book 1 in a prologue to book 2. (The rest of the series was less impenetrable and didn't need much recapping.)
A recapping prologue can be skipped by people who know what's going on, but brings new ones up to speed.
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