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Q&A How to tell or retell basic character and setting information in a series?

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 d...

posted 11y ago by Lauren Ipsum‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-13T12:00:15Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7463
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:46:39Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/7463
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T02:46:39Z (almost 5 years ago)
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.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2013-03-19T00:16:45Z (over 11 years ago)
Original score: 2