How to keep a long-running series fresh

[John Dean]

Writing a long-running series of novels, as can so often be the case for crime fiction authors, brings its own set of challenges, not least how do you keep the writing fresh for reader and writer alike?

As I start the latest DCI  Jack Harris novel for my publisher The Book Folks, the twelfth in the series where the action is divided between the North Pennines and southern Scotland, it’s a thought that is very much at the front of my mind.

There are several things which experience suggests will aid the process as I start to write, an important one being that, after spending so much time on my previous novel (from my other long-running series, the DCI John Blizzard stories), I have something new and shiny to play with

An author has to do that new idea  justice, which means making sure that the new plot has a strong idea at its heart, something that intrigues the reader - it is simply not enough to trot out the same novel again and again – a writer needs to be more inventive than that.

Also, yes, by all means go back to characters who appear in previous novels in the series  - crime fiction readers, by and large, like the ensemble approach, meaning they meet old friends and foes.

However equally important - actually, more important - is the new characters that the author will need. The author needs to make sure at least some of them are different to previous novels - maybe a profession they have not included or a type of villain they have not featured, or more women or LGBTQ characters or different nationalities if the novels have tended to focus on white faces.

Each new character, each new plot, each new idea, each new setting (maybe your rural character goes to the big city or your city dweller ventures into the countryside) injects energy into the story and ignites the author's enthusiasm and, in good time, will grab the reader's interest as well, however many novels there are in the series.