Thursday, March 25, 2010

In A Series, When Is the Story Over?

Elizabeth Zelvin

I spent last weekend at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville, VA, where I was one of about forty mystery authors who made up the Crime Wave portion of the event. The luncheon speaker was multiple award-winning author Julia Spencer-Fleming, whose readers are champing at the bit for the seventh installment of her traditional but far from cozy series, which combines murder, serious issues such as the environment vs developers in her small-town upstate New York setting, and the star-crossed relationship between Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and police chief Russ Van Alstyne.

In the course of her remarks, Julia touched on an aspect of mysteries that is crucial to an appreciation of the genre: the series, in which the story arc of each novel falls under the umbrella of the bigger story arc of a series. The arc of the novel is the solving of a mystery, or, if it’s a thriller, the foiling of a villain. In many cases, there’s another arc or subplot, whose resolution may involve secondary characters or some issue in the protagonist’s life and relationships. The series arc has a broader scope. Indeed, in a long-running series, the arc may be like the rainbow with a pot of gold at the end of it: you can start at the beginning and follow it...and follow it, and follow it. But you may never reach the pot of gold. Nor do you want to. When you get the pot of gold, the story will be over.

What is the pot of gold in a mystery series? Not the solution to the crime in a single book. Not the success of the quest for a MacGuffin, crime fiction’s equivalent of the Holy Grail. Happily ever after? That’s the pot of gold in a romance novel, and the reader closes the book with a sense of satisfaction. But in a series, the author must avoid the kind of closure that leaves no room for the story to continue. For several books, Spencer-Fleming’s Clare and Russ were divided by his marriage and the highly developed consciences of both characters. At the end of the last book, they are finally free to be together—just as Clare is deployed to Iraq. The unabashed romantic in me grinds her teeth in frustration. But the mystery reader is gleeful, because now there has to be another book.

To switch genres for a moment, I recently opened the new novel by Elizabeth Moon, author of the classic fantasy trilogy The Deed of Paksennarion. For the past twenty years, Moon has published a substantial number of bestselling hard science fiction novels, while I’ve been reading and rereading Paks’s story. Now she’s returned to her fantasy world with Oath of Fealty, which not only takes us back to Paks’s world but picks up exactly where she left off twenty years ago. At the end of the last book, as Moon puts it in her foreword, our heroine “rode off into the fictional sunset.” But all the other familiar characters have returned. (Even Paks makes a brief appearance, since we return to the same moment of crisis that ended the trilogy.) Moon makes the same point Spencer-Fleming did: that even if one character’s story ends, the world of the series may include other characters whose stories still need to be told.

7 comments:

Sheila Connolly said...

Julia S-F's books are wonderful in their own (individual) right, but if you read them as a series you become fully engaged with the characters (and I want the next one! Now!).

Sadly, the publishing industry in its current state works against creating a bigger story arc. At best you will get a two/three/four book deal. You can hope for renewal, but if that doesn't come, you've left your characters dangling in limbo, with issues unresolved.

Maybe we need to create a fund for "wrap-up" books, so that an author can tie up all those loose ends. Think our series lovers would contribute?

Elizabeth Zelvin said...

You're right, Sheila. I hope that readers understand that when a series disappears after three books, it's not by the author's choice. Julia's new book will be out in 2012, and she said there'll be at least one more after that.

Vicki Lane said...

Good question, Liz. I'm at work on my fifth Elizabeth Goodweather book -- but my next book coming out in September is a stand alone with some of the characters from the Elizabeth book but no Elizabeth. I hope to do more of this ...

And what Sheila said about leaving characters hanging in limbo is so true. I suppose one could self-publish a wrap up book. Or put it on Kindle.

Sandra Parshall said...

Julia's books sell so well and receive so much acclaim that I'm sure she can continue the series as long as she wants to -- or until readership begins to drop off. I can't see the latter happening anytime soon. There is a great danger, though, in clearing the way for the two protagonists to get exactly what they both want: a life together. Do readers want novels in which Clare and Russ are an ordinary married couple? Maybe, maybe not. It will be interesting to see how Julia handles this!

I think Laura Lippman's stand-alones are far superior to her Tess Monaghan novels, and I'm glad she's giving Tess a rest for a while. Other readers will disagree with me and beg for more of Tess, even though she's tied down with a baby now.

Elizabeth Zelvin said...

Sandy, I think Julia's point was that you have to stop when the characters' story is over. And tying the knot certainly tends to do just that.

L.J. Sellers said...

After writing the forth Detective Jackson novel, I'm struggling with this same issue. I have more stories to tell with Jackson and I've planted the seeds, but I have to think about my overall career. I'm outlining a standalone thriller and "Jackson 5" at the same time just to cover the bases.

Janice Campbell from NAIWE said...

I was at the luncheon and heard Julia speak, and that point struck me as well. I immediately thought of a series that I very much enjoyed for the first half dozen books. In the more recent volumes, the characters seem like paper dolls, and the amount of violence seems to be increasing, perhaps to make up for the caricatures. I know this particular author could do better-- she did it for years, but as Julia said, she's just phoning it in now. Sad, and a good reminder for everyone else.