It’s common for indie mystery and romance writers to publish series with installments in the double digits. This is a foundational aspect of their business, a key way to keep voracious readers turning pages and boosting Amazon KDP profits.
With those multiple installments requiring all the usual blood, sweat, and tears—not to mention resources like a world bible to ensure flawless consistency—you may be wondering just how much you should focus on continuity between installments. Should you recap events from previous novels at the start of each new book? Will it pull the reader out of the idyllic setting of your cozy mystery if they’re reminded that no fewer than thirteen people have died—yes, in whimsical ways, but still—over the course of a year and a half? How did the creators of Murder, She Wrote get away with all that?!
There’s so much that can be said on this topic, and the decision is ultimately up to you. Let’s at least get your gears turning by exploring some of the pros and cons of each approach to continuity in fictional series.
Episodic Storytelling Structure
If you’ve decided not to have major continuity between the novels in your series, that means you can get away without providing a recap of the major plot points at the beginning of each book. You can also ignore any impact these past plot points might have on your characters currently or on future plot lines. Think of a pre-streaming, episodic sitcom. If Beaver Cleaver destroys his parents’ bathroom but the show has an episodic structure, everything is “back to one” by the next episode. That is, the bathroom was never destroyed; it’s not like there will be a story arc about how June and Ward can afford to install new sink fixtures.
More often than not, in cozy mystery and romance series, plot-related developments go “back to one” while character development progresses. Couples that got together or broke up retain their relationship, but even if a murder may have happened in the past, it’s not focused on for very long or with very much (if any) gravitas.
The Pros
Some readers drop into a series halfway through (whether wittingly or unwittingly). If your series structure is episodic, a major plus is that these new audience members won’t be confused by plot points from previous installments. There’s a reason Law and Order is so easy to binge; you don’t have to tune in at a particular moment to feel invested in the story. Each episode is, for the most part, like a reset, and that’s what you’re giving all readers, both your ride-or-dies and the ones who might buy into the backlist later.
The Cons
There might be no momentum between installments if there’s a regular reset with each novel. To play devil’s advocate, by mentioning events that transpired in earlier books, you might actually amp up the excitement of those readers who dropped in on book eight to go back and read the previous novels.
Readers may have trouble identifying personally with the characters in a long-running series if they find it difficult to access those characters’ emotions. This can be even more difficult if one book ends with a character witnessing a horrifying incident but the next book glosses over or doesn’t even mention it. Because getting readers to identify with main characters is a major way to get them to invest their interest (and their book money) in your series, this is critical to consider. Of course, if the target readership is close in demographic description to the characters (e.g., readers of cozy mysteries and romance novels tend to easily relate to the protagonist), this may not matter, but it may be worth checking in with your street team before writing it off completely.
Who Benefits the Most From Episodic Storytelling?
Writers of cozy mysteries, some romance series (e.g., ones that are linked but don’t follow the same couple), and commercial fiction with a ton of planned installments where the mystery du jour is the A plot and the character development is the B lot can do well with episodic storytelling.
Continuity-Focused Storytelling Structure
Traditionally, book series are focused on continuity between their installments, meaning that all plot and character development is retained as the series progresses. There may be a general recap of previous events in the exposition of each successive book, and fans tend to build intensive amounts of loyalty to characters.
The Pros
Continuity rewards long-term fans for their loyalty and knowledge of the universe. This is the way to go if you want your readers to root for characters, write fics about them, and generally be voracious/fanatical.
The Cons
The one major con I can think of regarding continuity between installments is specifically regarding the alarming nature of events that happen in the cozy mystery subgenre, compounded over time.
If bad things have happened, as tends to be the case in mystery novels, the overall darkness may accumulate in a continuity-led series. Sure, you can have between-installment continuity for a whimsical gang of middle-aged women solving murder mysteries for a couple of novels, but if you have your narrator point out each and every location where they caught a serial killer, were held at knife point, or otherwise racked up trauma, we’re no longer whimsy-maxxing. We’re whimsy-minimalizing.
Who Can Benefit from Continuity-Focused Storytelling?
Traditionally, upmarket series and series that are darker in tone benefit from continuity-based storytelling (e.g., upmarket fiction with a focus on the intersection of plot and character—that is, how what happens to a character impacts their psyche and their life).
Darker mysteries in which characters are meant to change as a result of what happens to them, too, would do better to have continuity-focused than episodic storytelling. I immediately think of the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The first season was very “Monster of the Week,” but as the series went on, it retained continuity and grew darker, transitioning to loathsome villains whose evil plans represented increasingly high stakes. (The series finale saw fictional Sunnydale, California, destroyed.) This increasing darkness is understandable. If we still had after-school specials five seasons in, after Buffy had died twice, dated at least two vampires, gotten into and dropped out of college, just to name a few traumatic events, the show wouldn’t be the Buffy we know and love but rather something akin to Power Rangers.
If you go this route in your fiction, it’s a good idea to include a brief recap of salient points somewhere in each novel’s exposition. This doesn’t need to be an info dump; just find an early chapter in which the main cast of characters can be introduced, then pepper information about them throughout. For instance, “Marjorie walked past, giving me an eye roll in the process. Eesh. It seemed we still weren’t talking, after everything that transpired last year, namely the would-be jumper on the Verrazzano Bridge.”
If you take this approach in a cozy mystery series, to counteract the risk of the series growing darker over time, you might make light of the situation by giving characters tongue-in-cheek remarks, like, “Man, with all the murders around here, it’s a wonder property values in Cabot Cove haven’t dropped!”
If you’re taking this approach with a series of interconnected romance novels, for instance, ones that tackle a different couple in each book, “salient points” means points that are important to the main couple in this particular book. The reader doesn’t need the ins and outs of how Harry met Sally in a book that’s about Therese and Carol, except insofar as Therese and Carol have been there for the touchpoints of Harry and Sally’s relationship.
Having trouble deciding? Ultimately, it’s up to you as the creator of your series.
Whether you pick continuity-focused or episodic storytelling, there are benefits and detractors to each approach.
Mull over your own goals for your series in progress as you make your decision. Are you pro continuity when it comes to character development? What about plot? Would you prefer that everything has continuity? If so, how will you account for any gloom this drapes over your cast of characters? Will you lean into it or make light of it?
Polling your existing audience or even your beta readers can be a good way to get insight into what you should do. Post on social media, send it out to your newsletter subscribers, or ask about it in the way that makes the most sense for you and your audience. At the end of the day, there’s no wrong answer, so long as you’re doing what’s right for your series and what serves your narrative purposes.