When writing a series, the simplest structure is the most obvious: chronological—one protagonist with many stories, given in the order in which they happened.
Of course, the protagonist has to have a profession or interest that generates recurring plots which lead to resolutions—an investigator, explorer, skip-tracer, “fixer,” consultant, body-guard, discoverer, trouble-shooter (even cook and librarian). Then each novel’s independent story takes place after the previous book’s completed narrative.
As long as the protagonist’s personality is consistent and interesting, and the encounters with different events remain plausible, this is the most useful and common format. (Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe.) Let’s describe it as: Changing plots/Unchanging protagonist.
But if the lead character remains too much at the same age and in the same state of personal development, the series can become unrealistic. After a while the protagonist seems frozen in time, more a narrative device than an actual person, even though the plots are still changing and unique.
So a way to counter this sameness is to have the protagonist also change and develop—through aging, varying relationships, marriage, divorces, deaths of close friends, moving up the ladder of rank and position, temporary or even permanent changes of location. These developments make the protagonist seem more like the reader, growing over time. (Joe Leaphorn, Anna Pigeon, James Aubrey, George Smiley.) Most series today fall into this vein. Let’s call them Changing plots/Developing protagonist.
Another series variation is to have a recurring background plot that grows too, a “deep story” lurking behind the surface events of each volume’s independent story that does reach a resolution—like, for example, repeated encounters with a particular antagonist (Moriarity, Karla, Luthor). You then get independent stories along with the hook of a continuing plot. Furthermore, if the protagonist’s development is dependent on how that deep story eventually, or never, resolves, then even more interest can be generated (the uncovering of parentage, unknown spouses, secret past motivations, old mistakes and present consequences— as in The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Broadchurch).
Let’s describe these as Changing plots/Developing deep plot/Developing protagonist.
In all these cases the movement is still linear and chronological. You might encounter an occasional flashback here and there, even a whole book that relates a major past event, but still the series is based on a forward movement in time.
Yet a series can also go in both directions—back in time to pick up significant events, and then forward to lead to greater resolutions. The “deep story” in this case occurs in both the past and the future, leading into a set of complications that unveil what happened in the past and determine what occurs in the future. This series would not be a linear arrow but more a spiral, a focusing in on major revelations about the deep mystery plot but also, in conjunction, unveiling how the changing personality of the protagonist (related to both the past and future) is also finding itself.
This is the very thing I’m trying in the series I’m writing now, the “Mykol Ranglen” set of science fiction books. The order in which they were published is not the order in which the stories occur. The series began “in the middle” with The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes, then went back in time to speak of a near forgotten event in the protagonist’s past, In a Suspect Universe. Then the following book wasvery different, a collection of poems supposedly written by the protagonist himself (he’s a writer), Temporary Planets for Transitory Days.
These poems were mostly independent but they referred to events in both novels—and to events in books yet to be written. The collection itself, in the fictional world of Mykol Ranglen, is meant to be “published” after the events of the first novel, though this isn’t indicated in the collection. The current novel that will be released soon, Haunted Stars, is both a sequel (to In a Suspect Universe) and a prequel (to The Man Who Loved Alien Landscapes). After that, the next two novels planned to be written (I’m halfway through one of them now) will finally be actual sequels to the first book.
Complicated? Not really, since each work tells a stand-alone story. But the series has been fascinating to write because it re-evaluates and re-establishes itself, raising new questions about both the protagonist and the world(s) he lives in. The stories can be read for strictly their “face” plots, the independent sagas for each book. But if one is willing to look a bit more closely (like, for example, at the connections between the prose events and the poetic reactions to them), then a deeper form of narrative play and understanding can result.
Series fiction is like genre fiction. A writer must always provide what the reader expects (more information and plot about a known protagonist), but at the same time balance this with what can surprise the reader. As in genre fiction, one walks the line between being different and being the same, always needing to answer the plea from the reader: “Give me more of what I like, but also surprise me.”
So, if an arrow is too straight and uniform for your set of stories, then maybe try a spiral. It’s still a series, but in a tantalizing different way.
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