This subject comes up as I struggle to get a foothold in my new WIP. MAGIC’S FOOL (working title) is a rewrite/re-imagining of my very first novel. It starts considerably earlier. Also, since this time around it’s Middle Grade, the original plot has to be broken down into discreet segments, each with its own goal and completed conflict. I think I can do that, but I confess that I’m a little nervous about it.
However, there’s another point. My first novel, TSC (let’s just stick to the initials), was originally intended to be the first of a trilogy, later expanded to possibly four books. Now, some of what was in those stories, particularly the middle two books, will simply be deleted. But still, if I break the remaining story down, that could easily come to six or eight books in the series.
Other successful series (Flanagan’s THE RANGER’S APPRENTICE comes to mind) suggest that that’s not too many.
The other thing that brings this topic to mind is that a favorite author of mine is about to wind up a series of five books. But then she’s going to start two more series in the same world, following different characters. That worries me.
The thing is, I can think of several series or conglomerations of series using the same world that lost me part way through. I can name at least three series in which I devoured the first three or four books and was hungry for more. I kept reading, but perhaps a little less avidly after that. My interest usually puttered out somewhere between books six and nine.
One of these series continued to use the same world, but followed a different cast of characters for three or four books and then switched again to another set of characters. That one kept my interest the longest–to about fourteen books.
But in every case, eventually, I just got tired of visiting that world and those characters. It wasn’t fresh anymore. I wanted something new.
Of course with some of them there were other reasons that they lost my interest. Some went on too long without any resolution. (I don’t think I need to name that series to any student of the fantasy genre.) Some just seemed to me to be the same story told over and over again. But sometimes it just was that I was tired of visiting that particular world. It had become so familiar that it almost didn’t feel fantastic anymore.
So, maybe it’s not a good thing to write too many stories in the same world.
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Meredith Mansfield, Author 