It Gets Better in the Next One

This is a sentence which reliably drives me up the wall. The scenario it belongs to is as following: I’m reading the first book or watching the first movie in a series and I find something which I absolutely don’t like about it. It may be the creator playing something like the ‘White Saviour’ or the ‘Damsel in Distress’ trope straight. It may be some glaring plot hole. It may be something else which really sours the story to me. When someone asks for my opinion, I tell them so, but they, being big fans of the series, counter this with ‘Oh, I know it’s not so great in this book, but it gets better/gets explained/makes sense in the next one.’ To them, that’s the only excuse necessary. To me, it definitely is not.

You see, even in a series, every movie or every book needs to have a complete, self-contained story. Yes, there can be a plot arc which will bind the whole series together. That alone is no excuse not to properly finish a story and keep the logic within the narrative working. Yes, there will be a next instalment, but it might not be written, let alone published yet. It means I should read an additional book or watch an additional movie in order to understand and appreciate the story of this one.

 

Now, I don’t really want to use “Harry Potter” as a good example here, what with J.K. Rowling’s opinion on trans people which I definitely don’t share, but it is a very well-known series and thus easy to use. In this series, there is a plot arc spanning from the first to the last book: the enmity between Harry and Voldemort. It’s pretty clear from the first chapter of the first book that the big confrontation at the end of the series will be between those two. The stories of the six first books are adding to that, showing us parts of the whole, introducing characters and skills and history we need to understand the big confrontation, to understand the powers of Voldemort and the threat he can pose, once back in the flesh. Yet, the story about the Philosopher’s Stone (Sorcerer’s Stone, if you’re American) is completed at the end of book one. The story of the Chamber of Secrets is finished at the end of book two. I do not have to read the following book to get closure, I could, theoretically, end the series somewhere in the middle and all stories I’ve read so far would be finished. There would be some plot threads which haven’t been tied up - plot threads left for the final novel to tie together -, but each of the books has a finished, self-contained story to tell. None relies on the book afterwards to make sense.

The same goes for one of my favourite series: “Johannes Cabal”. Each of the five novels and each of the short stories is self-contained to a degree. There is a closer connection between “The Fear Institute” and “The Brothers Cabal”, since the latter picks up where the former ends, but even so, “The Fear Institute” would be a complete story which ends, presumably, with Johannes’ death, if no other book existed afterwards. That doesn’t mean that the stories don’t share a theme or that there is no understanding of what the end goal is from the end of “Johannes Cabal - The Necromancer” onwards. There are quite some characters who are in several stories, such as Horst Cabal, Leonie Barrow, Alisha Bartos, or Madame Zarenyia, yet all stories are self-sufficient. It helps to have read both “Exeunt Demon King” and the follow-up “The Erishkigal Working” before reading “Johannes Cabal - The Necromancer” and to read that one before “The Brothers Cabal”, but the identity of Rufus Maleficarus is suitably explained in every story which contains him. It would help to read “Johannes Cabal - The Necromancer” and “Johannes Cabal - The Detective” before “The Fall of the House of Cabal”, but it’s always wise not to start with the last book in a series. Nevertheless, there’s always some explanation of where Johannes and other characters have first met, there’s always a chance to enjoy the current story without having read all of the others. I’ve never had to tell someone that the story of “Johannes Cabal - The Necromancer” is not that good, but it gets better in the next book. The story stands on its own and it’s good on its own. The same goes for the other four books and all of the shorts. It may sometimes make the story more enjoyable to have entered the ‘Cabal Universe’ before, but the stories are also enjoyable on their own.

 

A book or movie has to win me over on its own, by the strength of its own story. If the book contains something I don’t like at all, a KO-criterion for me, I will not read the next one in the series, just on the off-chance that it gets better later. Therefore, it doesn’t change my opinion nor does it make me like a story more if a fan tells me ‘it gets better in the next one.’ Quite the opposite: if a creator can’t get things right or finish a story or at least heavily foreshadow a twist in a trope later, then I don’t have enough faith in them to consume other media by them at all.

I’m also not alone in this. Every instalment of a series has to keep the fan base, has to earn their trust again. As a writer, you should be aware of that. If a series goes too much ‘off course’, the fans will abandon it (although the new course might get you new fans). This means you should never trust to ‘the next instalment’ to explain something in your current story or to make up for weaknesses you have produced in this one. Every story has to stand on its own, no matter whether there is a plot arc over several instalments or not.

 

As an author, you should never rely on the next instalment in a series making up for weaknesses in your current story. While it is great to have a plot running through various books, each of those has to stand on its own, each of it needs to have a complete story. Keep that in mind while you’re plotting and writing. ‘It gets better in the next one’ is never an excuse for a story, no matter what kind of story it is. It has to get better in this one.