Whenever we read a good book or watch a good movie, there’s the wish to see the main character in another story, the hope for a sequel. Yet, the sequel is often a disappointment. Why is that? Why are some characters good for a series and others only work out once?
The easy answer is that there’s a difference between thinking up a character who only has one adventure to go through and thinking up a character who will go through several adventures before you’re done with them.
This doesn’t mean one kind of character is better than the other, it simply means that some will not work for a series or even a single sequel. Their story is told with that one book or movie and bringing them back will do them no good. Others can go on, go through more adventures, without endangering the quality of the sequels.
Quite often, the story for such a stand-alone book or movie is focused on the character growth of the main character, having them overcome a weakness and become a better person for it. There is no point in erasing that change afterwards and doing it all over again. Characters who are part of a series either do not have many changes in their personal arc or they change slowly during the course of the complete series.
One example for a stand-alone character in my own books is Alex Dorsey from the novel of the same name. Alex’s personal arc is to grow from the third child of a vampire hunter dynasty into the next leader of the clan. She also has a secondary arc that brings her together with her love interest.
Alex starts the book as the third child - the spare who won’t be needed to lead the clan, neither as the captain, nor as his second-in-command. Those will be the positions of her older brothers. Then her oldest brother is turned into a vampire in a suspicious manner and the other one becomes the new captain, putting her into the future position of ‘second-in-command.’ By the end of the book, Alex is the only surviving child and has taken the mantle of ‘captain’ herself.
Alex’s personal arc is to grow into leaderhood, to overcome her insecurity and grow confident. She needs to understand that she doesn’t have to go through it all alone, that there is a full clan of hunters with her, that her love interest and second-in-command will not desert her. Her romantic arc is to grow together with her love interest, to become acquainted and share more and more personal space. By the end of the book, both arcs are completed.
For a series, you may need a character with a lot of issues, so every book can be devoted to one of them. Alternately, you have one big issue which can be resolved in several steps, so the character growth is spread across multiple stories. The third option would be to go the pulp way and have a character which doesn’t grow at all. A lot of classic pulp heroes never really change, nor do their personal situations, but everyone who reads pulp is okay with that.
You can rely more on an outward arc with a series character, too. “Game of Thrones” is all about the question who will sit on the Iron Throne. This is not resolved in one book, naturally, and every books only gives you a little of the answer, taking out characters for good by killing them off and giving others a better or worse chance to sit on the throne. If you do it wisely, then you can draw out such a story for as long as you like. Every book still needs an arc of its own, but the main arc of the series can be dragged out.
One example for a series character from my own stories would be Gabrielle Munson from the “Theoretical Necromancy” series. Gabrielle has an arc which goes through all stories to a degree: the missing explanation for how she got the power to raise the dead. With this set in place, every story about her does have its own arc.
Some stories deal massively with her powers, such as “Stray” and “Revenge of the Devil Monks” which both put heavy emphasis on her powers and that she didn’t get them like a regular necromancer. “The Suitor” or “The Tower” on the other hand have little to do with the question where the powers came from, even if they feature as a way of solving problems.
Gabrielle is often motivated by the question of why she has those powers (and what her death and return from it might have to do with it), but just as often by helping her family or getting out of trouble which has come her way for other reasons. Will she one day find out? I honestly don’t know yet.
If you’re writing a series, one thing you need to keep an eye out for is consistency. A character can’t have a specific skill in book three, but not in book five - not without good and valid reasons such as an injury which makes it impossible for them to use that skill any longer. Therefore, you will need a ‘bible’ for your story’s characters and other notes - a file or suchlike devoted to keeping all the facts together for easy perusal.
Ask yourself if a skill you want for your character to learn or to have could be useful or story-breaking in the long run. It might be tempting to give your character some strong fighting skill that will help them against the physically powerful villain of book three. By book five, you have a villain who is physically much less intimidating, but very clever. Yet, if your character wanted to, they could just go there and beat that villain up. You can give the villain in book five a few strong bodyguards or you can give the character another skill in book three which will help them defeat the villain and not make them hard to threaten in the future. If uncertain, rather err on the side of caution and make your hero a little weaker.
This is also closely related to the ‘power creep’ that can happen in long series. Every time the story reaches a climax, every time the main conflict of a book is resolved, the hero gains more power. In a long-running series like “Dragonball”, this can lead to a character who becomes almost god-like and it may make other characters obsolete.
Fantasy series which come with magic are especially endangered by that power creep. It’s too easy to give your resident mage a powerful spell here and there and mostly forget about them afterwards (see ‘consistency’ above). Over time, that mage becomes immensely powerful, especially if you don’t reuse spells they have already. First of all, the readers might wonder why they don’t use that spell from book three which worked so well against a similar creature. In addition, it becomes harder and harder to come up with an enemy which will really challenge your mage. With all those powerful spells at their disposal, they should be able to solve every problem with a wave of their hand and a few well-chosen magic words. That doesn’t do any wonders for the rising tension.
Accept that not every character you imagine will be ready for more than one story. That is not bad per se, but you need to be aware of it. It’s better to give a stand-alone character a strong story to act in than to try and stretch that possible story out over several books or give the character new challenges they’re not meant for just so you can squeeze a sequel or two out of them.
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