Image Credits: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books.
I love reading stand alone novels. One of my favourites here is The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. The story is complete. There could not be a follow up. But especially in genre fiction, there is a lot of the room for the series novels. Crime and historical fiction seem to me to lead the way there. I will be interviewing an American author shortly who is renowned for her crime series, but I thought for this post I’d take a look at the joys and challenges of writing stand alone books.
Now to an extent I could argue I write stand alone books. Each of my flash fiction collections, including Seeing The Other Side due out next May, stands alone. From Light to Dark and Back Again is different to Tripping the Flash Fantastic. Seeing The Other Side is different again (as for one thing it will be my largest collection to date and I have written linked flash as part of this volume). Either book could be bought and read alone (though naturally I would prefer people to buy both of them and the third one when it is out!).
I guess I like the completeness of a stand alone book, whether it is a short form one or a novel. Everything has to end eventually so to me a stand alone book makes a great deal of sense here.
Having said that, a successful series will ensure each book within it can and does stand alone. The great ones will encourage readers to explore others in the series. I found this to be the case with writers as diverse as Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse (and with more than one series here), and Terry Pratchett.
With my reading hat on, I deliberately read in a genre for while. I will read short stories in that genre and then novels in it. I will then move on to another genre and repeat this. I will also include non-fiction and collections as well as stand alone books in between genres. In this way, (a) I read a great deal and (b) I mix up what I read. I do find the stand alone books refresh my reading palate for the next lot of genre stories I will read.
I have found in recent years many of those stand alone books are non-fiction ones. This has been a lovely discovery and has widened my reading considerably.
The Joys of Stand Alone Books
As a reader, you know you will have a complete story. There is no teasing cliffhanger at the end promising another book. The author has said all they needed to say and that is it. They can move on to the next novel, the next challenge to write another book. Sometimes you do just know a character has one purpose so only needs the one story in which to meet that purpose.
For a writer, if they love inventing characters, coming up with another storyline with new characters to populate it is a joy to do. You won’t necessarily want to use the same characters over and over again. You yourself want to move on (and hopefully take your readers with you). You also don’t want to become tired of your characters. Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle famously did become tired of their star characters, Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes.
Especially if a writer is using their novels to explore issues, it would make a great deal of sense to have a character explore one issue in one book, another in another and so on. I doubt if any one character could possibly cover every issue a writer could want to write about.
The Challenges of Stand Alone Books
The biggest challenge, I think, is ensuring your characters are interesting enough to keep a reader hooked for the entire novel. This is where those who write collections have an advantage. We can have multiple characters in multiple stories in one book. Mind you, that has its challenges too.
But for a single novel, the writer will have to know their lead characters especially so well, they would know what they would have for breakfast and what they would never have. There has to be in depth knowledge of what the character could and couldn’t do or be. A lot of that knowledge might never make it to the pages we read but the author has to know it. It is the only way to write your characters with any sense of conviction. That, I believe, comes through to the readers – this author really does know their characters well enough.
The first person to believe in the characters has to be their author. When done well, the character will handle the challenges their creator throws at them and readers will subconsciously take in yes, this character would do that, be like that because…
A Sense of Satisfaction
This is the ultimate goal of any author for their readers to feel when they read their stories (of whatever word count). For stand alone books, the reader needs to feel the character has “done their job properly”. (This is where series novels can have another advantage – knowing there will be a series means the author can leave some things unresolved to the next book. For example, if a detective has just cleared up a case, readers won’t expect another case until the next book).
The reader needs to feel the character has done everything needed to fulfil the plot, that there could be nothing else, and to be left with the thought this was a cracking good read. No pressure then!
Conclusion
I have a good mixture of series and stand alone books on my shelves and I love them all. Writing of any kind takes time, commitment, a willingness to learn to improve, the openness to accept rejections are part of the business, and a lot of self belief that hard work can and does pay off.
I wouldn’t say I had a favourite between series and stand alones. But a good stand alone book will give a sense of completeness I don’t think the series novel can provide, rightly so too given obviously the series will be continuing.
Any thoughts for your own favourite stand alone books? Comments as ever welcome! Over to you!
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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