How to Create a Series Character

Series characters can appear in any form of literature.

Series characters, unlike traditional protagonists, live beyond the end of one story to reappear in another. But the one thing they must all have--aside from fictional "believability," is consistency.

Writing, and developing a series character, becomes an elongated process which spans an inordinate amount of time. The crucial backtracking to verify details is as important to the character as the developing story. And even the best writers make errors.
The idea is to limit the amount of damage that unsubstantiated errors can do to your character.

Things You'll Need

• A storyline
• A character you'd like to keep around
• A notebook
• A witting implement
• A hanging file
• An electronic storage device (floppy disk, CD, USB etc)

Instructions

1. Before you run off and begin writing, before you even start your best seller, put all those ideas to the side and write a biography about your character. Start with their genealogy, moving forward to the parents. Insert events as they were growing up which shaped their ideals - and which may be examined in your stories. Write a physical description of them, their appearance, their attributes and their mannerisms, and put it all into an index notebook.

   You're going to be referring to this notebook as you go, put it all down now. Save it electronically too.

2. Create a F.B.I. file for your character. Even if your character is an F.B.I. agent, they all have files.

   Unlike in the first process however, this is a factual data account of specific events in their life. Include arrests, prosecutions, accidents, births, deaths and marriages. Any event which requires a document in real life applies to your character--including filing taxes.

3. As you write the story, add notations to your biography of the character.

   Your character goes into a coffee shop and buys a short black with two sugars - put it in your biography. Your character pays for it with a credit card and not cash - put it in the biography. Make your character have a level of consistency in their actions even if this is the first installment.

4. The character created will undergo challenges or change through the first story, but they should emerge in a similar state of mind and body that they started, which will become the standard from which the second story commences - even if it it is some years after.

   It does no good if in the first storyline your character is disabled in a wheelchair, and then appears in the second story running the Olympic 100m.

   What you create in the first story must be carried over to the second of the series.

   Important! See warning below for the ONLY exception.

5. Publishers prefer series characters.

   Write a murder mystery and see how much a publisher will pay for one book when the protagonist dies. Write a murder mystery with a series character and suddenly that first story could be the start of it's own library series. Multiple books = multiple avenues of income.

   Kill your character off in the first story - and you're left to start the second from scratch.

Tips & Warnings

• It's important to be accurate in recording details about your series character, but not the point that it stifles the actual story writing. Get the "back story" down first, then add notations along the way.

• A series character may not be the protagonist of the story. Series characters may be heroes as well as villains, locations and even historical events. Some fine examples of series characters who were not the protagonist of the story include Darth Vader (Star Wars) the Hogwart's School (Harry Potter), even the Cold War (Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy).

• There is one exception to Step 4 surrounding the continuing state of your character. It applies almost exclusively to the original story. If your character develops a trait in the first story (for example - disabled in a wheelchair), that trait must be the centrifugal event that propels your character into a series character.