Fiction Writer’s Toolshed | Practical Tools for Authors
How do you give each story in a series its own arc while carrying characters and problems into the next one? And how do you keep familiar elements interesting?
I’m joined by J.A. Merkel, author of The Fall Gauntlet (opens in new tab), to talk about writing a connected novella series. We discuss animal masks, changing settings, and how a later book can reveal something an earlier book needs.
Merkel is sharing what he’s learned from his own series. He doesn’t present it as the one way to write or publish yours. That leaves us room to look at his choices and ask which ones might help with our own work.
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Fiction Writer’s Toolshed
JA Merkel Interview – Writing a Series and More | ep 012
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Keep practicing, and notice what feeds your work
Merkel compares a writing career to training for a marathon. He wants to keep writing and recording ideas, while allowing for breaks and off seasons.
Reading and watching stories also feeds his work. He pays attention to science fiction and fantasy that makes him think differently or shows him a way to handle a story problem.
That’s something you can try without copying the result. When a book or show interests you, ask what it did. How did it introduce a new idea? What helped you follow a complicated story? What made you want to return?
Let one story give you something to build on
Bear, the first book in Merkel’s series, began as a short story. Publishing it gave him a way to learn from readers and keep developing the work.
We talk about the value of getting a finished piece into the world instead of keeping every idea on your hard drive. That doesn’t mean publishing a draft before it’s ready. It means giving readers something you’ve worked on and learning from what happens next.
A short story can also help you discover whether there’s more you want to explore with its characters and world. You don’t have to answer every question about a whole series before making that first story.
Give each book an arc, then carry something forward
Merkel describes his earlier books as having their own villains and settings, with characters and problems continuing across them. We compare that structure to episodes of a show: an individual story gives you something to follow, while the larger story gives you a reason to keep going.
Those books still belong to a connected series. An individual arc doesn’t have to erase everything that came before it or solve every problem the characters will face.
For another approach to stories that share a character’s life, see What Conan the Barbarian Teaches Us About Writing Stories Out of Order, my conversation with Matt Click. That episode explores self-contained adventures at different points in a shared history.
Keep something familiar, and change what happens around it
The Fall Gauntlet gives Merkel recurring elements to work with: a tournament, animal masks, and books with distinct names and cover colors. Those elements help the series feel connected.
Within that structure, he changes the villain, the setting, and what the reader learns about the world. He also varies when a mask comes off. In Bear, the reader learns early that Benji’s opponent is his brother, Soren. In another book, the identity behind a mask can remain a question until much later.
That changes the reader’s experience even when a familiar object is involved. Knowing who’s behind the mask creates one kind of tension. Waiting to find out creates another.
Merkel also uses different books to explore different parts of the world, including the masks, the gods and goddesses, and the government. He can add to what the reader knows as the characters face new problems.
These are choices that interest him. Matching colors or a repeated tournament isn’t a requirement for a series, and we don’t treat the packaging as proof of what caused sales.
Begin where something is already happening
Bear begins with Benji in jail, preparing for the final match. Merkel brings us into a problem the character is facing, rather than starting with a long history of the masks.
I give another example from my friend Matt: two people arguing about a sign in the pouring rain. Beginning with that moment lets the scene show us something, instead of walking us through everyone arriving first.
You still need enough detail for the reader to understand where they are. And an opening doesn’t have to be a fight or a crisis. The useful question is where the scene starts giving the reader something worth following.
Leave room to revise earlier setups
Publishing one book helped Merkel learn. But later in the series, he chose to hold closely connected books back so he could work on them together.
At the time of our conversation, he was working through books seven, eight and nine. Something needed in book nine might change what he had to establish in book seven. Holding them gave him a chance to make that change before the earlier book was released.
He describes a larger plan of three groups of nine books. That’s his plan for this project, rather than a target another writer needs to match. He still looks for developments that excite or surprise him as he writes.
Our conversation even gives me an idea for Tales of the Black Clock: tying individual novellas to different hours on a clock. It’s an idea I explore during the interview. A repeated image could give the stories a shared shape while leaving room for each one to be different.
Try connecting two stories
This exercise adapts ideas from our conversation:
- Name the first story’s problem. What does the character face, and what changes by the end?
- Choose what carries forward. It might be a character, a relationship, or a consequence of what happened.
- Give the next story something different. What new problem, setting, or discovery makes it worth following?
- Look back at the first story. Does the second need something set up earlier? Make a note of what you may need to add or revise.
You can try this with outlines, drafts, or two stories you’re considering. The aim is to see how they connect, while giving each one something of its own to do.
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed: Practical Tools for Authors is a Make Exist podcast hosted by Tim Kearney. It offers hands-on training for fiction writers to diagnose writing problems, build their skills, and finish more work.