When writing a crime fiction series, there will inevitably come a time when you feel like you know the regular characters better than you know yourself, and you have an established method for going about writing your books.
There is a fine line between a series doing what it does best and a series that has become too formulaic, so what can we do to make sure our crime series’ stay fresh and interesting? Please feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments.
- Keep writing about different topics. The good thing about crime fiction is that there is always a different story to tell. Just because you usually write about detectives solving murder cases doesn’t mean that’s what they always have to do. Putting them onto a different type of case in a different kind of setting to the one they usually find themselves in can add new life to them and your series.
- Introduce new characters. There’s nothing wrong with introducing new characters to your established cast from time to time – in fact, it’s probably necessary.
- Do something to the protagonist that makes them act in a different way. Whether it’s something in their professional life or in their personal life, something that makes your protagonist behave or respond differently to how they have before is always an interesting exercise, and can have a knock-on effect on other characters too.
- Find a new perspective. If you’ve always written from the point of view of one character, why not see what happens when you write from someone else’s perspective? Or if you’ve always written from the point of view of the people solving the crimes, try writing from the other side of things – the people committing the crimes or those who are otherwise affected by the investigations.
- Make sure things evolve. Don’t let your crime series get stuck in a formulaic rut where everything is always the same, characters never age and relationships never change. Let them change with the times. You can still do this even if you’re writing a series that you want readers to be able to pick up at any point, regardless of whether they’ve read the previous novels.
- Write something else for a while. Sometimes the best way to re-inject life into a crime fiction series is to write something completely different for a bit – a standalone crime novel or a completely different genre. Whatever it is, it will make you think in a different way and give you the chance to explore different ideas, something that will help you when you go back to write the next instalment of your series.
