Thursday 13 June 2013

Starting Book Three in The Flirting Series

So I'm now starting to write Book 3 and I'm getting lost in all the 'side' stories.  Do my readers just want a focus on the main characters or do they enjoy all the other story lines running along side?

In Book 1 I only had two other romances going as well as Ellie and Nate (The main characters).  Sophie and Jack are developed characters that run accross all three books and Flora and Gabriel are very secondary characters that also run across all three books. In Book 2, Rose and Leo are the main characters and just like Ellie and Nate their story is only for their own book and doesnt really run on.

Do the readers want more of the main characters from 1 and 2 in Book 3? Or new characters?

How many other side stories can I put in without drawing away from the main characters?

As Book 3 is supposed to be the last in the series (unless I get a call for more from fans) I'm finding that each time I introduce a character I want to give them a story of their own.

For example, Alex.  Alex is the brother of Ellie (Book 1) and the cousin of Rose (Book 2). He doesnt have a big part in either book but he is there. Shall I give him a back story? Shall I give him a happy ending all of his own?

If I keep going like this with all the other background characters then Book 3 is shaping up to be much longer than the first two!

Part of me wonders if the shift from character to character perspective is jarring for the reader. But then I figure that most people watch soaps and other tv shows which usually have several characters with seperate stories all running along side each other.  The major british soaps have upwards of 30 or more characters all with story lines of their own and the scenes jump between them with no problem.

Hmm, I suppose that unless I get some feedback to sugget otherwise then I'm going to have to keep letting each character take on a story of their own and just hope that Book 3 gets finished on schedule!

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