So, I know I’m a hard sell when it comes to romance novels, but I read Jeannie Lin’s Pingkang Li series, which is a combo of romance and mystery/adventure, and it really got me thinking. The way a series works in romance is that Book #1 focuses on Couple #1, then Book #2 focuses on Couple #2 (who you’ve somehow met in Book #1—they’re usually friends or family of Couple #1), then Book #3 focuses on Couple #3, etc. And with the Pingkang Li series (Jess Michael’s Wicked Woodleys series is a bit like this, too, although much more X rated), there’s some nice plot build from Book #1 to Book #2 to Book #3.
And thinking about it, why shouldn’t there be? Oftentimes when you hit, say, Book #7 in a romance series the plot is really petering out and everything’s kind of on autopilot, but if a writer planned beforehand, knowing they had X many couples, they could do a series that really built a plot that paid off well in the end. The move from Couple #1 to Couple #2 could actually move the plot along, because the different perspectives would give the reader fresh eyes on some underlying conflict that’s been driving everything all along.
Anyway, this interests me. I really like the idea of series that are all really one big book, and while the plotting can get complicated and difficult, I think this is a format that could really work.