Keeping It Fresh
Keeping It Fresh
By Julie Tollefson
Jean Redmann’s private eye, Micky Knight, has been through a lot, 11 books’ worth since 1990 with No. 12 on the way. How does Jean, writing as J. M. Redmann, keep the series fresh and relevant? Here, she offers five tips for series writers, both established and novice.
1) First, consider the big picture — If you’re just starting out, Jean offers these practical considerations:
— Give future you a break by choosing recurring character names wisely. “You’re going to have to type those names over and over again, so go for something short,” she says.
— Choose a world you want to spend years of your life in, whether it’s a place you already know or one you want to learn about. You’ll be returning to it frequently in the course of your series. For Jean, that means writing about topics like medical fraud (she worked in public health for many years) and the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans (which she saw first-hand while living there). “I ask myself why is it important that my character be involved in this particular story at this time in her life? How is she adapting to the world as it is now?” she says.
— Give your character a believable reason to keep stumbling over dead bodies. A professional PI, like Jean’s Micky Knight, will come across all manner of crimes and criminals in the course of her work. “I have also given her a group of friends, a homicide detective, an assistant DA, that she bounces off of—sometimes for help, sometimes not—when she’s skirting the rules they have to abide by.”
— Identify what’s special about your series. “My character is an out lesbian and has to deal with both misogyny and homophobia. Her life has had a lot of ups, downs, twists, and turns. I’ve aged her, albeit not as relentlessly as the years have aged me,” Jean says.
— Define the boundaries of your characters, she says, then ask what would happen if you pushed them to the edge. The Micky Knight series is gritty and dark and tough things happen, things that would be out of place in a different kind of series. But whether you’re writing noir or cozies, horror or comedy, ask what would happen if you challenged your characters—and yourself as a writer.
2) Give your protagonist space to grow — In Micky, Jean says she created a “messed-up character” with plenty of room for improvement.
“I’ve tried to have her always learn something about herself or about life in each book,” she says. Not as a Lesson-with-a-capital-L, but the kind of small-l lessons we all learn every day.
Take Jean’s last book, Transitory, about the murder of a black transgender woman. “Micky has to question some of her assumptions and learn about the community,” she says.
Not only does character growth help keep a series fresh, it’s fun for the writer, too.
“Writing really nice, good characters is hard,” Jean says. “I’ve found asking ‘what are the bad things about the good characters’ and ‘what are the good things about bad characters’ helps me get deeper into who they are.”
3) Find your character’s voice — Jean chose to write her New Orleans-set noir PI series from a first-person point of view that lets Micky’s snarky asides shine.
“In the first few books, she was a bit of an asshole,” Jean says. “I had to ask myself who was she and why would she choose to be a PI? I decided on someone who didn’t have justice as a child and was slow to trust. As a PI, she searches for the justice she didn’t get. Questioning people, looking beyond what they show to the world, pushes her to also question herself.”
Like Jean with Micky, let your characters be messy and flawed but care about them.
“One of the things that interests me is how do those flawed characters search for justice? What do they have to overcome to get there?” Jean says. “And, writing as someone who has been illegal for a good part of my life, what is justice?”
4) Steel yourself for conflict between reader expectation and authorial goals — “I sometimes feel like I’m writing for two very disparate communities,” Jean says.
The Micky Knight series, with its lesbian main character, debuted with a small feminist publisher 34 years ago. In the years since, the series has continued through the gamut of publishing paths, from mainstream to small queer presses to, now, a fairly large LGBTQ press. Jean has experienced challenges at all.
“While things are changing, there are still people who aren’t comfortable with reading about queer main characters,” she says. At the same time, “many lesbian readers want romances and my books aren’t. I get pushback because they get a mystery ending of the noir kind and not a romance ending.
“A review once said I didn’t have enough likable male characters, but given there were several gay male characters, it seems he was worried about not seeing the reflection he was used to seeing — nice straight male characters. So, yes, there are a lot of tensions between multiple expectations.”
5) Prepare for the challenges of success — In many ways, writing a series becomes easier over time.
“I didn’t plan from the onset to write a series. To be honest, I thought I was writing a short story, then I got interested in the characters and realized I had a novel,” Jean says. “Then while writing the novel, I realized I couldn’t tell the story in one book.”
Now on book 12, Jean can slip into her characters’ voices easily. She knows the setting intimately. Dialog comes more easily.
But?
Success comes with different pressures.
“I now have people who read these books and who care about these characters,” she says. “I write for myself, but now I’m aware of them. I started the journey alone and now have a van full of people along for the ride.”