John Dean – Crime Writer

When you are an author writing novels for a series, the biggest challenge is keeping the narrative fresh. But how do you achieve that? The answer is by injecting energy into each story to avoid a sense that it’s ‘same old, same old’.

One way to do that is to come up with a story that is different from previous titles in the series and my many reviews on Amazon and Goodreads for the DCI Jack Harris and DCI John Blizzard series, published by The Book Folks, a Joffe Books company, suggest that readers like the very different stories with which they are presented each time a new book comes out.

Another way of keeping things fresh which I have started to work into my writing is to develop the careers of members of the supporting police cast, which means readers who read a novel as a standalone comes away with a sense of a constantly evolving situation and regulars enjoy the changes in the fortunes of their favourite characters. Both these techniques inject energy into the stories and, hopefully, keep the readers coming back for more.

There are lots more tips for emerging writers in the Handy Hints and Features section of this website.