Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
I have to disagree that each book in the In Death series works as a standalone. There are character arcs and referrals to things that happened previously. In a series, if there is any character development or even a single sentence that refers to something from a previous book, then it's not standalone. And if the characters evolve, the books are not standalone. You can have a book in the series where the none of the characters evolve and nothing in the past is mentioned. But still, how do you write the characters if they've evolved from previous books? You have to write them as they are now (unless the book is one that takes place in the past).
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That's all perfectly true for writing the stories in a series (i.e. you need continuity in them), but you don't have to read them that way if each story is written to be standalone. By that, I mean that each standalone novel contains the beginning of a story, the end of that story, and the information that you need to know to make sense of the story. Something may have happened in a previous novel, but if the necessary information is given in the current novel, then you don't need to read the previous one to get it. Lots of series are written that way (especially police/detective series as someone else mentioned).
Our brains are good at making connections and filling in holes. Reviewing new information against old ideas is what we do, so reading stories out of order isn't bad if each one is written to be standalone.