Sometime around the late 2010s, an interesting trend began to emerge in traditional publishing. Big publishing houses had a new ask for authors looking to query literary agents and submit their books for publication. It wasn’t a genre. It wasn’t a theme. It was a book structure… and soon the term “standalone with series potential” entered the vocabulary of writers around the world.
The Business Pitch
A standalone with series potential (SWSP) is something of a unicorn: a single book that can stand on its own, or can be built on to make a series if the author (or publishing house) feels so inspired. In theory, this makes it the best of both worlds. Standalones are easily packaged, low-commitment for readers, and reassuring for publishers wary of taking on the risk of a series upfront. They can be finished without leaving fans hanging. They’re sleek, they’re snappy, and—most importantly—they’re self-contained.
Series, on the other hand, are goldmines for reader investment. They gather fandoms, build brands, and overflow with potential merch or bonus content. They also offer a better return on marketing investment: sell one book, and any readers you capture will end up buying several. The risks, though, scale with the potential rewards. If the first book flops, both you and your publisher are left in a difficult position. Do you sink that much more time, effort, and cost into something that will limp along through additional books, or do you cancel the series and leave your readers unsatisfied? It’s a good way to break their trust and waste everyone’s time.
Best of Both Worlds
Into this dilemma steps the SWSP. Structurally, it starts out as a standalone: queriable, neatly packaged, and low-risk for everyone involved. It’s marketed this way at first. If it does poorly, it’s no great loss; you can leave it and move on. But if it does well, you suddenly have another option. The potential for more books is there. You activate your standalone, and suddenly you have a series on your hands: a marvelous magic trick in which you and your publishing house both reap the rewards. This fine balance between standalone satisfaction and expandability is what makes SWSPs so unicorn-y.
The problem with unicorns, though, is that they start to look a whole lot like rhinos when you view them up close.
The Building Blocks
To understand the constraints of the SWSP format, we first have to understand what makes a standalone different from a series on a structural level. As I wrote about in my blog post about book-sizing, a standalone typically deals with a local problem, while a series tackles issues on a much broader scale. To do this, most series are heavily interconnected, and cumulative in two distinct ways.
Brick and Mortar
The first of these building blocks is plot. In most series, each book builds on the ones before it, expanding a central throughline into a higher-level narrative that spans the whole project. This overarching plot has its own beats, just like any individual story under it.
The full-series midpoint, for example, will fall at the halfway mark of the series as a whole. In a trilogy, this will be the middle of the second book. In a tetralogy, it will be the second book’s end. The full-series inciting incident and climax will likewise fall at or near standard percentages of the overall story. These typically align with key beats of individual books. The full-series inciting incident, for example, will occur at the 5-15% mark of the series, which may be the midpoint—or even end—of the first book.
Character Circuitry
The second cumulative component of series is character arcs. Series protagonists grow and change throughout the entire story, and don’t typically overcome their core flaws until the full-series endgame. In short, a series spreads out character development to ensure there’s always enough growth and internal conflict to keep things moving towards a satisfying end goal.
This cumulative nature is why most series cannot be read out of order. It’s also why you can’t get halfway through them and drop out without leaving the story significantly unfinished. Their overarching components are left unresolved. A standalone, by contrast, is self-contained by design. It ties up its own plot threads and resolves the growth arcs of its main and major characters. Hopefully by now, you can start to see the challenge here when it comes to SWSPs.
The Problem With Unicorns
Expanding a true standalone into a series requires the author to do one of two things: walk back things that were formerly resolved, or add entirely new conflicts, characters, and plot threads to pull the characters along. Both of these are challenging from a reader-happiness perspective. Ripping out stitches cheapens the achievements and resolutions of the book in question. Adding new material, on the other hand, creates discontinuity and risks looking like a money grab. If you’ve ever watched Part II of a movie that should have stayed single, you know what I mean.
Now, you might say SWSPs are not true standalones… and you are partially correct. But remember, they are only standalones with series potential. They must be able to function as standalones in the event that they don’t gain traction or otherwise never receive their series transformation. You can’t leave an overarching plot one-third finished in a standalone. You can’t leave a main character arc without a resolution. If you try to shoehorn most series ideas into a SWSP, you end up with one of two things: an overextension of a book that should have stayed a standalone, or a first book that was never a standalone to begin with.
Gone Fishing
SWSPs also unavoidably exacerbate some problems series face. A significant proportion of readers who start a series never make it past the first book. This negates all the advantages of having a series in the first place, so reader retention becomes a huge concern for series authors. In an ideal scenario, by the end of the first book, those readers already feel they’re in too deep to stop. A SWSP sacrifices this continuity by design. Readers can still finish the first book and (theoretically) walk away satisfied. This means the author needs some other way to convince them to keep reading.
One of the most important tools for boosting cross-book reader retention in a series is a powerful plot hook at the end of the first book. This works like a cliffhanger, and often is one. It ends the book on a high-tension note and convinces readers that continuing onward is worth their time. Unfortunately, SWSPs don’t have this option. You can’t finish a standalone on a cliffhanger. If it never turns into a series, your readers will have problems with you.
With neither unfinished plot build-up nor end-of-book hooks to rely on, SWSPs that do turn into series are left scrambling for other ways to hold onto their audiences after the first book. The burden of this typically falls to marketing. And if you need to jump on social media to convince your readers to take a chance on a sequel whose first book can’t effectively market that sequel itself, you’re already several steps behind.
Follow The Money
This dilemma only becomes more stark when you understand why publishing houses are so obsessed with SWSPs in the first place. It all comes down to risk and money. Large media industries in our day and age have become more risk-averse than they used to be. With thin profit margins and a capitalist incentive to put safe money before creativity, they shy away from taking chances on unproven authors. These publishing houses want escape hatches built in when they take on new books. They also want the ability to spot smash hits and immediately franchise them. Maximum profit, minimum risk.
SWSPs come with both those things. If they do well, they can be expanded. If they do poorly, they can be left as-is. The deep, inherent difficulty in actually making them work is immaterial in the face of their appeal to the industry, and even the grumbles of unsatisfied readers are not (yet) enough to overcome this incentive.
Hunting For Unicorns
Now. None of this is to say SWSPs are impossible. There are exceptions to the continuity rules of most series, and it is under these exceptions that SWSPs can arise. However, the first thing SWSP-aspiring authors need to understand is that most cumulative series ideas do not work in SWSP form. The few that do still require significant structural modifications. To pull off a SWSP, you may have to rethink your approach to series entirely.
The biggest challenges with SWSPs are the two forms of series continuity I mentioned earlier. I’ll get to the plot side of this in a moment, but character arcs hit particularly hard. These form the emotional spine of any book in almost any genre, and leaving them unfinished (or cutting them short) is a very effective way to let down your readership. This necessity of character development increases the likelihood that the “standalone” book in a SWSP will deplete—even totally use up—the growth potential of its main protagonist. If that character is awarded a smaller milestone in a larger growth journey, on the other hand, the first book risks being unsatisfactory if it never gets the series treatment.
So what’s an author to do?
Option #1: Series of Standalones
The most functional series outcome of a SWSP is a series of standalones. These are books that can be read in any order, even if they technically have some plot or character continuity between them. Some will, some won’t. This category includes:
- Episodic series in which each book is a self-contained story following a similar template—for example, a detective solving murder mysteries.
- Extended universes in which books sprawl across time and space, and may share little more than the world they are set in.
- “Series of spinoffs” in which side characters become the new main characters of subsequent books. This works especially well with Romance.
The Advantages
The continuity required across these series structures is much less strict than the overarching plot and character arcs of a cumulative series. Books within a series of standalones often share a world or local setting. They may share characters. They might share as little as a story template or theme. However, on a structural level, each book is truly a standalone.
The Romance point is also worth emphasizing. Capital-R Romance arcs often struggle in cumulative series. If the characters get together in book one, the remaining books are either unclassifiable as Romance or left struggling to extend the romantic tension after the couple gets their happily-ever-after. Authors may try to accomplish this with breakups, cheating arcs, pregnancy, or other complications, often with mixed results. Their necessary path to the new HEA becomes murky. And there’s only so many times you can break a couple up and put them back together again before the relationship starts to feel toxic.
If you delay a Romance arc to stretch its resolution over several books, meanwhile, it’s your first books are are no longer in the capital-R Romance genre category. This can work well in dual-genre spaces where a slow-burn romance arc simmers alongside a more immediately active but different-genre plot. This approach, though, is likely to change your audience entirely.
The Downsides
Outside of Romance, series of standalones still come with some restrictions. You can’t tackle cumulative series problems in a series of standalones. Don’t expect to overthrow a galactic empire or resolve a war between nations. Your options for main character continuity are also limited. If you keep the same protagonist across stories, their arc will eventually flatten. The murder-solving detective isn’t going to change dramatically between books. The more dynamic option is to give each book a new main character, at the cost of reader investment in a character they like. Each route has pros and cons.
Because series of standalones are made of, well, standalones, they also forfeit some of the benefits that cumulative series enjoy. Marketing gets complicated again. Readers are less incentivized to buy multiple books. Those who want to sink their teeth into an extended plot or growth arc will not find it here. Structurally, though, these series work very well as SWSPs. They can also be continued indefinitely and stopped at any time. This is a huge advantage for authors and publishers alike.
Option #2: Modified Cumulative Series
It’s still possible to pull off a cumulative series with a SWSP. However, there will be a continuity speedbump between the first book and the rest, as you’ll be trying to launch a broader plot without the end-of-book hook I mentioned earlier. Without buildup, this scope switch can be jarring to your readers, and make it feel like the real series only starts in book two. At best, your SWSP will function like a prequel… which isn’t the worst place to be, unless you’re trying to sell the story with it. At worst, it turns that book into a kind of book-long prologue. That’s never a good pitch.
Once you’ve started this type of SWSP series conversion, you can’t stop until you’re done. As I mentioned before, you can’t call off a cumulative series partway through. This reopens the risk of breaking reader trust if you stop writing—or your publishing house drops you—before you finish the entire thing.
How exactly cumulative SWSP potential is accomplished within the first book is up to the author, but there are a few different avenues they can take.
1. Broader Conflict
Say your characters live in a dysfunctional world that they know is dysfunctional. In the initial SWSP, they take down a minor villain within this system, but leave the system itself untouched. This works! Left as a standalone, it’s an effective scale-down of a series-sized idea. Your characters get their win, have their impact, but are left with escalation options should they choose to engage.
If the SWSP becomes a series, you can throw your characters into this broader fray. This approach has the huge advantage of letting you keep the same main character, who must now grow and change again as they embark upon a new and larger journey.
If you pursue this option, you will want to make sure to leave this character with growth yet unfulfilled at the end of the first book. Maybe they overcome their loneliness by finding friends, but still struggle with feeling they need to prove themself. In a standalone, this is an acceptable place to stop! They’ve had an arc, and don’t need to be perfect by the end of it. But they still have growing to do.
This is probably the best of the cumulative SWSP approaches from a structural perspective. However, as with every approach I list in this section, it suffers from continuity problems. You have to restart your story tension in the second book. With a bigger, badder, higher-stakes villain involved, that jolt will be particularly jarring.
2. Spare Plot Threads
It’s also possible—though risky—to write a standalone with loose ends that can be picked up to fuel later books. These threads must be robust enough to rest a future series on, but unobtrusive enough that they don’t compromise the first story’s appeal if left unresolved. If that sounds like a challenging balance to strike, that’s because it absolutely is.
In this approach, your SWSP characters might (for example) encounter a side mystery they don’t have time for, wonder about it, and let it slide. They might hear about conflict or interesting events happening in another location, but never go there. They might use a mysterious object to win the day, but never uncover where it comes from or whether it’s more important than it first appears. Any of these things can be spun into a series later on.
This approach carries the same advantage of allowing you to keep the same main character. It also allows for lower-stakes sequels than the Broader Conflict option. That dial-down might lessen (though not eliminate) the continuity speedbump at the end of book one.
The risk of this approach, though, is hopefully obvious to anyone who’s read (or watched) widely enough to see it gone wrong. If the spare threads are too small, future stories that build on them will give the appearance of grasping at straws or spinning up new material to profit off a book’s popularity. If they’re too strong, however, they can become big, obvious loose ends that detract from the SWSP if it remains a standalone. Navigating between these options is a tightrope walk, to put it lightly.
3. Ensemble Casts
This variant starts with prominent or otherwise memorable side characters that undergo some development in the first book of a SWSP. “Some” is the operative word here. These characters must be developed enough that readers get invested in them, but not so developed that they too exhaust their growth potential by the end of the first book. They must maintain flaws and internal conflict. They must have backstory that’s hidden enough to offer material for future books, but hinted at enough to intrigue readers. Because they’re side characters, this is easier to pull off than it would be with the first book’s protagonist.
If the SWSP becomes a series, that first protagonist can pass the baton to these characters to carry on the story. This gives side characters their chance to shine, and gives the series a fresh source of character development to keep readers invested. You might even be able to put one character in charge of the whole rest of the series, thus granting them a longer cumulative arc that your first book’s lead was denied.
There are, of course, downsides to this too. Most cumulative series keep the same protagonist all the way through. This gives readers someone to latch onto, get deeply invested in, and follow to the end of the story. A revolving door of protagonists can detract from that investment, especially if former characters stick around but are left with flat arcs for the rest of the series. A single hand-off where the second character carries the rest of the series, meanwhile, can feel like a bait-and-switch. There aren’t really other options.
Pick Your Poison
Publishers likely aren’t going to stop asking for SWSPs any time soon. This means writers will keep being asked or incentivized to write them, and their downsides will continue to propagate through the realm of published books. The fact that SWSPs range from disadvantaged to structurally broken isn’t likely to mitigate—let alone reverse—this trend.
The results of this are already apparent if you know where to look. Writers who want to make their debut with series (without cutting off those series’ heads) flock to serialization and self-publishing, where story length remains an asset and no industry gatekeeper guards the door. Unfortunately, the upfront costs of self-publishing only multiply when a series is involved. You have to sink that much more time, effort, risk, and cost into the project before you can call it done. Whether this is balanced by reduced marketing costs and higher return on investment is probably a case-by-case question. And for better or for worse, authors aren’t going to stop shooting for traditional publishing anytime soon.
And so here we are. I’m not here to stop anyone from writing a SWSP, especially if publishing is your dream and that’s what you want to shoot your shot with. In fact, one goal of this blog post was the opposite: to share knowledge on where and how SWSPs can work, together with each option’s pros and cons. So if you are one of those people aiming for this story model, good luck! And I hope you found this helpful.
About the Author
A.B. Channing is a queer speculative fiction writer and blogger who loves analyzing the writing industry and dislikes speaking about himself in third person. Most of his work is Dark Fantasy or Horror, but he frequently dabbles in Sci-Fi, Paranormal, and Romance. When not at his keyboard, he can most often be found up to his elbows in a pond.
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