: Similar to what has already been said, but I'd say do what they do in long-running television series. In Law and Order, they have mostly single episodes dealing with a new criminal. Same

Similar to what has already been said, but I'd say do what they do in long-running television series. In Law and Order, they have mostly single episodes dealing with a new criminal. Same in many detective stories or variants of Sherlock Holmes like Monk or Elementary or The Mentalist. The same in many hospital shows like House or Scrubs, another disease or new issue shows up. Same in Buffy, as Galastel points out. Same in Military Mission shows, like Seals, or other savior missions, like Leverage or the old Mission Impossible, same in political shows, like Madam Secretary, similar in Star Trek, all the mysteries of the universe and cultures is never ending. And on and on.

If there is any arc for the main character(s), it is a very slow moving one, aimed to run for seven seasons or more. For a book, the approximate life of the series. But your main characters can also remain static and not evolve, the trick then is to bring in new characters and let them have character arcs. You avoid spectacle creep by devising a dynamic that does not allow it. In part, that can be by never really defeating the bad guys. House never cured all diseases. Sherlock never solves all crime, Madam Secretary never brings permanent world peace, the military never defeats all terrorism, the cops never finish locking up predators.

You make your story the same, whatever your heroes can do, will simply never be enough to permanently end the underlying source of conflict. In a way, Spectacle Creep happens because you DO solve giant problems. Think of your series more like Star Trek or a Detective Series. Your heroes are present with a problem, the readers have fun watching them having a harrowing adventure solving the problem, and they look forward to the next such adventure with no expectation of the stakes getting any higher.

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: A thought: To me (though not necessarily to you) the language subplot is about being immersed in a foreign-to-self place and slowly learning to cope with, and then perhaps embrace, that place.

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: How to enter a self published book into Russian library My late father wrote a book in Russian. He self published it, and registered it with the USA Library of Congress. I tried twice to

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: Is it possible for one to be a good editor but a bad writer or vice versa? If so, how? Intuitively, it would seem like being skilled in one automatically entails being skilled in the other.

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: Give him a talent. Make him a musician, or singer. Let him have a sense of fashion. Let him win some talent contests and awards with this talent. I'd say even a comic, but writing that

: Similar to what has already been said, but I'd say do what they do in long-running television series. In Law and Order, they have mostly single episodes dealing with a new criminal. Same

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: A thought: To me (though not necessarily to you) the language subplot is about being immersed in a foreign-to-self place and slowly learning to cope with, and then perhaps embrace, that place.

: How to enter a self published book into Russian library My late father wrote a book in Russian. He self published it, and registered it with the USA Library of Congress. I tried twice to

: Is it possible for one to be a good editor but a bad writer or vice versa? If so, how? Intuitively, it would seem like being skilled in one automatically entails being skilled in the other.

: Give him a talent. Make him a musician, or singer. Let him have a sense of fashion. Let him win some talent contests and awards with this talent. I'd say even a comic, but writing that

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