: Re: Can the first book in a series have a sad ending? (The antagonist wins) I have an idea for a series, but I want the protagonist to die at the end of the first book, and make it seem like

Game of Thrones did exactly that, so it can't be that bad right?

There is a lot of risk you are putting on your work with this approach. Pretty much you are putting all your eggs in the basket of your writing being so good that people want to read the second book, even though the first one failed to to have a satisfying payoff.

Here are some bits of advice. First make it 100% clear that this is the first book in the series. People should probably even just going in know that they are not going to get the fill story from this one book. This will set expectations and make readers much less frustrated. It will for better, for worse, keep the kind of people that don't like series away from your wring.

Give the reader closure on something. Back to Game of Thrones, or Wheel of Time, some of these books get very frustrating as a 1000 pages later you feel like you have just consumed another part of the story. I feel like series like Dresden Files are much more respectful to their readers, giving conclusions to at least some plot points in each book. Maybe in your work the protagonist dies but the "relative" succeeds at something. Maybe thy escape, maybe they kill the licentiate that killed the protagonist. Pass the torch in the first book, and give the reader some sort of win, no matter how small to keep reading forward.

Past that go nuts. Modern readers seem to love hard core writers who are not afraid to kill their precious characters.

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: Re: Can the first book in a series have a sad ending? (The antagonist wins) I have an idea for a series, but I want the protagonist to die at the end of the first book, and make it seem like

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: Problematic writing I'm currently attempting to write a story. And In the past I have tried but found myself unhappy with the result because I find that I use "I" in every sentence. For example:

: How to convert non-fiction narrative to monologue I'm working on an audio book about history, and I've decided to have the audio book recited as a monologue, to make it somewhat more engaging,

: How do I define smells I have never experienced? I am a lifelong writer, who was also born without an ability to smell. I have been trained to engage the reader by applying the five senses,

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