: Re: How to tell or retell basic character and setting information in a series? I am writing a short children's novel and I want to expand this into a series made of several short novels. I intend

@Bryan361

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You have two basic choices:

(1) Begin each book with a narrative synopsis of previous books or whatever background is required. Like have an intro titled, "The story so far" or some such, and then summarize the previous books. Advantages of this is that it is straight-forward and clear to the reader, and someone who has read and remembers the previous books can skim it or skip it completely. Many writers don't like to do this, though, because they consider it awkward. Also, it highlights to the reader that they are starting in the middle of the series. Some readers may decide to go back and get the earlier books, but others may say, Oh, forget it, I've missed half the story.

(2) Include such background early in the story as conversations between the characters or other exposition. When done well and subtly, the reader may not even realize what you're doing, it just all flows together. When done poorly, it can be really, really lame. I've read plenty of books where a character says, "As you know, Bob, last year you and I went to the Amazon searching for treasure. That went very badly when our guide, Jorge, abandoned us ..." Etc. The reader can only wonder why a character would give his friend a long explanation of things he already knows, telling him about things that he did, etc. But if you're good at it, you can work it in smoothly. Maybe, "Wow, this is even more exciting than that trip to the Amazon last year! Do you remember when Jorge abandoned us? Maybe this time we'll get a better guide ..." Also bear in mind that it's not necessary to tell the reader everything that happened in a previous book, but only as much as they need to make sense of the current story.

I see Neil Fein mentioned Asimov's Foundation series. I was thinking of that one myself. It was originally printed as a series of short stories in a magazine, so he couldn't assume that the reader had read all the past issues. In my opinion, Asimov did a great job of sneaking descriptions of the background into each story in fairly subtle ways. Characters make brief references to past events in ways that sound natural. In one case he has a high-school girl talk about the paper she's writing for history class as a way to bring in a bunch of background material. I didn't even notice what he was doing when I first read the books. (Though I must admit that when I told my brother that he should read these great books, he hated them, saying he got sick of all the recaps, so apparently he noticed.)

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