by PocketPen

Created on: January 08, 2010   Last Updated: January 09, 2010

Use your characters and ideas as often as they interest you, as long as you bring something new to the table.

Most successful writers have recurrent people, themes and/or settings in their work. Pursuing obsessions, uncovering secrets, theorizing about societies and universes, wanting to see that justice is done —it’s not a disadvantage to find a passion (or two) and spend a lifetime mulling it over. And a love of Venice, New York at night, or Los Angeles when the Santa Ana winds blow (when “Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks”) make stories live and create the sensation of returning to a beloved and palpable universe.

Yes, we have novels with ongoing characters in science fiction, fantasy, detective fiction, as well as in literary fiction (Updike’s Rabbit, for one). As long as the characters grow, the reader’s interest will as well. The only absolute is that you don’t simply repeat the characters and ideas, rather than develop them and explore them. Of course, that’s a rule for writing in general, even within a short story, your character has to develop, so it’s no surprise that there are two layers of developing: the kind of effort you make for a swift scene, and the longer, slower, multidimensional change  that comes with the victory and defeats of life. Your characters have to accrue that lived-in feeling.

Serial characters have the added advantage of becoming beloved as they reflect the changes readers experience in their own lives. A good story has a blend of the surprising and the familiar; a reader should want to learn more about what happens and have it balanced with the recognition that this person, this revelation, this situation rings true.

Using a character again is fine, and using a character for two stories rather than a collection of linked stories is also fine. The point is to develop what interests you as a writer until it stops being developed, or until it stops being interesting. There’s no law that says you can’t have just four stories about someone or something intriguing. You can have as many or as few as works. Lewis Carroll only wrote two Alice books while L. Frank Baum never seemed to stop writing Oz books, which kept picking up and reusing characters and introducing new ones. Ultimately, that’s all that matters: stop reusing when the thrill is gone. Ah, if only TV series knew when to stop!

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