Top Ten Ways to Know When a Series Should End

This is inspired, if you can call it that, by a panel I was on at ConClave.

Top Ten Ways for You, If You’re a Writer, to Know When Your Series Should Have Ended

10. If you had to ask, it was two books ago.

9. Your main character, who started out with fairly little power, can now eat mountains and crap rainbows.

8. Your main character, who used to just eat mountains and crap rainbows, can now go toe-to-toe with Chuck Norris.

7. Your readers openly express hope that any prophecies regarding the upcoming destruction of your fictional world come true as quickly as possible.

6. You base your next major series-changing revelation on whatever the defacers of your series’s Wikipedia page have come up with.

5. The most popular fan-written ‘slashfic’ story for your series is ‘Any Character in This Series-Slash-Wheat Thresher.’

4. You’ve been given enough money to retire to your own personal tropical island, which you’ve already populated with zombie dinosaurs and singing pirates for your personal entertainment.

3. Your characters have run out of prophecies to thwart and now spend most of their time thwarting each other with paddles.

2. You’re dead and even that hasn’t stopped your series.

1. The shark you jumped sued you for animal cruelty.

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Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and several previously published and forthcoming short stories. He can be found via his website, his blog A Taste of Strange, as @gwox on Twitter, and in many other far-flung places on the Internet. He lives under your bed.

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