Using Your Characters in Different Stories

[RachelPost]

There are posts about other people using your characters, and where they live, and whatnot. My question is Could characters from a two-part series make a cameo appearance in another series? Or would it confuse readers who didn't read my previous works?

My idea is to have the two characters from the Paradise Series show up, being friends with the two main characters. But there are references to things from the other stories.

 

[Priscilla_June]

I have all my stories set up in a sort of “Priscilla-verse” so I plan to/have done this. However, to make this work from a reader perspective, I think you need to make said character’s appearance independent enough from whatever story they originate so they make sense as a category in the story you are featuring them in.

Basically don’t go into the story with the character assuming people know what they are about. Sure, leave some things unsaid that isnt applicable to the featured story, but just don’t think that the reader is going to have read that other story, and unless its in a series, I wouldn’t make the featured story reliant on the character’s other story either.

This way, its special for those who have read your other works, and less confusing for those who haven’t.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I do this all the time, and readers may or may not know. My regular readers will spot the cameo, but drop-by readers won't, but that won't matter, provided the character fits the new story.

Don't over think this kind of stuff. They're your characters, use them wherever and whenever you want to.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

There are posts about other people using your characters, and where they live, and whatnot. My question is Could characters from a two-part series make a cameo appearance in another series? Or would it confuse readers who didn't read my previous works?

My idea is to have the two characters from the Paradise Series show up, being friends with the two main characters. But there are references to things from the other stories.

I have a few characters that get cameos in my stories. locations, too. I have one character in particular that has become a supporting character in a couple of stories, as well.
A lot of my stuff is based in Austin, so there are real locations that appear in multiple stories as well as some fictional locations I reuse as well. I don't really call it out, but readers have noticed. I think it's kind of cool when they make the connect.

 

[MrPixel]

My MMC and FMC are pretty much a constant across all my stories; they are modeled on younger, fantasized versions of myself and my wife. The secondary FC is similar, but not the same character. No reason for the (many!) other characters to cross paths, they are basically different universes although both of my main series exist in more or less the same era.

But that's a fun idea, frankly. I could easily have one or two of them cross at a particular common venue. Hmmmm...

 

[StillStunned]

Don't introduce the characters as if your readers should know who they are and be overjoyed to see them. Treat them as just another pair of characters that the main characters of the new story encounter. Provide backstory as necessary.

Fantasy author Raymond E. Feist had a habit of writing some scenes as if they were lifted directly from a game of Dungeons & Dragons. At one point, the heroes are escaping from a city, and one of them has to go off separately to deliver a warning. All of a sudden a nameless mook from the group the heroes are escorting gets a name and a speaking part. The next time this now-named mook appears is several books later, and all the main characters act overjoyed, like they recognise him instantly and he's their best friend ever. The only reason why he's treated any differently from another random NPC is because the reader is supposed to know and remember him.

It was very jarring, and I'd try to avoid falling into the same trap.

 

[Zootonius]

There are posts about other people using your characters, and where they live, and whatnot. My question is Could characters from a two-part series make a cameo appearance in another series? Or would it confuse readers who didn't read my previous works?

My idea is to have the two characters from the Paradise Series show up, being friends with the two main characters. But there are references to things from the other stories.

I think @Priscilla_June put it well. In general, think of the reader's perspective. Make sure references from the other stories make sense in the context.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Oh yes. My characters will be overlapping.

 

[MyBareTorso]

There are posts about other people using your characters, and where they live, and whatnot. My question is Could characters from a two-part series make a cameo appearance in another series? Or would it confuse readers who didn't read my previous works?

My idea is to have the two characters from the Paradise Series show up, being friends with the two main characters. But there are references to things from the other stories.

I do this frequently. As other authors have mentioned doing, I have created my own "universe" with various connections existing between characters. I don't even know if readers notice, but I really enjoy it. I often drop in [See Story etc etc] within the text to provide background and further related reading (and self-promotion) if readers are interested, but I have received a couple of negative comments about this. But, y'know I just keep doing it anyway...

 

[KeithD]

Sometimes characters I've written pop up in different stories, yes.

 

[AchtungNight]

Just be careful using similar names for different characters. A lawyer in my LW story and a sniper in my military story Debrief both go by the name Jake but they are otherwise dissimilar.

 

[RetroFan]

I've done crossovers for a number of my stories.

For example in my story 'My Nephew Got Into My Knickers' the narrator is Emily, a 44-year-old MILF divorced mother of two who is out for the day with her nephew in Melbourne Australia and walks up a flight of steep stairs near the Princes Bridge wearing a short skirt. Emily recalls that years earlier in the early 1990s when aged 18 and in her last year of high school she walked up these same steps wearing her school uniform, and a fat, leering, older chain-smoking guy looks up her school skirt at her panties. The guy's wife sees what her husband is up to, and screeches at him that if he wants to spend their holiday in Melbourne looking up young girl's skirts, then they will be going home on the next flight back to Sydney. The pervert guy who up-skirts the younger Emily in 1993 is Uncle Merv and the shrill wife Aunty Rose, who were characters in my story 'Leanne the Lusty Lifeguard' which takes place in Sydney in 1980.

Another crossover I did was between 'Grumpy Humphrey's Easy Wife' and 'Tonya, Tiffany and the Twins' set in 1960 and 1989 respectively where Humphrey Grim from the former story and Henry Grim from the later story are uncle and nephew. It is revealed in the second story that Humphrey Grim - aka Grumpy Humphrey - died of lung and liver cancer earlier that year on his 77th birthday, after smoking and drinking himself to death.

One thing I am careful not to do is crossover stories with supernatural themes with stories set firmly in the real world. For example, my most recent story posted on the site 'Cindy's Close Encounter' is a science fiction story about an alien abduction in the late 1950s, so I wouldn't cross over this story with a real-world story.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Using Your Characters in Different Stories​

In the quasi-autobiographical Desire, I introduced a female angel on one of my shoulders and a female demon on the other as a metaphor for me battling desire vs discretion in the office. Desire won which was reflected in the demon tying up and gagging the angel, and ass-fucking her with a strap-on.

I liked the idea so much, that when both demon and angel got made redundant for gross dereliction of duty, they ended up in their own story, Off The Shoulder (geddit?). And now have their own series. One that is also intertwined with @Djmac1031’s own Angels & Demons Saga.

Meet Emma:

and Lily:

I love them both dearly.

Em

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I've got a few series and half a dozen other stories with a bunch of the same characters (plus some with very minor cameos which I don't think any reader has spotted, because I cover a variety of genres and I doubt anyone else has read all my stories).

Partly I wanted to write more stories and didn't want to have to think of entire new characters, and also I'd start thinking things like 'ok, so we know Rachel and Richie know each other age 25 and 28, and Richie's college mate Laura introduced Rachel to lesbian sex when Rachel was 18, so at some point Rach and Richie must have met for the first time. How, and how would it go?'

(scribbles 'Accredited Sadist')

 

[Stimtheone]

I plan to have all the stories I have be in a shared 'verse, so the Outsider will certainly be a recurring character. Yes, the ones here focus on almost a big series, but there are some off-side adventures that I may write in the future.

 

[Euphony]

There are posts about other people using your characters, and where they live, and whatnot. My question is Could characters from a two-part series make a cameo appearance in another series?

Absolutely.

Or would it confuse readers who didn't read my previous works?

Are you just dropping them in blind in the new work?

Bare minimum, make them stand alone interesting in the new story. Readers won't pushback and it can be an Easter egg for the followers.

Leveraging their backstory only contained in a tenuously related work is not good writing.

Again, the bar is interesting enough to be a functional character in your new story. You don't have to retell to the heights of the first story (better that you don't IMO) but, as with any character, you need to earn the reader right to be there.

 

[Djmac1031]

In the quasi-autobiographical Desire, I introduced a female angel on one of my shoulders and a female demon on the other as a metaphor for me battling desire vs discretion in the office. Desire won which was reflected in the demon tying up and gagging the angel, and ass-fucking her with a strap-on.

I liked the idea so much, that when both demon and angel got made redundant for gross dereliction of duty, they ended up in their own story, Off The Shoulder (geddit?). And now have their own series. One that is also intertwined with @Djmac1031’s own Angels & Demons Saga.

Meet Emma:

and Lily:

I love them both dearly.

Em

On my end of this, Emma and Lily don't show up in my stories so much as get referenced at one point.

And @EmilyMiller winds up mentioning a few of my characters as well including my main She-Demon character Cozbi.

We both did it in a way that connected our universes without making it necessary for readers to read the other authors stories to make sense.

 

[Voboy]

There are posts about other people using your characters, and where they live, and whatnot. My question is Could characters from a two-part series make a cameo appearance in another series? Or would it confuse readers who didn't read my previous works?

My idea is to have the two characters from the Paradise Series show up, being friends with the two main characters. But there are references to things from the other stories.

I do this all the time. Every single one of my stories has at least one or two (usually several) characters that also show up in other stories I've written.

Some readers notice, and comment. That's nice. But most probably don't pick up on it, and that's nice too. I'm writing stories I'd like to read, so that's reason enough for me to keep doing it.

 

[Djmac1031]

Oh, I almost forgot about this one..

So I wrote this father / daughter incest story called Caring For Carrie that wound up becoming a three part series.

At the same time I'd been writing my series The Jenna Arrangement. During the course of that story, I needed an accountant character and realized I already had one in Carrie's dad Bill.

At first I was just gonna use Bill, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized Jenna and Carrie were about the same age and maybe they grew up together as kids and that's how Jenna would know Bill and choose him as her accountant.

So I wound up crossing the stories over, but again did so in a way that it a reader wouldn't have to have read the other series to follow what was going on.

Each series stands alone, but if someone were to read both, they'd see the connection.

 

[Djmac1031]

I liked the idea so much, that when both demon and angel got made redundant for gross dereliction of duty, they ended up in their own story, Off The Shoulder (geddit?). And now have their own series. One that is also intertwined with @Djmac1031’s own Angels & Demons Saga.

And again to expound, my She-Demon Cozbi is assigned to seduce a young human named Emily after Lily, the Guardian Angel assigned to protect her, instead runs off with Emma, the first demon sent to seduce Emily.

It's not EXACTLY how it happened in @EmilyMiller s stories, more of an "alternative universe" thing.

But we do know Emma and Cozbi know each other, have a history, and there's some bad blood between them.

 

[luv2custrip]

I’m finding many of my seemingly standalone stories fit in to my “Nude Therapy” universe. I probably only have a handful of fans who would notice any crossovers.

 

[Duleigh]

There are posts about other people using your characters, and where they live, and whatnot. My question is Could characters from a two-part series make a cameo appearance in another series? Or would it confuse readers who didn't read my previous works?

My idea is to have the two characters from the Paradise Series show up, being friends with the two main characters. But there are references to things from the other stories.

I use my characters to death! They're demanding more money!

In my 9 part series Stormwatch the MMC and FMC is Josh and Veronica Gravely, Stormwatch is the story of their romance. They are neighbors and friends with Andi and Paul Jarecki from the Andi's Dream trilogy. In Stormwatch and Andi's Dream there is a neighborhood pub named Worzils Grille, which is owned by Julissa and Ayato Tanaka, who appear in The Pilots Conjugal Christmas. In that story the readers find out how a mismatched pair of USAF veterans chuck it all and buy a bar in a village in Western New York.

When Andi lived in Denver one of her patients was Don Campbell, MMC of the We're a Wonderful Wife saga and the story A Krissymas Carole. And the bunch of them, Andi, Paul, Josh, Veronica, Don and his wife Lanh and her sister Kim-ly all appear in Stormwatch - The Love Boat and in We're a Wonderful Wife, Chapter 13, The Love Boat.

My readers that have responded love it! They love seeing their favorite characters interacting with characters from other stories. And believe me - they know my characters as good if not better than I do and will point out little things I may have forgotten. Try it, you will love how much fun it is. I really would love to have King Verence III of Lancre and his wife Queen Octavia leave the discworld and appear in a "mundane" story but that's really stretching it, I want to keep my stories believable

 

[oneagainst]

There are posts about other people using your characters, and where they live, and whatnot. My question is Could characters from a two-part series make a cameo appearance in another series? Or would it confuse readers who didn't read my previous works?

Absolutely, though unlike some of the responses in this thread, I pare it all the way back to just a few words of description. Like, in my latest (Yielding to Ophelia) we finally get the major players in the saga in the same room, but only if you've read the previous books and can spot them in the crowd.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

There are posts about other people using your characters, and where they live, and whatnot. My question is Could characters from a two-part series make a cameo appearance in another series? Or would it confuse readers who didn't read my previous works?

My idea is to have the two characters from the Paradise Series show up, being friends with the two main characters. But there are references to things from the other stories.

It sounds like you are referring to a common and well established literary technique known as "allusion".

When an author makes an indirect reference within a story to another work of art, person, or object not otherwise part of the story it can either complicate or deepen the readers' understanding of the story. It frequently depends on how obscure the particular reference is to most readers.

 

[BobbyLaker]

In the quasi-autobiographical Desire, I introduced a female angel on one of my shoulders and a female demon on the other as a metaphor for me battling desire vs discretion in the office. Desire won which was reflected in the demon tying up and gagging the angel, and ass-fucking her with a strap-on.

I liked the idea so much, that when both demon and angel got made redundant for gross dereliction of duty, they ended up in their own story, Off The Shoulder (geddit?). And now have their own series. One that is also intertwined with @Djmac1031’s own Angels & Demons Saga.

Meet Emma:

and Lily:

I love them both dearly.

Em

The demon wins it for me