The other day, I posted a random tweet about how I wished there was a synopsis at the beginning of new books in a series. Based on the response I got, I’d say quite a few people agreed with me.
Why is it that TV producers don’t expect us to remember what happened last week without “Previously on” reminders, and yet book publishers expect us to remember the details of a story for a whole year or more? Can’t we have a “Previously in” in our books? Pretty please?
— Nicole Hewitt (@NicoleMHewitt) August 25, 2018
First off, I was excited for the fact that my tweet went mini-viral (well, at least, it’s by far the most attention one of my tweets has ever gotten). But I was also both amused and educated by the responses.
But what did I mean by these 280 little characters? Some people misunderstood my intent. There were quite a few responses like this one from @BedCraib:
They do have it – well good writers do – they work in the *previously* to the text of the new book – they remind the reader of what happened in the first over the first few chapters of the second, or where appropriate and if they do it skillfully you don’t notice.
I realize that most authors embed background info into the first few chapters of a book. My problem is that I’ve often forgotten so much that I spend those chapters puzzling through them, trying to put it all together, trying desperately to remember who Joe is and why he no longer works for Monster Hunters Inc. It tends to ruin my enjoyment of the beginning of the book because I’m so focused on figuring out what the heck is going on.
PLUS, having a quick synopsis at the beginning of the book that’s well-marked and easily skippable would be a win for binge readers as well. No more slogging through a bunch of exposition out of fear of missing something new. And no more awkward recaps. I thought @kalbzayn said it best with this hilarious reply to my tweet:
It would also minimize the amount of backstory infodumps authors would have to awkwardly do to catch the reader up on the previous books by saying things like, “I know you passed that class with a C last year because the werewolf kidnapped you the night before finals, but…”
Of course, there were plenty of people who told me I should just read the previous books again. (Some people were nicer about it than others—some people seemed downright insulted that I’d want a synopsis instead of just rereading. Others implied that if I didn’t remember the details of a book I’d read, I must not have liked it very much. They obviously have superior brains to mine.) While rereading sounds great in theory, I know from experience that it doesn’t happen. I have the best of intentions, but inevitably new books crowd out any room for rereads. Plus, I think I could spend a year just rereading books from all the series I still need to finish!!
Where to Look for Recaps
Several people pointed out places you can go to look for recaps. Here are a few that were mentioned to me or that I found, in case you’re looking:
- Recaptains – This has always been my go-to. I really should submit my own recaps to them for series I don’t want to forget!
- Book Series Recaps – I hadn’t heard of this one, and it’s a GREAT resource for YA series recaps.
- SERIESous Book Reviews – Both reviews and recaps!
- Fantasy Book Recaps – This looks to be mostly YA and hasn’t been updated since May, but still seems like a great resource.
- SparkNotes – This site seems to have mostly classics on it, but there are some other books on it too. (Especially if they might end up in a curriculum. For instance, I saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower in their list, which isn’t a series, but there might be others that are.)
- Wikis – Lots of series have wikis that have been created for them. Unfortunately, fandom.wikia.com doesn’t have an easy to click category for books like it does for movies and TV, but you can just search for the series name in the search bar. You can also just do a Google search for the name of the series and “wiki” (AKA “Game of Thrones wiki”) and you might find others!
Recap-Friendly Authors
And lots of people gave me names of authors that do recap the books in their series. I can’t confirm that all of these are true synopses (rather than just reminders built into the narratives) because I haven’t read them all, but here are the books that were mentioned to me, if you’re looking for a recap-friendly series!
- Jay Kristoff recaps in his Stormdancer and Nevernight Series.
- Rachel Caine says she recaps in some of her series. (And she told me she’d make a video recap of Honor Among Thieves before Honor Bound comes out. How cool is that?)
- S.J. Pajonas does them in her Nogiku Series.
- Tad Williams was mentioned A LOT, so I think he does it with all of his series.
- Stephen King’s Dark Tower Series.
- David Weber, author of the Honor Harrington space opera series.
- Gini Koch.
- Brent Weeks’ The Lightbringer Series.
- Mark Lawrence’s The Grey Sister Series
- CJ Cherryh does this in some (but not all) of her series.
- Raymond E. Feist included an “Our story so far” in his initial Riftwar series.
- The Saga of Darren Shan has them.
- Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Series.
- R. Scott Bakker.
- Jim Butcher did it a lot with the first books of the Dresden Files.
- Victoria Dannan does this in her Knights of Black Swan Series.
- The Inheritance Cycle (Eragon) by Christopher Paolini.
- The Passage trilogy by Justin Cronin … best recap ever at the start of book 2!
- The ILLUMINATUS! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.
- Stephen Donaldson did amazing recaps in his Thomas Covenant books.
- James Islington did this in his sequel to The Shadow Of What Was Lost.
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator seems to have a nice recap of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the beginning.
- Lots of people mentioned the Harry Potter books too (though I’m not sure that these have an easily skippable synopsis right at the top).
A couple of people also mentioned these creative ways authors included recaps:
- Jasper Fforde once had the main character go onto a tv chat show to talk about the events of the book previous in the opening chapters
- David Eddings’ novels would have a prologue pretending to be an in-universe history textbook covering the basics of the previous books
And here are a couple of other fun replies that I just want to share because they made me laugh:
@El_Dodgero gave this little tongue-in-cheek recap:
“Previously on Lord of the Rings: Frodo and Sam hung out with a guy under a waterfall. Trees talked for seventy five chapters. Then they killed Saruman and Merry spent fifteen pages looking for pipeweed. Let’s hope nobody turns Faramir into an asshole in the film!”
And @KWilsonAuthor said (I think I actually know what book she’s talking about here.):
I just started book 3 of a series & the MC has amnesia, so neither of us remembers what happened in the last book
And I’ll end on that fun note.
Do you wish that series books had synopses in them? Do you know of books that do (besides the ones I’ve listed)? Or any other recap sites I missed? I want to know!
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Praise be to this post! I am checking out the recap links to see if the series I was going to read is on there. I’ve found a recap for book 1 (which I sort of remember) but not for book 2.
I agree with you, sure, good writers do integrate the past book well into their book but I’m with you, trying to put it all together when you’re reading does put you off a bit. I want to go in knowing where I stand and carry on. And not remembering a book well does not mean you didn’t enjoy it. Book amnesia is a thing! I mean, I loved a book I read the other day but when it came to writing my review a couple of weeks after finishing I still had to go back and read characters names because I’d blanked them and I forget events until I see them in someone’s review. Ugh, some people just do not understand.
Exactly! Those people who implied I must not have liked the book enough obviously don’t read as many books as I do in a year!
The amnesia tweet cracked me up, haha. But yeah, you know I agree. I actually just keep my own summaries for series books, but that’s a pain in the butt. It would be much better if this were just a thing. And I love to binge read, so I do find it really frustrating when I have to sit through characters awkwardly explaining things I just read about. Once I was binging two books, and the second one had literally a pages-long thing where the MC sat down with another character and explained the entire plot of the first book to him -_-
You know, maybe another idea would be for authors to keep a recap on their websites? Not as handy as having it right there in the book, but a note with a link to their site could still be useful, esp if you were reading an ebook!
Yes, I actually thought of that as well, and a few others mentioned that suggestion. A link on the back cover or in the front of the book would work well (especially for ebooks!).
Yay for a viral tweet!! And I so agree with you. That is kind of why I stay away from a lot of series. I am totally not going to reread the book. I would love a little recap to remind me. I am so going to check out those sights for sure. And those last two tweets were funny!
I really got a kick out of those last two tweets. Comments like those made reading the thread much more fun! 🙂
Okay, whoever wrote you and was snippy about you not re-reading…are they bloggers? Because I’m going to guess no, since most bloggers just don’t have TIME to re-read even though we would love to. We tend to read way more than the average reader – I think – and some of us don’t have wonderful memories! I’m a little indignant on your behalf now. LOL I love all the nice/funny comments though. But to answer your question, yes! This would be amazing and it would make it so much easier to start the next book in the series without worrying about forgetting important things! More books should definitely do this, and I’ve never seen one that does, so thanks for the suggestions and the sites!
-Lauren
I agree that those people must not read as many books as we do. I mean, I could seriously spend a few months straight just rereading series I haven’t finished yet.
Wow, that tweet kind of exploded. It’s weird that some tweets get tons of attention and others get none. Thanks for the recap sites. I appreciated the recaps in The Dark Tower series. There were so many years between the release of one book and the next that it would be reasonable to assume that the reader had forgotten EVERYTHING. And the reader probably misplaced their copy of the previous book and can’t reread. It was a long wait.
Yeah, I really wasn’t expecting it to get so much attention. It’s not like I was saying anything many of us haven’t said a million times.
I do this! Or at least I did this for the Nogiku Series. I need to work this into the Hikoboshi Series, too, so maybe I’ll do that when I get the new blurb for Crash Land on Kurai. And I definitely plan on doing this for my next series. I even plan on doing “Next time in Book 2…” and then a quick “Previously in Book 1…” at the beginning. I put them in the “foreword” area on Vellum so they can be skipped easily.
Did you do it as like a summary at the beginning of the books? Am I really just forgetting that? (Or maybe it’s because I read most of them as ARCs.) Either way, that’s amazing for your readers! 🙂
I may not have had them in the ARCs! That’s totally possible. But yes, they’re a quick summary right at the beginning. I need to go back and do this for other series I have. Here’s a screenshot of it…
https://www.evernote.com/l/ADJuge-He0VCi74UmQFfwlHHsjtBkRm1MOc
Oooh! I’ll definitely add you to my list! 🙂
That’s great you got so many replies (and maybe not so great if you’re thinking about the not-so-nice ones). I only ever really knew about Recaptains (and I agree that I should be submitting to them too – I kick myself sometimes when I get to a series that no one has written a recap on and I could have done it when I read the previous book). Thanks for sharing! I love the comment about the character with insomnia! Ha!
I hadn’t heard of all these sites, so I was very grateful for the heads-up!
Oh yes, I soooo wish there were recaps for all the books! Sadly that doesn’t always happen! I know of some of these websites that have some, but that’s just it. It’s not all of them! Like I was trying to find recaps about the Mara Dyer books and no one seems to have recapped those nor Noah Shaw. So diving into that one was tricky! I think it was last year I decided I would take as detailed notes as I could and keep them in a journal to reference for the next book. It helped me some, but not all the way. There’s always something I might miss, but I usually get the general points and that’s helpful!
Rachel Caine’s Weather Wardens was always a favorite of mine because her character/narrator did a brief rundown of what happened in the last book and that was soooo helpful after I binge read the first few and then was subjected to wait for the rest! I can only hope that Rachel does this when the next installment eventually comes out, as that’s been delayed like 2-3 years now.
Great post too!!
What I really need to do is write recaps for a site like Recaptains. Then I would never be lost. Of course, time is always an issue. 🙁
Lovely post! I’ve been saying something similar for ages — book a brief recap of the series in every additional book. Readers then have the option to read it or not. If I’m binge-reading the series, I’ll skip the recap. If I’m reading them as they’re released — GIVE ME THE RECAP. If not, I feel like I have to back and read the first book in its entirety.
Lindsi @ Do You Dog-ear?
Yep, exactly. I know a lot of people feel this way. Don’t know why it’s not a regular thing.
Some authors are better than others at embedding enough information from the past book into the current book, and that is usually enough to reactivate that information in my brain, but others are NOT as good at it, so I really appreciate those awesome people, who do the recaps. I don’t reread. It’s just not going to happen. I have heard other bloggers say they do their rereads via audiobooks, but I am not successful with fantasy audiobooks, and most of my series reading fall into that genre.
I sometimes reread via audiobook (sometimes on 2x speed so I can just power through since listening takes even longer than reading). But I’d still much prefer a simple recap. When I read Kendare Blake’s latest, there were lots of hints sprinkled in, but I was still really glad I’d found recaps on Recaptains.
Three cheers for that viral tweet! I can imagine how hard it is to keep track of all those notifications but regardless, Twitter fame!
Thank you for putting up this post and sharing all the resources you were able to gather. I am not a big reader of book series mainly because of this forgetting what happened in the previous book problem. Pre-blogging days, if I can’t remember what happened in the previous books, I tend to resent my limited memory space and hate myself a bit when I realized recently that this is hardly my fault. It was super bad for my mental being, so now I just veer away from series and read mostly standalones. Or I wait until every book in the series has been published and binge read, lol.
Yeah, I know I can’t cram the details of that many books into my mind. I don’t think it would be possible. I can’t feel bad about that.
I so agree! A synopsis would be a *huge* help. And, like someone else mentioned, would alleviate the need for info dumps At the beginning of subsequent books. I’m not much of a re-reader so I hate feeling like I need to reread a book (or more) for every new release.
Love that tweet about the character having amnesia so “neither of us remembers what happened in the last book.” LOL
That amnesia comment made me laugh so hard—loved it!!
LOVE the author with amnesia bwhahahah. I love the book recap sites, but it’s hard because of course they’re only human and can only do a finite number of series. I LOVE the Honor Among Thieves video idea- because I adored that book so much! And yay for you on your fame! 😀
I know, I keep thinking that I should just WRITE some recaps for Recaptains because then they’d have the books I want. Of course, I never actually do it. Sigh.
This is such a brilliant idea! I usually tend to reread the series beforehand, but it is an extremely time consuming task that has become pretty unmanageable recently. But I suffer from the forgetfulness syndrome you mentioned (even if I loved a series) so I can’t figure out a better method. This is the #1 reason why I don’t continue with series. I just don’t remember enough to continue on, and the little details or side characters I don’t remember always drive me mad when I try not rereading the earlier books. I’ve only read Recaptions for fun (Maggie Stiefvater’s recaps of The Raven Cycle are hilarious) because I’m too scared they’ll miss something, or won’t be enough to jog my memory. I’m so glad I now have this list to go through when I feel stuck.
Someone else mentioned Maggie’s recaps too, and I’m so glad because they’re hilarious!! I need reminders, even for books I absolutely loved. Some days, I’m lucky I remember what happened to me yesterday, much less what happened in a book a year ago!
Maggie Stiefvater does her own hilarious recaps which are posted in lots of places. Even readers with great memorie should read them!
http://recaptains.co.uk/2013/09/the-raven-boys-by-maggie-stiefvater/
Oh my gosh, thank you SO much for telling me about these! They are hilarious!!
I think recaps at the beginning of books are so helpful when they’re there, both for people who have had to wait for the next book for a while, and for those who are reading one book after another. I’m currently rereading the Harry Potter series, and I roll my eyes each time, at the beginng, it talks about how Harry is an unsual boy, because he’s a wizard, who attends Howarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and how each book explains the rules of Quidditch. It gets annoying pretty quickly.
However, I read Red Sister a few weeks back, and Mark Lawrence started the book with a recap which was pretty much him talking to the reader. It said something like, “To remind you of what happened in the last book, and to save me from having to try and somehow work all this in to the story, here’s what happened.” And it wasn’t just a recap of the plot, it explained the worldbuilding, the different races, the power dynamics, etc. It was brilliant!
I absolutely love Eddings’ prologues, too. So clever to have “excerpts” from history books that not only explained the world, but also recapped the previous story. I do love them!
However, I’ve never actually gone looking for a recap. It’s never really occured to me to do so. I’ve just struggle through normally. But I will definitely be checking out some of those links from now on. Thanks, Nicole!
Mark Lawrence’s recap sounds perfect to me! I would love it if all books had something like that (or like Eddings’s).
If I love, love, LOVE a series, I might do a re-read. I think I’ve re-read Megan Whalen Turner’s first 3 Attolia books twice as the next two have come out sloooooowly. I re-read the Blake books after seeing your posts about the 3rd book coming out, and it wasn’t quite as magical the second time, BUT hopefully having read them twice will let me dive into book 4 with just the recaps.
Thanks for gathering the resources for us!
Sorry you didn’t love them as much the second time through—that’s definitely one of my fears with rereading.
I love this post! I always think about this exact same thing. Like, sometimes I don’t get back into a series because it has been over a year since I read the last book and I can’t remember exactly, and I’m worried I won’t remember enough to enjoy it. So I love it when an author can skillfully weave it throughout the beginning of a story in a way that isn’t info dump, but also helps me feel caught up. I do get annoyed with the “last time” bit on tv shows, especially if I’m binge watching. But if I’m watching it live, or it is the beginning of the next season after a long break, I love those same little recaps. Thanks for sharing all these sites, I know I’ve looked at Recaptain before.
Love the little tweets you got at the end, especially the LOTR one. LOL!!
Yeah it would be nice if the recaps were easily accessible and also easily skippable, that way everybody’s happy. 🙂
I’ve just came across you blog post in 2021, I have this same problem. I read so many new books at least 150-200 a year and with long series my brain forgets, the worst part is if I re-read about halfway through the book I start remembering main plot points but it’s always the little details you need to remember to get the whole story and there the ones I forget.
I would love something like a cliff notes site for all books for a site where people can add a small synopsis.
What I’ve started doing is at the end of the book before I start a new one is go onto goodreads and click edit review (star rating) and they have a private notes section. I add my own thing to remember then in a year or so when new book is out I can re-read what I wrote.
Also another good one if you don’t have time to re-read on Kindle you can view X-Ray and select noteable clips and it will give you one paragraph from each chapter to kind of sum up what the main point was for that chapters, so it’s a lot quicker.
Oh, those are both really great tips that I never thought about. That’s an ingenious use of the private notes section, and I didn’t know the X-Ray setting existed. Very interesting. Thanks for your thoughts!
Yes, they should, IMO.
I’m a book editor and was recently assigned the task of editing BOOK 8 in a YA series. Four pages in and I still had no idea what was going on because there was no context. I advised the author to add a brief synopsis of what was taking place and what led up to it in the previous book or two.
All your reasons are what I was thinking just yesterday and today, since I borrowed two books from different series this week, and have need of recaps for both. One was published in 2020, and is the 4th and last of a series, so I read the 3rd book at least 4 years ago. I remember the main stuff, but not the bits I really want to remember in order *not* to wonder awkwardly through these first chapters what exactly the relationship between the two protagonists is at the moment, or where the magic development ended up, what happened to the villain(s), etc. The other is the 2nd in an ongoing series, the 1st of which I read a couple of years ago, and it follows on immediately from the big climactic event at the end of the previous book, which I can only remember vaguely. But to understand what’s going on, I need those details.
I’ve never found good book synopsis sites – usually it’s just the blurb, which I already knew before I read those books. I need to remember what I knew after reading them!
I’m thinking of creating a website that provides synopses of fantasy series for adults, including by Australian authors, which aren’t mentioned on US-centric sites (the case with one of the series I mentioned), and perhaps less-common series, like the other one I’m reading. This does mean I’ll probably have to re-read these books myself, though….. argh.
Also character lists – some authors provide these; others don’t. All fantasy series should have character lists! If not in the book, then on the author’s website. One of the books I borrowed this week has a list for this book – new characters who will be introduced – but not for continuing characters! I can’t remember all of them, or what they did in the last book, or what their connections are. And I need those details, too, in order to figure out what’s going to happen and see the threads. Another thing I’ll add to my site….