A Small Confession About TV… Writing Interconnected Romance Series with Complete Love Stories
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Season 3 key art). Courtesy of Paramount+ / StarTrek.com. Photo credit: Pari Dukovic/Paramount+. TM & © 2025 CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Back in December I finally started watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which means I’m very late to the party while everyone else has apparently been enjoying it for ages and I’ve been over here doing what I always do, which is choosing books over TV.
My husband finally convinced me to start watching it because he said I’d love it, and he was right. Even though I’m not usually much of a TV person, I’ve always loved stories that come in a complete package. I like a beginning, a middle, and an end. I like finishing something and feeling that it gave me the full experience it promised.
In books, that matters even more to me. Romance is not optional, and it’s definitely can’t be a cameo. Not for me. Not I need a solid happily-ever-after. I want to close the book and feel that satisfied little ahhh in my chest, like everything came together the way it should.
One of the things Strange New Worlds reminded me of right away was The Next Generation, when you could sit down and watch one episode and get a full story. There was a problem, it unfolded, and by the end of the episode you had resolution. You weren’t being asked to wait through multiple episodes just to feel as though something meaningful had happened.
Those shows were doing more than telling one complete story at a time, though. They were also building something over time. You had the same crew, the same relationships, and the same world. You got to know people. You watched the dynamics shift. You saw little pieces of a larger picture gathering in the background. Each episode stood on its own, but if you kept watching, you got something extra. You got the experience of returning to a familiar world that kept moving forward.
That’s exactly what I want for the series I write. I want every book to feel complete on its own. I want each couple to get their full story. Their beginning, their struggle, their emotional turning points, and their happily-ever-after all need to happen inside their book. I don’t want readers to feel as though they need to read two or three more books just to see one couple’s story resolved.
I also don’t want the world to feel as though it resets every time. Part of the pleasure of a series is coming back and recognizing people. It’s seeing side characters step forward into their own stories and knowing past couples are still out there living their lives. It’s feeling those background threads continue, not in a way that replaces the romance, but in a way that gives the world more depth.
This balance matters, especially in romance. Romance readers are showing up for the emotional payoff inside a good story. They’re investing in characters, in relationships, and in the promise that the love story will take them somewhere meaningful. Some readers love following the same couple across multiple books, but for me, when that payoff is stretched out too long, it can start to feel like the relationship is being held open instead of brought to a satisfying conclusion.
That is where interconnected standalone romances really shine. Each book can give the reader the satisfaction of a full love story while the wider series offers the pleasure of continuity. You get the emotional payoff of the couple in front of you, but you also get the comfort of returning to a world that already means something to you. Instead of choosing between a complete story and a living world, you get both.
I think that’s why episodic television has always appealed to me more than stories that are all one long thread with no pause for satisfaction along the way. An episode of Star Trek gives you a full experience in an hour, but if you watched week after week, you still saw growth, familiarity, and connection building in the background. The continuing elements made the world richer, but they didn’t take away from the completion of the individual episode.
For romance writers, I think there’s something useful in that model. When I think about interconnected books in a series, I tend to separate the couple’s arc from the world’s arc. The version I find most satisfying is when the couple’s story feels complete in the book they’re starring in, because that’s where the romantic payoff really happens for me. The world can still continue around them. Side characters can carry forward, trouble can simmer in the background, and new questions can open up for later books. I love when those ongoing elements make the series feel richer without taking away from the satisfaction of that individual love story.
This distinction matters because structure and continuity aren’t the same thing. Structure is what gives one book its shape. It’s what allows a reader to follow one couple through a meaningful emotional journey and reach a satisfying ending. Continuity is what makes a series feel alive. It’s what allows readers to come back and feel that the world didn’t vanish when the previous book ended. Both matter, but they’re doing different jobs.
If you’ve read my In Magic series, then you’ve already seen pieces of that on the page. Each book focuses on a different couple, but there’s still an ongoing thread connecting them. Characters carry forward. The world continues to move and there’s a sense that life goes on beyond any one book. That’s something I love as a reader, and it’s something I’m always trying to build more deliberately as a writer.
Part of what draws me to this kind of series is that it can be more than a backdrop for different couples to fall in love. The world itself begins to matter. It holds history, momentum, and relationships that continue beyond the edges of one story. At the same time, each book can still offer a full emotional experience, with a couple who matters completely in that book instead of feeling like one piece of a romance stretched across several installments.
What interests me most as a writer is not simply creating a world that can hold multiple books. The real challenge is creating a world that keeps giving readers something more while still honoring the shape and satisfaction of the individual story in front of them. I think that’s one of the reasons series can be so powerful when they’re working well. Readers get both intimacy and continuity. They get the focused emotional payoff of one love story and the deeper pleasure of returning to a world that keeps unfolding.
Watching Star Trek brought that back to mind for me. It reminded me not only that I enjoy complete stories, but also that I love the feeling of coming back to the same crew, the same world, and the same larger fabric of relationships and conflict. That’s very close to what I want my books to feel like. A new love story each time, a full happily-ever-after for that couple, and a world that keeps breathing around them.
That, more than anything, is how I want to write my romance series.
Top of Form
