Alright, so I'm wondering something. I have started writing a book and I really really like this one character I made. she's a very secretive very cryptic character who is tied to everyone's fates and is only ever seen once but sets up the dominos for them all to fall. Is there anything I should keep in mind if I want her to be the common character between a series of books? Even if the books themselves are not connected in a sense. It's sort of like the series another- (Pan, faust, jackyll, hyde,) They all had the countess or the duchess in them somewhere and all had the same school where crazy fairytail nonsense was going on.
I do that myself. To a very large extent in some cases, actually. So I guess your question is how that should be done? Then my advice would be to always give it meaning or significance, be it to the story or to the reader. A cameo for the cameo's sake is just the writer patting him-/herself on the shoulder. But when there's actually a point to it, some recurring thing that the reader can read from between the lines or even just a distinct, good feeling of "... heh!" that you can give the reader, simply by showing that character for the briefest of moments, then it's worth it and done right. I would also give you this tip: Sometimes it's fun to not make it fully clear if it's really that exact same character or not. And you don't even have to answer that question at some point - have it all make proper sense "behind the scenes", but simply don't fully clarify who that person is, and instead just heavily hint at it or even make it really obvious, but still questionable. Of course you'd need a situation where such an approach makes sense - but when you do have one and you feel like it... go for it! That can be a really fun thing for the reader. They'll think about of for days or weeks. ; ) Greets, AniGa
