blog Then What Happened? 8 Things We Learned Writing Our First Sequel

[A. E. Lowan]

A. E. Lowan submitted a new blog post:

Then What Happened? 8 Things We Learned Writing Our First Sequel
by A. E. Lowan

In 2017 our team released our first full-length urban fantasy novel. After the frenetic pace of finishing, editing, formatting, publishing, and promoting our first offering, we thought we would take a well-earned vacation before jumping into the sequel. We set out to take a month to regroup, but one month quickly turned into four and we learned our first important lesson about writing sequels:

8. Don’t Wait Too Long to Start the Next One

Taking a long break may sound perfect after a frantically busy launch, but we found that it was far too easy to keep putting off getting back to work. By the time we knuckled down and started serious work on the sequel, we had lost a third of a year (time we would wish we had back when life events caused another long break within two months) but more importantly, we had lost all momentum. Rather than the energy we had all brought to finishing the last project, we all struggled to find our focus and the words for this new one. We had simply been out of our world for too long. Not only did this struggle to get back into the rhythm of production frustrate us, but it made us realize the next important lesson:

7. You Don’t Have as Much Time as You’re Used To

First books can take all the time in the world to produce. They require extensive worldbuilding and their authors, especially those going indie, have...
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[Svrtnsse]

Good advice throughout. I'm learning about this first hand at the moment as I'm working on my own sequels. My stories are shorter, but I find I've still underestimated the amount of time it takes to write them, and get them ready for publishing.

I also found that the second part in the series became a lot more "streamlined" as far as plot goes. It was easy to get the idea of the story across to the reader right from the beginning, and I was able to keep the story moving towards that goal all the way through - except where I added some flashbacks to flesh out the backstory a bit.
By comparison, the first part of the series meandered quite a bit and is more focused on letting the reader get to know the main character than on the actual plot. The same happens in part three which introduces a new character, and where a lot of time is spent getting to know her.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Good advice throughout. I'm learning about this first hand at the moment as I'm working on my own sequels. My stories are shorter, but I find I've still underestimated the amount of time it takes to write them, and get them ready for publishing.

I also found that the second part in the series became a lot more "streamlined" as far as plot goes. It was easy to get the idea of the story across to the reader right from the beginning, and I was able to keep the story moving towards that goal all the way through - except where I added some flashbacks to flesh out the backstory a bit.
By comparison, the first part of the series meandered quite a bit and is more focused on letting the reader get to know the main character than on the actual plot. The same happens in part three which introduces a new character, and where a lot of time is spent getting to know her.

That is exactly what happened with us, as well. Faerie Rising, our first book, took years to write and has a great deal of world building to plump it up, so its around 400 pages. Ties of Blood and Bone, the second book, took only a matter of months from outline to first draft, and that first draft was incredibly short, closer to a middle grade book than a fantasy. We had forgotten the world building. So we had to go back all the way to the drawing board and replot, then rewrite, the whole thing. But, it was all for the best and the book turned out well.

 

[ThinkerX]

Which is why, despite having digital manuscripts in various stages of completion for 6 books in one series, and 2 books in the other, I have yet to publish any of them. Most recent annoying example that could have caused havoc: I was forced to introduce (well, mention) a rather unpleasant heir to the imperial throne in book 6 of Empire. That has meant going clear back to book 1 and inserting occasional mention of said character.

Decisions made in a series first book, once published, impose constraints on following books. I've seen this happen with other published series; sometimes the authors simply try to pretend the contradictions don't exist, other times they come up with convoluted explanations that may or may not be plausible.

By the way, I was under the impression that book II in the 'Faerie' series stood at around 65-70K or 200 pages, give or take. Was it expanded from there?

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Which is why, despite having digital manuscripts in various stages of completion for 6 books in one series, and 2 books in the other, I have yet to publish any of them. Most recent annoying example that could have caused havoc: I was forced to introduce (well, mention) a rather unpleasant heir to the imperial throne in book 6 of Empire. That has meant going clear back to book 1 and inserting occasional mention of said character.

Decisions made in a series first book, once published, impose constraints on following books. I've seen this happen with other published series; sometimes the authors simply try to pretend the contradictions don't exist, other times they come up with convoluted explanations that may or may not be plausible.

By the way, I was under the impression that book II in the 'Faerie' series stood at around 65-70K or 200 pages, give or take. Was it expanded from there?

It was. Ties of Blood and Bone originally came out at around 63k, and my pride couldn't face that, so we rewrote and ended up with a much more satisfying 80k. Still shorter than Faerie Rising, but a good book, none-the-less. Our next book, Beneath a Stone Sky, is going to be much more ambitious.

 

[Chessie2]

I enjoyed this article very much. It's always interesting seeing the insight authors get into certain parts of the craft and business. Best of luck with your sequel and the ones thereafter!

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I enjoyed this article very much. It's always interesting seeing the insight authors get into certain parts of the craft and business. Best of luck with your sequel and the ones thereafter!

Thank you so much! We greatly appreciate it.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

That is a great question. Our next novel has three plots that weave together, as well, so we’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with this same issue.

Any time you need to split your cast into different groups facing separate challenges you have to figure out how to juggle your chapters to address each storyline without spending so much time focusing on one plot that readers forget about the others. But that doesn’t mean that you have to know exactly how you are going to braid the stories as you write. We recommend two broad options for writing these complex types of novels, depending on whether you are more of a plotter or a pantser.

For pantsers, we recommend writing each storyline straight through as separate stories and deciding how to braid them together during the revision process. This allows you to keep your momentum and follow one storyline as it logically flows from plot point to plot point. This technique leads to a little more revision as you iron out transitions, but allows you the greatest ability to discovery write, focusing on one storyline at a time.

Our team are plotters and so we are using this same idea earlier in the process. We are outlining each of the three storylines separately, to focus our development time on one story thread at a time, then blending the outlines together into a logical sequence before we start writing.

It sounds like your writing style is a blend of plotting and pantsing – writing scenes organically with a loose outline. Have you ever tried storyboarding? We’ve found it to be very useful at balancing the structure of outlining with the freedom to discovery write. We’ve heard many different versions of storyboarding, from post-its to white boards. What we do when we need to try this organizational technique is write each scene that we know we’ll need on an index card. For each scene’s card we write the gist of what happens in the scene, who is in it, and any requirements for what needs to happen before or after it. We then spread the cards out on a table and build our scene list from them. We’ve found this kind of visual outline very helpful in sequencing complex portions of stories, especially when the action in one storyline needs to react to the action in another. Some of the most common writing programs have storyboarding functions built-in if you prefer to keep all of your organization aids in one digital place, but we find the old-fashioned paper version easier for us.

Good luck and have fun with your WIP!