Sequels and open-ended books

Read this thread and pay attention to the reader reactions.

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45036

I have a theory that the really good big hitters tend to arc their series such that each book could be the first, and handle backstory as if the preceding books did not exist.

There's no reason you can't bring back characters you liked from one book for a sequel or even a prequel. Just make sure you finish the book you're writing. It cheats the reader to leave them hanging. Especially when you're a new writer because there's just no guarentee your second book will ever get published...sorry, but it's the truth.

The only writer I've ever forgiven for totally leaving me hanging was Stephen King with his DarkTower Series and that was because I knew he would be back.

Each book needs it's own resolve. Think of ones you have seen. I'll use Underworld off the top of my head.

It had a complete self contained story with an open ending.

It had the resolve, the main bad guys were dead, one of the lesser badguys had escaped, the two lovers were allowed to live for another day, but there were the unresolved of Marcus and the retribution and unknown.

Matrix is my second example. I will use the first one as the second two sucked.

It ended with him knowing he was the one, he faced off with Smith, escaped from the Matrix and lived through something that he was never supposed to live through and Trinity proclaimed her love.

It left an opening of him leaving a message to the machines of his plans and he flies off, leaving the door wide open for more.

You must resolve your smaller story. I like to think of a double arc when thinking of series. In each book you should have a smaller arc, even Harry Potter does it. With a larger over arc bounding over across the entire series. Give your reader the satisfaction of an ending, and a hint at more to the story. This will leave them hungering for more instead of being really pissed off for having to wait a year and pay more money for the story they thought they had already paid for.

I had an email from my publisher a few months ago, explaining how books within a series always sell better than standalone novels. So far I've written two standalone and one book of a trilogy. Book two and three of the trilogy are going to have to wait, because if I want to have them both finished before book one is published, that's going to be a heck of a lot of work before they see the light of day.

The two standalones end with proper endings – there aren't any unanswered questions. But I think I could write another book for each, because there are parts in both stories that lend themselves to being the start of an extension to the original plot. Rather than having the next book start where the previous one left off, it'd be more interesting to write if it branched sideways. This would also mean I wouldn't have to use all the same characters again, something that might tempt me just to retell the first story but in a slightly different way.

All about sequels...

seun said:

I realised recently that a lot of my work is either a sequel/prequel or left open enough at the end for me to come back to the story. Does anyone else do this? I've decided to focus a little more on self-contained stories for a while but the attraction to return to people I know is very strong.

Do you guys aim for self-contained or open-ended?

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I've been writing for 40 years. I used to write shorts and novellas, but some 20 years ago I became compelled to tell the story of a fictitious character, and continue to do so. I have several mms on the shelf, one waiting for publication and a WIP at 70,000 words. I also used to write articles for magazines, but didn't find the satisfaction to writing that comes from doing a series of connected books. I suppose there is a personal, biographical element to this urge. My character roughly parallels my own, but with many important differences. Building a mythos is exciting. Creating a whole world that you've constructed. That enduring longevity of a serial character adds to it, I suppose.

That said, each story MUST be individual and unique to the story being told.

JPS

icerose said:

Each book needs it's own resolve. Think of ones you have seen. I'll use Underworld off the top of my head.

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*Remembers that it's still on my TeVo, waiting to be watched.*

I agree with everyone else. Make sure you have a complete first. Sprinkle in forshadowing for later, but bake a complete meal in that first one.
Then, after it's done, work on #2 and so on.

Never, never, never end in the middle of something, unresolved.

Well, at least not until everyone knows and craves you. But it can still slap readers' faces.

seun said:

I realised recently that a lot of my work is either a sequel/prequel or left open enough at the end for me to come back to the story. Does anyone else do this? I've decided to focus a little more on self-contained stories for a while but the attraction to return to people I know is very strong.

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that means youre not ready to let go and that could be bad to you as a writer if you cant let go of your characters and stories once youre done with them - or that you can never be done with them

Simon Woodhouse said:

I had an email from my publisher a few months ago, explaining how books within a series always sell better than standalone novels. So far I've written two standalone and one book of a trilogy. Book two and three of the trilogy are going to have to wait, because if I want to have them both finished before book one is published, that's going to be a heck of a lot of work before they see the light of day.

The two standalones end with proper endings – there aren't any unanswered questions. But I think I could write another book for each, because there are parts in both stories that lend themselves to being the start of an extension to the original plot. Rather than having the next book start where the previous one left off, it'd be more interesting to write if it branched sideways. This would also mean I wouldn't have to use all the same characters again, something that might tempt me just to retell the first story but in a slightly different way.

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But series books are standalone novels. Trilogies aren't series books. The Spenser novels are series books. The Travis McGee novels are series books. Each book is a completely standalone novel, but the protagonist comes back again and again in novel after novel.

kpmcneil22 said:

Why can't more people look at a series like this?

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Because not all stories work like that. Some have a vast story to tell that cannot be covered in one book. Think Lord of the Rings.

I love sequels and prequels...I like the way Lonesome Dove came out and Dead Man's Walk was great as a stand alone...Streets of Loredo...they all are good! I've been working on a book and it feels like it will have a sequel with the characters aged five or ten years...it will end in each book however with a proper ending.

zornhau said:

I have a theory that the really good big hitters tend to arc their series such that each book could be the first, and handle backstory as if the preceding books did not exist.

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Jasper Fforde does this. Instead of writing a series, he interweaves his books so they all fit together (even the Thursday Next books fit with the Nursery Crimes!). Each can be read and understood independent from the others, but the others open up a world of inside jokes and linked plots/subplots that make the readings all the richer.

kpmcneil22 said:

Wasn't LOTR written as one book, then split into three by the publisher/editor?

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Yes.

zornhau said:

I have a theory that the really good big hitters tend to arc their series such that each book could be the first, and handle backstory as if the preceding books did not exist.

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I think this is true in crime and suspense, but definitely not in fantasy, and p'raps not in SF. Thrillers tend to stand alone. (At least, the ones I read do.) This may have something to do with the kind of problems protagonists in crime and suspense novels face.

My books are self-contained, but reuse the same characters. If people like the characters they'll keep buying the books, which is one reason publishers like series. The other reason is that each fresh book brings in new readers for the earlier ones.

I like the way, for example, Pratchett's series' work.
Take the Watch series. In this, you have a number of stories, all involving the same characters. Each story is self contained, with a beginning and an end. But, at the same time, Pratchett recognises that people have things in their life that go on beyond the resolution of any particular episode. For example, the relationship between Carrot and Angua builds in each book. The Watch itself grows and develops into a larger organisation. Vimes has to adjust to becoming a Duke, a husband and a father.
The important thing is that none of these things is directly relevant to the particular story of each book, they are overarching stories that continue before and after the scope of any one book. Each story treats them as backstory, but backstory that you know if you read the earlier novels.

As I was reading down this thread it put me in mind of Simon Haynes' Spacejock books as I have recently read 1 and 2. They can stand alone but there is sufficient continuity of the character for me to recommend that they are read in order. Anyway, that is what I was thinking for a bit, and then noticed that the man himself put in bit about reusing the characters.

I should warn you that in some cases he reuses his characters by having them completely dismantled and reassembled, all in the name of character development of course.

And another thing that occured to me was how Alexander McCall Smith strings his stories together in "The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency" series. These books stand alone but they are linked by the progression of the romance between the main characters. This is the only story development from one to the next. It is only after reading the series in order that I saw how they had been planned as a whole.

On the other hand, William Golding, who is one of my favourite authors, wrote his sea trilogy almost by accident. He wrote "Rites of Passage" as a stand alone novel but it worked into a rather clever but awkward ending. He says he decided to write the sequels because he kept thinking of silly things for the inept MC to say.

OK, third time lucky and I'm going to answer the original question.

I write mostly short stories and like to have them as complete as possible. However, in my collection published early this year there are three that might appear to some readers to be linked in series. The serialising of them is deliberately vague and has no real impact on any story, and the characters are not obviously continued from one to the other. It is just that there is an undercurrent that a reader might pick up and wonder about.

In the YA novel that I am querying at the moment my original intention was to cover a year in the life of the MC. However, the story ended itself at his birthday, which I imagine is about August. The material for the rest of the year forms the basis of a sequel.

The reason I am working it like this is that the resolution that happens at the end of book 1 matches the opening. However, through the course of the story there is a deeper conflict that emerges and it is this deeper issue and its consequences that get resolved in the second book. The sequel is a much more complicated story to put together.

I didn't plan the sequel thing, but the story arc of book 1 found its way home as I was writing. I was somewhere in there and this serendipitous voice inside my head said, "This is going to finish in a few hours, better prepare yourself to close off earlier than you planned." When the closing sequence came within view I was very comfortable with it. It took me a week or two to realise that the rest of the original story would be a sequel rather than a major edit.

series, sequels, related standalones ... ?

All right, so we have the series-as-episodes and the series-as-one-story-arc-with-sub-arcs-in-each-book (sorry, I haven't a better way of phrasing that). We have one story divided into volumes (Lord of the Rings), many different books with interrelated characters and some interrelated stories (Discworld), and two sets of stories set in the same narrative universe with many cross-overs (the Jasper Fforde books). There are also standalone books that could eventually be worked into a series (hmm . . . I think Anne of Green Gables might fit in that category, but I'm not sure).

If I can get your thoughts on what the following is, I'd appreciate it. It's not really all that important, but I've been trying to figure out what to call my set of interrelated stories. There is an overarching story arc I intend to tell, but in discrete chunks, divided into two sets of stories that eventually come together. (They are going to start out as quite different stories, however, so I'll leave aside the second set--which is going to be more of a usual trilogy, I think--for the moment.) The first two stories are related as follows:

My WIP--let me call it Story 1--ended up having a new character introduced at the very end (properly foreshadowed and led up to, I hope), whose arrival is the conclusion of the story arc. This new character, B, is going to be the focus of Story 2, which follows more or less chronologically on Story 1 but is otherwise quite different.

Does this count as a direct sequel? It is going to have a different feel and pace that Story 1--Story 1 takes place over a (rather eventful) week in the life of the MC, Story 2 is going to take place over about a year and a half, I think.

The two books should be separate in the sense that you could read Story 2 without having read Story 1 and it will still make sense, but if you have read Story 1 you will know something about Character B that is will not be discovered in Story 2 until quite deep in. And if you have read Story 1 you will probably want to know what happens between that MC and Character B.

I suppose my problem is not so much that I am going to change how I'm structuring this 'series' (for I do like interrelated stories, sort of in the manner the Jasper Fforde books were mentioned above--different sets of stories that weave together), but how I should describe it when I am writing query and cover letters. Do I say it is the first in a series? A standalone book with series potential? (Although I have a distinct story arc about characters A and B that I think will cover four books and no more.) That there is going to be an (indirect) sequel? Perhaps it isn't a problem at all and I'll just say "I'm now working on a book set in the same narrative universe" and leave it at that.

Any thoughts?

victoria.goddard said:

Do I say it is the first in a series? A standalone book with series potential? (Although I have a distinct story arc about characters A and B that I think will cover four books and no more.) That there is going to be an (indirect) sequel? Perhaps it isn't a problem at all and I'll just say "I'm now working on a book set in the same narrative universe" and leave it at that.

Any thoughts?

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I think the phrasing you used at the end, re: a book set in the same narrative universe, is a pretty good bet, Victoria. I personally would consider the new book to be a sequel, and any other books that you do in the same narrative universe to be episodes in a series. I have a framework for five books of my own all set in the same narrative universe, but all telling independent stories, and it is a conclusive concept in my own mind that it is a series.

Amiton.

Doctor Shifty said:

As I was reading down this thread it put me in mind of Simon Haynes' Spacejock books as I have recently read 1 and 2. They can stand alone but there is sufficient continuity of the character for me to recommend that they are read in order. Anyway, that is what I was thinking for a bit, and then noticed that the man himself put in bit about reusing the characters.

I should warn you that in some cases he reuses his characters by having them completely dismantled and reassembled, all in the name of character development of course.

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The funny thing about that is that I posted just above your endorsement of my books. Now everyone thinks I'm you (and vice versa)