I've been told that if you have a book that's intended to be part of a series, make it stand alone and give it to the agent that way, then tell them it's supposed to be a series.
I got a full request and now that I'm frantically going through my manuscript to make sure it's prim and proper, I've run into this problem.
While my book can TECHNICALLY work as a stand-alone, my love of Chekhov's guns make me write things into the first book that are going to be important in later sequels. I tried to make most of the things subtle, though.
For instance, you only find out who a shady character was actually working for in the very end, and even though you learn the name of it and what their main goal was, you don't actually learn what that character was doing with them. This is intended to be revealed later.
Another character is equally secretive, but this is constantly made fun of as "just the way he is", so none of the book characters give it a thought. It is intended for him to get important in a later book and have his backstory revealed in a later book.
Another character is said to be a "direct cousin of the king" which is fine and dandy...until the palace where the entire royal family lives is nuked. The character suddenly gets worried about "his future". It's not explicitly stated that he's worried because he's going to have to be the king now (happens in a later book), but people can figure easily enough if they think on it.
There is also the fact that the main character seems a bit genre savvy in the way adventure stories go, and its implied in a future book that he found out through magic that he wasn't supposed to use that he is a fictional character in a book, but he doesn't really care because now this gives him the advantage of knowing that since he's the hero, he's not going to die until the final battle at the very least.
Those are the all the big things that aren't explicitly stated, but I'm wondering if keeping them a bit vague as they are in the manuscript is all right. I did say in my query that the book had 'series potential', after all.
(I just do want to do anything that would make my manuscript look bad in the eyes of the agent.)
I got a full request and now that I'm frantically going through my manuscript to make sure it's prim and proper, I've run into this problem.
While my book can TECHNICALLY work as a stand-alone, my love of Chekhov's guns make me write things into the first book that are going to be important in later sequels. I tried to make most of the things subtle, though.
For instance, you only find out who a shady character was actually working for in the very end, and even though you learn the name of it and what their main goal was, you don't actually learn what that character was doing with them. This is intended to be revealed later.
Another character is equally secretive, but this is constantly made fun of as "just the way he is", so none of the book characters give it a thought. It is intended for him to get important in a later book and have his backstory revealed in a later book.
Another character is said to be a "direct cousin of the king" which is fine and dandy...until the palace where the entire royal family lives is nuked. The character suddenly gets worried about "his future". It's not explicitly stated that he's worried because he's going to have to be the king now (happens in a later book), but people can figure easily enough if they think on it.
There is also the fact that the main character seems a bit genre savvy in the way adventure stories go, and its implied in a future book that he found out through magic that he wasn't supposed to use that he is a fictional character in a book, but he doesn't really care because now this gives him the advantage of knowing that since he's the hero, he's not going to die until the final battle at the very least.
Those are the all the big things that aren't explicitly stated, but I'm wondering if keeping them a bit vague as they are in the manuscript is all right. I did say in my query that the book had 'series potential', after all.
(I just do want to do anything that would make my manuscript look bad in the eyes of the agent.)
