For years I’ve assumed I had a problem writing sequels. Part of the reason to drive my poor publisher insane by redoing a book at the last possible moment, which I’m doing with Darkship Renegades comes from this. I feel Darkship Renegades is inferior to Darkship Thieves, and I’m trying to fix that. I felt the same way about Gentleman Takes a Chance towards Draw One In The Dark, and having read both recently, I think this is true, for various reasons (partly because I was SO depressed while writing GTAC, but that’s something else.)
It’s not a marked difference, mind, I just thought the sequel didn’t quite hit the right note. This might be subjective and predicated partly on the fact that I THOUGHT I wasn’t good at sequels.
Why am I saying “thought” as though this were somehow illusory?
Because I realized, when Iw as discussing this with someone today that in fact I can write sequels just fine for some of my books – to wit the mysteries. I never wrung my hands and went “I don’t know how I can write a sequel to Death of A Musketeer.” It was baked in before I wrote the first book: these are mysteries, each focusing on one of the characters. Same with the Refinishing mysteries.
I think the difference is that my fantasies and science fiction start from the character, while the mysteries are “plot books.” They start from the plot inward. This is not to say that Darkship Thieves is not plot driven – of course it is, also – or that the musketeer mysteries don’t focus on character – of course they do, to an extent.
But it’s where the primary force is, and how the book presents itself to me. Athena came to me, in Darkship Thieves, as this seriously messed up chick, by the end of the book she’s almost functional, and though I planned on a sequel, it’s weird to be in the head of a “calmer” Athena. With the first shifter books, Draw One In The Dark, Tom was SO severely messed up that when I got him settled at the end, it seemed almost nasty to disturb him for a second book.
And yet, you know and I know, if you love a book you need to go back. You want to go back, as a reader.
So… how to reconcile that?
Well, first, I rid myself of the idea I can’t write sequels. I think part of the reason for this feeling is that my first series, the sequel got so severely messed around with by agent that I got convinced I couldn’t do it.
Once rid of that idea, I think I need to give myself permission for writing the sequel different from the first book. Because there’s a built in it should be “the same.”
And then, at least with Darkship Renegade, I need not to be depressed <Grin> – I say this because it’s so much easier to see where I “stuttered” in narration due to depression. I mean, I’m dragging around the creeping crud, and I’m still able to see this much clearer now I’m not depressed.
AND when possible (if the Earth Revolution series comes to pass, for instance, but also for other books/series) I need to set up the sequels so they have different characters – at least when the book is intensely character driven. This is often used in Romance, for that reason.
For instance, in Noah’s Boy the Shifter series starts pivoting slowly away from Kyrie and Tom. Oh, they’re still there. The George is still the center of the action. And the next two books, Bowl of Red and POSSIBLY Balloon Juice center around their relationship as much as the other plot, but the other plot starts pivoting away from them and towards the other people: Rafiel first, then Conan and THEIR relationships, so that Kyrie and Tom become only one of the legs of the series, as it were, still there, still important but not the fulcrum.
Again, this is done a lot in Romance, because of the “compelling character problem” that drives the plot, and it will – I think – work well for other series too.
What do you think? Do the readers always want the same plot/book with different names? Or do you want characters who grow in different ways? And how would those of you who are not primarily romance readers feel about the “moving among a group of characters” thing?
According To Hoyt 
In some “series”, it’s the world/setting that’s one of the “characters” so each new book in the series shows us more about the world/setting by focusing on different people in that world/setting.
So I see no problem with focusing on different people in the “George” world/setting.
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Well I for one am not big on series. The reason is that the story development usually goes something like this. Apprentice loses master but manages to survive and triumph with the help of friends, apprentice (actually journeyman since first book) must defeat a master for good. Apprentice (master since last entry) must defeat cabal. master must defeat invented danger serious enough blah blah.
That being said a series set in the same universe with different characters is great. If you happen to pass the hero from the previous book so what. He was only truly important in his own story. You don’t get someone riduculously powerful this way.
I was not aware that romances did series that way. There is finally something good to be said about a genre i normally despise.
While there is nothing wrong with recycling plots per se, when the same author recycles the same plot over and over the books become too predictable. There are exceptions, Louis L’amour was said to have 7 plots that he redid nearly 200 times. For a L’amour or a Heinlein that is possible, for those more mortal… not so much. Mickey Spillane wrote a lot of books in the mid twentieth and was very popular, but it was for his, at the time, racieness not his plotting which was terrible.
Sanford
P.S. Sorry I was so long winded
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It might help (it might not) to think of the ENTIRE cycle in a given ‘verse — whether it focuses on the same lead(s) or not — as a single work, in which you are working on different books at different times. And, it might also help to figure out, if you can, how to work at the books out of “order”.
At least (if I may be so bold), that’s what I’m doing with the Baby Troll Chronicles (as I’m coming to think of them). There are at least four sub-cycles — The Dolly Apocrypha, the Dolly Canon, Gabrielle Godslayer, and The Continuing Adventures of Gabrielle Dolly. Each sub-cycle comprises between 3 and 10 stories of various lengths. All of which can change at whim or necessity.
M
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I think that’s an issue related to definitions of terms: the distinction between “series” and “sequel”.
Anybody whose business is selling to the public would pretty well have to long for some equivalent of industrial production, in which widget n is pretty damned similar (and perhaps identical) to widget n+1. Customers who liked widget n will be predisposed to like widget n+1, which is the same except for this one indispensable new feature.
In writing terms, that’s a series — the newest Vorkosigan, another “Darkship” with the same characters. Publishers have to be excited by the idea — the market is known to be there, and “same but different” is a safe thing to introduce. But if what you write is character-oriented, that’s pretty much impossible. The characters at the end of the book aren’t the same ones who began it. “Same except for minor improvements” can’t happen.
There’s a spectrum, of course, with Tom Swift and your typical TV situation comedy on one end and “one long story broken into volumes” on the other. A true sequel is somewhere in the middle. It’s distinctly related to its predecessor, but the characters are different (although they may have the same names) and time has moved on even in the worldbuilding. Toni wanted the next book in the Darkship series. You had a problem with that because Athena and the others aren’t the same people any more, and got frustrated by trying to fit the Procrustean bed.
Do the sequel — and the prequel(s) — different people with the same names, a different world with the same places in it. It’ll be good. Trust me on that. And if Toni’s frustrated because it isn’t the next volume in a Game of Thrones, she’ll get over it. Or not; it isn’t your problem.
Regards,
Ric
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Ah, but the newest Vorkosigan is going to be a Vorpatril! (Ivan gets to be the star of his own book, WHEEEE!) Ahem. I think that while people will always have their own favorite characters, at least some branching out — e.g., a Vorkosiverse/Nexus book without Miles starring in it — is likely to be well-recieved by many readers. (And, arguably, Miles changes all the time; he went from a more Baen-standard Merc Leader to… an Imperial Auditor and family man! And overall, that series still has fans…)
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It’s not Toni’s complaint. It’s my own struggle. You see, I still wrote this with “editor in my head” trying to guess what publisher wanted. So… I’m fixing it…
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Ah, you don’t want it to multiply and replenish the earth! Totally understandable. Totally.
Just make sure that the stories. do.
Wayne
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Tried to post an answer from my iPad. Didn’t work, so I’m on a real computer now, one that runs Unix.
Sarah, I think you are asking the wrong question. Consider:
Conan, the original, i.e. only the stories written by Robert E. Howard himself, which cover forty years of his life history.
Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs, in which again over forty years of the title character’s life history is covered.
The first two books of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Chalion series, the first of which Ista is psychologically (and theologically) crippled. In the second is at least partially healed, and becomes and extremely sexy main character. Or at least an extremely sexy main character from the point of view of a fifty year old man.
I’m not sure what the right question is. I’ve tried to ask my writing coaches, and the answers I got back from them told me that they didn’t understand what I asked. Both are reasonably well known, and yes, both have been published by Baen. Both have written multi-part books.
Maybe there isn’t an answer. Isn’t that a joyful thought!
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I am currently writing a “BIG” series, whole worlds, epic story arc, and I decided that I wouldn’t have just the one hero, like in HP. I would have several and each book would then move to the hero’s journey for that book.
Nephys, the main character of the second book, passes off the story to Lucy in the second, who passes it off to the next one. I have five major characters and five books. So far it’s working for me.
Imagine if the second book in HP was about Ron, and the third book was about Hermione’s journey, and the fourth was about Ginny’s. This isn’t new, this is pretty much what Madeleine l’Engle did with her Wrinkle in Time series.
Oh, and I tried to get rid of the skull. Hope it works. If not, I don’t know why the blog holds on to my old FB icons.
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I don’t like main characters that repeat from book to book. I want a story to end. As a result, I end up avoiding a lot of books because I know that they are the start of a series and I don’t want to read 13 stories about him/her. I don’t have a problem in the reapear as side characters, but not main characters.
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I think Ric makes a lot of sense.
Wayne bringing up Conan and Ric mentioned the Vorkosigan saga reminded me of something: I read different books for different experiences.
Sometimes I want to read about an iconic character, one that is complete and whole and doesn’t change. I want to read about how Conan or Druss deal with a situation. I don’t want to read about Conan settling down and raising a family.
Other times I do want to read about a character, see them change and see their world change. Again, Bujold’s Vorkosigan series comes to mind. I didn’t like all the change and some of the story decisions she made disappointed me, but I enjoyed the journey.
Likewise, moving through a cast of characters, giving each character a book, their moment in the limelight, can work well.
Some readers wil want to read more about Athena. Some readers will want to see more of your world and be ok with someone else guiding them through it.
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But Conan did settle down and raise a family. After be became a king.
Wayne
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Not really. The last we see of the Howard Conan (the only one IMO), he’s planning to get married. While we can assume that he plans on having children, we never see him raising them. [Grin]
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Did I get confused again? Been a long time since I read Conan. Something like thirty years.
Wayne
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Yep, but it’s a minor mistake. There’s an industry (and existed for several years) of writing Conan novels. I’m sure at least one of the other writers had Conan and Son going out for adventures. [Wink]
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Yeah, Carter and Lin added a lot to the narrative that IMO was unnecessary. Reading Howard it’s rather disjointed and intentionally so. The whole idea was that Conan, near the end of his life, would put a few beers back and start spinning yarns about the good ol’ days. That means the narrative is sometimes unreliable and there is only a trace of a larger story arc, and even then it’s intentionally out of chronological order. It’s meant to be episodic. Howard’s technique in this is brilliant and the attempt to make it a coherent arc in order causes problems. It also meant Howard could shrug at inconsistencies and continuity problems because what person wouldn’t spinning a bunch of tales?
Howard really was a genius.
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Howard was the subject of a 1996 movie, The Whole Wide World, based on the memoir of a Texas school teacher who befriended him. Interesting portrayal by Vincent D’Onofrio with Renée Zellweger as the school marm. Easily worth watching once.
Yeah, it isn’t really germane, but how often does I get to recommend such a flick?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118163/
Plot Summary for
The Whole Wide World (1996) More at IMDbPro »
In Texas in the 1930s, young schoolteacher Novalyne Price meets a handsome, eccentric, interesting young man named Robert Howard. He’s a successful writer – of the pulp stories of ‘Conan the Barbarian’; she’s an aspiring one. A friendship develops into a sort of courtship. Based on a memoir by Novalyne Price.
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People keep telling me about that movie. Never have seen it at Blockbusters, and since they Blockbusted themselves, I guess I never well. Maybe I should see if it is in ITunes, or if Amazon has a hard copy, and then see if I can come up with an excuse to make a $100.00 order of research materials…
Wayne
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There is one question, 4 words, that form the essential basis for all storytelling: “And then what happens?” The answer is NOT “They lived happily ever after.”
A sequel answers that question. A character grows, resolves a fundamental problem — which generates a new problem. Back when I posted in the Bar at Baen I occasionally employed as a sig line the phrase: The solution to your current problem is the basis of your next problem. Athena’s growth changes her relation to the world around her — she may be “healed” but she still lives in two worlds, neither of which is entirely congenial to her. How do the events of DT affect the world in which she now exists? Or, skip a generation: what will ‘Thena’s & Kit’s offspring be like? How will they be educated, how will they establish themselves in the world in which they are raised? Do you have nothing worth saying about schools & school systems? What’s the career path in Kit’s society — apprenticeship? college diploma? How does a young entrepreneur get venture capital in that culture?
In Citizen of the Galaxy Heinlein gave us what a contemporary writer would spend at least three novels telling and could easily stretch over five or six. Pratchett’s Discworld focuses upon multiple characters and locales, telling many stories in a common setting, whether centered on Nanny Og & Granny Weatherwax, Sam Vines or Rhincewind,
My recommendation: you are now recognizing what it means to be a self-employed writer, a literary entrepreneur. What sorts of sequels/series have you enjoyed? What single novels have inspired you to desperately wish a sequel (cough*Austen*cough)?
Similarly, what sequels/series have you found … excessive? too much of what had been a good thing? Apply your analytic skills to this and write the kinds of novels you would wish to read while avoiding the ones that left you feeling exploited.
As you have been discovering, when you feel free to follow your muse your writing reflects that freedom. You are now at liberty to write to please yourself; do that and the evidence is that the audience will follow.
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Oops – insert [END ITAL] after “you” and before “enjoyed” in para 4 above. There ought be no further italics in that post. Dang.
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Bad (cough*Austen*cough) you’ve got there [GRIN].
Wayne
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Well, part of the problem with Darkship Renegade is that the WORLD is having problems, so it’s less… internal than DST. Though it’s still there… The main problem is that I wrote it while VERY depressed, and when I’m depressed I explain a lot. I’m weeding that out.
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I like to read series where the hero stays essentially the same, but it’s always better if he has to confront different types challenges – it can get boring fast if every new villain and every new problem is a carbon copy of the first one, much nicer if there is some variety. But I think that type of stories require a really iconic main character.
I also like series where the hero does develop, but more slowly, not so that he has one huge personal problem (or problems) in the first book which does get solved by the end of it and he is then healed as a person, but rather stories which chronicle the hero’s slow growth. I do think the latter type do work better if the hero is not a complete wreck in the beginning, though, but rather a fairly normal individual with several smaller issues. And longer life histories can be good too – a twenty year old going adventuring will deal with things differently than a thirty five year old who is married and has kids, and again if we have the same character when she is sixty and she and her husband are both a bit less capable physically it will, again, be a different kind of story.
I also like series with a group of heroes, where each book concentrates on one of them, only preferably when the plots involve team work and all the characters get a lot of exposure even if only one of them is the main POV in each novel. When I fall in love with two characters out of five and each novel is a solo adventure for each individual character while the others only appear far in the periphery in supporting roles, well, guess what, then I’ll only buy those novels where my favorites are the stars. Even changing heroes completely can, however, work for me if I love the world building enough, which is the case with, for example, ERB’s Mars series.
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I really like the different main characters in the same world type of series. In my opinion it is much more difficult for an author to write a series with the same main character without either a)the main character becoming a superhero, or b)the stories in the series coming out as cookie cutter replica’s of each other with just names and dates changed.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, some of my favorite series are written around one main character, and don’t have the above problems, but I think it is more difficult to do. And sometimes these aren’t problems, if the main character is Superman, obviously him being a superhero wouldn’t be considered a problem. Or if it is a mystery series, with the main character being a detective, the cookie cutter characteristics aren’t nearly as bad. But overall, I prefer series that switch up main characters every couple books. Unless the series reads like a huge goatgagger of a book, that has been broken up into several publications due to size. Then we have whole different set of pitfalls for the author to aviod :) I realize from a marketing perspective of selling the next book in a series that cliffhangers are good, but I despise them. And I have this wonderful habit of picking up books as I come across them, unless it is an author and series I am already following, so I like books to stand alone, instead of picking up the second or third book in a series, and still not having any idea what is going on, or who half the characters are, halfway through the book.
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My 2 cents. I really don’t like series to jump around characters a lot. Also if it changes from book to book I’m never going to read book 2. I would much rather get 4 books and the end(or the end for now). Then the author can write about the characters I didn’t really care about and the people that did can read it. Some people read for the setting and world development, but I don’t. I’m reading the story for the characters and not the setting. While the setting is important it is only important like a side character. It is only as important in how it helps the characters I’m enjoying moved forward in their journey.
It also needlessly stretches things out in my opinion, because even if their stories intertwine it only do so to an extent. When all is said and done I’ve read half a book. Rather than getting two or three books with the characters I enjoy and finishing to the end of their story I’m expected too sit through twice the number. One of the reasons I stopped reading Jordan was because of his incessant need to jump around from character to character often. It isn’t the fact that the characters are not interesting but rather that not enough time is spent with any one character to really get into their story.
It is sort of like asking “Aha! Now aren’t you riveted? Addicted? Don’t you just have to keep reading to find out what next?” Any my answer? *Yawn* “Nope next author’s book. Let me know when there is enough of any one story to bother reading it.” Which also leads to my next point. Why should I want to pay 6.99 (or what ever the price) for half a book? For me that is generally what I’m getting so I’ve stopped doing it. And if I actually happen to like a side character? Then the same still applies. I want to be immersed in their story and not take away from it.
The other problem I have is that all too often the writer seems to loose touch with their characters then. When you create and tell the reader the characters motivation then the reader expects the character to make decisions based on those motivations. I’ve ready too many books(even from authors I though knew better) where the characters have done things at total cross purposes to what drove them in the first place. What made that character what is was is lost either by forgetting all of what brought them to that point, todays emotional baggage, and/or by what is now felt as a story necessity. You say you were depressed when you wrote GTaC and yet for me its impact was only nominal on the story. The characters stayed true to who they were(so-to-speak) and that made the story worth while.
While Draw in some ways may have been a better book GTaC was more enjoyable because it move more away from the internal conflict. Tom and Kyrie might have their internal issues it has them both at a healthy point to continue to deal with them. Which is needed if they are going to have to continue to deal with the more external problems of shifter society as it seems to grow around them. The one concern I’ve had for Noah’s Boy was that you might decide to regress that progress with what happened at the end of GTaC.
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