Successful Sequels

If you read the October Monthly Reading Wrap-Up, you’ll see the series I’m currently re-reading is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. This series is a well-spring of things we could potentially talk about- fantastic writing technique, pacing, character development- but one of the most interesting things about it is that it’s one of the few series where as good as the first book is, Kristin and I have always been in firm agreement that book two, Catching Fire, manages to top it. So, we thought we’d delve into sequels- particularly ones that can achieve this rare phenomenon and what elements might play into pulling that off.

First off, when you’re talking sequels, there’s an extremely wide variety of ways to go about it and still fantastically turn everything in your world on its head. This Shattered World, the second book in the Starbound trilogy by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner, feels almost like a completely stand-alone novel as opposed to a sequel, although it continues to expertly expand the larger plot and features cameos by the characters from the first book. In Jay Kristoff’s LIFEL1K3 series, the situation in the second book (DEV1AT3) has been completely reshaped by hidden truths until suddenly it’s not clear who’s on what side, or if the person you automatically assumed was the main character in B1 actually is who the story’s about. Kind of wild when a book suddenly makes you question the validity of everything you know. So, there are literally a million ways to creatively expand your story, as long as it makes sense with your plot.

*PAUSE*

Hi, Kristin here. I’m interjecting in this lovely blog post because when I heard Kamryn was going to write about sequels, I knew ACOMAF needed to be mentioned. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas is the second book of her A Court of Thorns and Roses series. I’ll keep it spoiler free, but there is a reason why it is so well known (and a part of many banned books lists).

In the first novel, you are promised a love story with a strong female character in an extraordinary world. ACOMAF takes what you thought you got in the first book and completely flips it on its head. The promise of premise is essentially the same, but through the events of the first book and beginning of the second, you see things in a different light. The romance is better, the world is better, the protagonist is so well-written. It’s honestly the best sequel I’ve ever read so far and a great resource for looking how to construct a sequel. (Alright, back to Kamryn!)

*UNPAUSE*

When I think about series though that had second books that topped the first book (in my opinion, of course), two immediately come to mind: The Hunger Games, as I mentioned before, and Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart trilogy. Actually, concerning Cornelia Funke, I think several of her series have follow-up books that might top the first one, so I’m not sure what magical ability she possesses to keep pulling that off, but I love it. Inkheart is probably the easiest example to discuss though since I’d say that’s her most well-known series.

NOTE: THERE WILL BE SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.

Okay, so to briefly catch us up if anyone’s not super familiar or fresh on these stories.

Catching Fire picks up several months after the first Hunger Games book. Having outsmarted the Capitol’s horrific Hunger Games to get herself and the supposed love of her life, Peeta, home, Katniss is facing threats from the president himself, a growing sea of unrest as she seems to have unwittingly triggered rebellion among the districts, and mixed feelings about the boy she’s supposed to be in love with. In literally one of the biggest plot twists in history, Katniss and Peeta get thrown back into the Hunger Games against previous victors from each district and find themselves facing certain death again.

Inkspell, on the other hand, takes place a year after the first book, and for the most part, all seems to be well. All the enemies that were accidentally read out of the book Inkheart have been vanquished or returned to their books, the Folchart family has been reunited, and despite some growing discontent, things have been pretty uneventful. After a scheme by Dustfinger, one of the few characters who was not returned to his book, to get home, the initial problem from Book 1 gets turned on its head as the Silvertongues (people with the ability to read elements out of books into our world, in exchange for something else, of course) find that instead of reading characters out of books, they have to venture into the Inkworld with its many dangers, mystical creatures, and former friends and enemies.

So, as you can see from my vague attempt to describe these very complicated books, both of these books start long enough after the first one for things to have settled, at least a little bit. Both start by having the main problem be a direct after-effect of the resolution of B1- Katniss proving the Capitol can be defied, then threatened by the rebellious fallout; Dustfinger getting left behind then seeking the help of more devious Silvertongues to send him home, ones that might have made alliances with old enemies after them all.

So, after talking it through, Kristin and I determined at least four elements involved in writing a successful sequel:

1. The Promise of Premise is the same.

The Promise of Premise is the thing that draws you into the story.

For The Hunger Games, it’s that fast-paced, full-throttle action and survival plotline of the Games. In B1, Katniss is in the arena for two of the three parts of the book, which interestingly is not actually the case in Catching Fire, as she’s only in the Arena itself more like one part. Still, even before the unthinkable twist of Katniss and Peeta getting thrown back into the Games happens, the entire book promises to be them dealing with the consequences of their defiance, their alleged romance, and the upcoming Games, where presumably they’d have been mentors if the situation had been normal.

For Inkspell, the book immediately opens on Dustfinger’s desperate journey to find a way back into his story to get back to his family, though we catch up to Mo and Meggie and Elinor pretty quickly. With the Inkheart trilogy, the premise involves this family with such an extraordinary and odd ability to read living things out of books, that you’re drawn in to the pure imagination of that. Everyone’s wanted to pull their favorite characters out of a book at some point or another, right? These are people who can read fairies or unicorns or fantastic characters into being, but have to grapple with the fact that such an ability may not be right to use as some characters- like Dustfinger- will never be happy outside of their native worlds.

2. Higher Stakes

For Catching Fire, the higher stakes are pretty obvious. Katniss caused a big, old mess in Book 1. The president is hand-delivering threats to the safety of her family and friends, several districts are uprising directly against the Capitol, celebrity and status guarantee that she has no privacy and perhaps no say in her own future, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, this poor, traumatized girl gets thrown straight back into the very nightmare she just spent the whole last book surviving. The one assurance of being a victor was that she was supposed to be forever safe from the Games. Suzanne Collins then said, “Ha. Nope.”

In Inkspell, you have the opposite problem of the first book, where instead of characters being read out of the mystical world into our world, the characters from our world suddenly find themselves trapped in the Inkworld. This means they have to blend in, figure out where they are in a sprawling fantasy world, deal with all the intricacies we love about fantasy worlds: magic, politics, mythical creatures and lore. Plus, the characters are thrown into the Inkworld at different times, so there’s the added pressure of finding each other across at least two countries.

3. Expansion of Lore/Characters

One of the things I think successful sequels do is always expand the initial lore and add to the larger cast of characters. This is where we take the world that was established during the first book and do a deep dive into it.

In Catching Fire, this is actually really interesting because Book 1 has a very limited, or at the very least, mostly unknown cast. I mean, beyond the characters left behind in District 12 and the Capitol, literally the only character you get to fully know in the Arena is Rue. This, of course, is extremely purposeful as Rue’s death is what stems Katniss’s urge to fight back against the atrocities being committed against the districts. I think Collins’ choice to not give you much information about the others in the Arena beyond a couple of names is very purposeful, being as she literally kills them all off. Now, that is not to say that though they’re described vaguely that there’s not characterization there- when you consider characters like Foxface, Thresh, or Cato- you understand them.

In contrast to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire actually expands the world quite a bit. We get introduced to a much larger cast of characters through the reaped victor pool Katniss and Peeta will be going up against in the Arena, many of whom become main ensemble cast members such as Finnick and Johanna. In this one, we get to know much more about the competition lurking ahead of them, but also get to see Katniss’s preconceptions about these brutal, tragic people be reshaped as she gets to know them. In the same way that we suddenly get a much deeper understanding of the new cast, we also get a broader view of how the world works and more established characters like Haymitch. In the sense that there wasn’t really a lot of time or relevance for his backstory in B1, B2 gives us a much deeper look at District 12’s somewhat gruff mentor and why he is the way he is.

Through this expansion of cast and story, we are given a wider view of the true situation across Panem and the quiet seeds of rebellion that have been growing for years, thus setting up for the drama to hit a fever pitch by B3.

In terms of Inkspell, I always find myself describing it as a sequel that kind of goes off the rails in terms of story, but in the best, most coordinated way possible. Like the story is insane compared to the first book, but at the same time makes sense as the natural next step. In B1, though we were dealing with a large cast of villains that had accidentally been read out of a book also called Inkheart, we knew very little about the world these characters were from. Clearly, it was a fantasy story with rival nations, along with many threats and magical creatures. In Inkspell because the characters from our world have been pulled into the book themselves this time, Funke is able to take the entire book to let them explore this strange place with completely different rules.

As well as being forced to figure out this new fantastical place on their own, there is also a much larger cast of characters and interrelationships to deal with. Who are the royals in charge and how are they connected? What’s the political situation? What magical creatures are to be avoided? Who are you able to trust? I kid you not, so many characters get added between B1 and B2 that there’s literally an index of who’s who at the beginning of the book to help- plus, Funke is probably giving you this too because, remember, some characters within the story are familiar with the Inkworld because they’ve read the fictional book Inkheart, whereas other characters have not. This helps the reader out with figuring out the world without info-dumping every time you come across someone new.

One of the most interesting things Inkspell begins to bring into question is just how far a Silvertongue’s power can go. Funke expertly introduces an antagonist who’s using his powers not only to read characters in and out of books, but also pushing the limits of creation. As long as you can write something that sounds like it belongs within the actual story, what’s to keep you from reading new elements into existence? This not only adds a wider expansion of power that Meggie, the main character, finds herself tempted to use, but also adds a dangerous level of unpredictability to an established world. Yeah, navigating an unknown fantasy world is hard enough when you’re lost, cut off from family and friends, or injured, but what about if we have other Silvertongues adding in new surprises to contend with as well?

So, as you move into this second stretch of writing your story, think about your world and cast building. Who can you add in that might be beneficial to helping your characters move forward? What kinds of things can you expand on that you maybe didn’t have time for in B1 or that didn’t seem to be super relevant at the time? Like Collins does with Haymitch, can you hide insights or foreshadow future elements within a backstory we’ve not seen? Or like Funke does with Inkspell, throw your characters into a completely alien world and then repeatedly change the rules of the game?

4. Expansion of Book 1

I think the biggest thing to consider when trying to write a successful sequel is to take the world you’ve already established and find ways to take it to the next level. The reason Catching Fire and Inkspell are such good sequels is because they offer all the things you loved about the first book while just absolutely ratcheting everything up to the next level: higher stakes, bigger plot, better characters. Needless to say, B2 is usually the “Go through Hell” stage of the series, in my mind. Now, both of the books I’ve used as examples- in fact, all of the books I’ve mentioned in this blog- are the middle books within a trilogy, so we might want to come back to this topic later with specific regard to longer series. But essentially, this middle stage is perhaps where characters face the most upheaval before the more unified plotline for the final book comes along- this is the place where it needs to be clear that once this stage of the story is complete, your characters will never, ever be returning to the way things were. Not like the B1 world and not like the way things were before B2 started and things hit their fever pitch.

As Kristin and I begin finishing up the final work needed on our debut The Visionary and begin looking toward its sequel, we’ve had a lot of conversations about how to make B2 the best it can be. In truth, though we’ve maybe gotten about three quarters of an initial first draft, we’ve both been pleasantly surprised to find that as much as we like B1, B2 just hits differently. We are extremely excited for when we can share this book with everyone as well.

Some things we especially tried to keep in mind as we were writing were:

· Filling in characters you didn’t get to see a lot of in B1. By necessity to maintain the core mystery of the story, there were several characters- main ones, even- that we weren’t allowed to spend very much time on, so B2 gives quite a bit more love to these characters we had to keep secretive.

· Walking through things you might not have realized were happening in B1. Because we have a main character whose powers allow her to see through time, we’re able to backtrack some and perhaps better expand some of the more behind-the-scenes moments the reader wasn’t always allowed to see in B1.

· Expanding characters you see a lot. Though B1 tends to give you a firm understanding of the core characters, you’re in no way done with their character development. Though a prominent focus might be on better establishing characters you’ve not had a chance to get to yet or newer ones, make sure your characters are still growing and changing and getting all that good character development to get them where they need to be by the end of the series. In B2, we really tried to make a point to keep our main character Jade in sticky situations, forcing her to pick which lines to maintain or cross. B2 also gave us a much larger opportunity to expand her best friends, Dylan and Henry- maybe especially Henry- and reshape what roles they play as they grow and how the three interact with each other and others.

Writing a sequel is going to be a tall order no matter who you are…writing a sequel that completely blows the first book out of the water will be harder still. Still, I think the best thing we did when beginning to draft our Book 2 was do a lot of discussing to try to figure out where we wanted to go, what needed to happen specifically, and what sorts of things we wanted our characters to be dealing with. Yeah, we didn’t know everything we wanted to do right off the bat, plus it actually took us quite a bit of time to figure out one specific plotline, but once we started, we ended up having a lot of things flow right into the next. Figure it out and find that groove. Maybe talk it out with a writing partner or a friend if you’re having trouble. Remember, even if your plotline sounds absolutely insane, that might just be what you need to raise the stakes.

Are there any more fantastic sequels you know about? Recommend them and maybe we’ll check them out!

Thanks for reading. Write On.

Kamryn and Kristin