Story Magic

93 - Lessons from writing sequels

• Golden May

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Today, Emily & Rachel talk about what we've learned from writing sequels.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • how much of a sequel needs to be planned before writing
  • laying the groundwork for future books
  • weaving together plot threads and subplots
  • making sure character goals and agency are still present

Ready to make readers so in love with your characters they can’t stop biting their nails in anticipation?  Grab The Magic of Character Arcs free email course: https://www.goldenmayediting.com/arcsmagic

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Emily: https://www.instagram.com/ebgoldenbooks/

Rachel:

Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.

Emily:

I'm Emily.

Rachel:

And I'm Rachel.

Emily:

And today we are going to talk about writing sequels because we both just wrap fun. Yes. And they are their own little beast. And I know that they have a unique. Yes. A set of challenges. So I thought I've gotten questions about this from folks before, honestly, like, mostly before I ever wrote one, you know, because it takes a while to get to the point where you're writing sequels. But I know that a lot of people have questions about, like, you know, how much do you should, you know about your second book before you finish this first one, before you sell the first one, before, you know, and then, like, how do you and I. There's no obviously right answer for how much to know, but I do think that there are, you know, tips and tricks, and I, for me, made the mistake of not knowing.

Rachel:

Do you. I don't know if you. When you start, sold it and if you can't talk about this, we'll edit. We'll edit it out. When you sold it, you sold it. If I remember, as with series potential or did you sell it? I sell this exact duology.

Emily:

I sold two bucks.

Rachel:

Okay. So I guess I should say when you query, when you wrote it and when you queried, did you query it as a book with series potential or did you query it as a duology?

Emily:

I know you're called as a duology, so there's a very specific reason for that, which if you read our la. Or listen, read, listen to our last podcast, you will make you laugh. My first. So my duology is a romance. The first book is not.

Rachel:

Right.

Emily:

So when I. I had to market it as a duology because I was like, it's a romance.

Rachel:

There will be a happy ending. Yeah, yeah.

Emily:

There just isn't right now. Which is common, I think, for a lot of romance. Romance duology is that, like, the first one is, like, everything blows up in the second one. They, like, come back together. It's just like a longer version of a romance arc. So I knew that I wanted, you know, to have some version of a happy ending, and I needed people to know that that's where this book was going, and that was at the heart of this book. And so, so my agent then, you know, encouraged me to bring out the romance even more, and then so did my editor, and, you know, we made it more and more and more and more, more and more romantic. And. And so I. Yeah, so When I. When I sold it, it sold as a two book deal. So I got paid, you know, upfront for those, for that book to be written. But history of behind the Crimson Curtain is that I originally thought it was going to be one book.

Rachel:

That's what I thought that. Yeah.

Emily:

Yes. Like, before I even finished the first draft, I actually, while I was writing the first draft, I reached to the midpoint and I was like, oh, this is a book. So. And then I split it into two timelines and I had to weave the timelines together. And in that process, I unintentionally took a lot of the ideas that I had for the second half of what was gonna be the first book or like the solo book, and put it into the first one. So when I went to go write the second one, I was like, all my good ideas are gone.

Rachel:

We're out. The faucet is dry. Yeah.

Emily:

And I did. I had written a one page synopsis, so I did. I wasn't starting with nothing, but it was like not the strongest of synopses. It was like, I'm just gonna, like, make it, you know, sound interesting and fun. But like, I. I think my biggest. I don't want to call it a mistake. Right. But like my biggest challenge maybe is I had no idea what the heck my characters wanted.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Emily:

Like, book one ended. Everything blew up. Sorry for everybody who read it. I promise.

Rachel:

Been out a while.

Emily:

There's. People are so mad. I'll put it back together. You say you're the queen of cliffhangers.

Rachel:

Everybody knows. I feel like sometimes in romantasy or in, like in my niche of romance, why choose Mafia? Nobody dies. Everybody's getting together and we're all happy about it. Like, I do feel like even with the cliffhangers, it's not really that cliffy. We're gonna be fine.

Emily:

Everybody knows mine's a little more genre bendy.

Rachel:

Right.

Emily:

People were a little bit like, oh, what?

Rachel:

That's what I'm saying. I do feel like in yours, go.

Emily:

Reflect more of my. My reviews.

Rachel:

Like, what the hell was that? Yeah, I feel like that's. There's more of a question of, like, are these people ever going to be happy? And like in mine, we all know they're going to be happy.

Emily:

No, that's so fair. So if you haven't listened to our podcast on what not to do about genres, go do that. It's last week. No, but sequels. Yeah. So I. So, yeah, I sold behind the Curtain of the Curtain, had to revise it and then I had to go write a sequel. And I really had no idea what the heck my characters wanted. I was like, I don't even know what their plans are. Um, and that was the worst. That was honestly, I think the hardest part of it was I just didn't know where to start. Like, I didn't. I didn't know where to pick up, because I didn't. There were a lot of different options for how they might have reacted to what happened at the end of book one. And I felt all this pressure to pick the right one. Cause I was on this tight timeline. Right. And I honestly didn't even really figure out exactly how to nail, like, their motivations at the beginning of the book until, you know, probably draft three. But I am sworn off series for a minute. My next book's gonna be a standalone because it was so hard.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Emily:

So anyway, what was your experience, like, going from your first to second book?

Rachel:

A little different. But before we get to that, when you. I just feel like this is. There's a lot of lessons, or not necessarily lessons, but, like, this is so interesting to me. And especially because you mentioned you are getting. We always get questions. Should you have your series plotted well in advance? And I am always going to say, who cares? Nope. Because I'm never going to do it. I'm just not going to do it. So. No. But what I do think is really interesting is that when you wrote behind the Crimson Curtain, you wrote it as a standalone, you. You sold it as a duology, and then had to write the second book. So I feel like there's. I feel like there's so much flexibility there that I would have, as an outsider looking into TRAD would have been like, oh, there's no way you could sell a duology without. And you said you had a synopsis, but, like, without having everything perfect. And, like, clearly that's not true. That's. My point is like.

Emily:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rachel:

My point is that you still were able to go through this whole process without having all the answers.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And TRAD was perfectly fine with that. I feel like that's. That's a disconnect for some people where they. They expect so much of the TRAD process, and I don't think it always has. There's no. Every writer's experience is different. That's the point that I'm getting at.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. Because I'm sure, you know, other. I'm thinking of a couple other writers who have done similar things, you know, and the writers.

Emily:

I've seen writers sell like their, their first book proposal. Right on proposal with like a paragraph.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Emily:

Pitch for the rest of them. Like, here's what I think, where it's gonna go.

Rachel:

Maybe.

Emily:

Yeah. And I, I think that's great and fine. And I think it's important that people understand that that is sometimes how it works. I also think it, that comes with tricks. It's a little, little bit tricky because then you gotta write those books. And I think there's kind of two lessons. One which is if you can be a little bit prepared, that's not a bad thing. Right. I wish that I had been. I think there was a part of. Truly, if I'm being totally honest, I think there was a part of me that didn't think it would sell and that was afraid to fall in love with another book idea if it wasn't going to go anywhere. And so I think. And that's not a healthy or good positive reason to not do that. Right. That's me fearing, putting faith in myself.

Rachel:

And that's a good point. Sorry, go ahead.

Emily:

So my point is like, by the time I had an agent and that I still wasn't entirely sure it was going to sell. Right. And so I like held off and held off until it was kind of too, like not too late, but like now I had to think of an idea.

Rachel:

Like I was there, you were there.

Emily:

I didn't have anything to work with. Yeah.

Rachel:

Well, I do feel like there is the advice that if you are going to query a book and you think it could have a sequel, I have heard plenty of people say, don't work on that sequel. Work on a new project so that you have another thing to sell if this one book doesn't work out. So I mean, I feel like that's what a lot of people would have told you to do, you know, because if you're not going to sell this one book, this is in massive air quotes. And I don't agree with this. It would be a massive waste of time to work on the sequel if you're not going to sell the first one. So there is advice out there. Don't work on the sequel until you have the deal. Work on a separate project.

Emily:

I think in retrospect for myself, I think I could have had a stronger and like more confident experience if I had written that, that one page synopsis for the second book ahead of time. I actually, now it's coming back to me. See, this is so hazy because I was postpartum. So if you haven't been listening to the Podcast I sold behind the Crimson Curtain the week my daughter was born. Right. And I was asked for a synopsis of the second book as part of my acquisitions process. So it wasn't even something that went out to editors with my packet that like, my agent didn't ask for it, she didn't send it out. Right. It was just like billed as a two buck deal. And it was. I wasn't asked for synopsis until an editor was interested and then I was postpartum. Like, I have to come up with a one pager for this book and I wish that I'd had it already. That, yeah, you know, and you know, I can't change the past, but I do think if I was to write a series in the future for myself, I would want to have, I would have a stronger experience both of knowing where the first book kind of sat. If I had just a one pager, obviously it's going to change, right? But just a one pager kind of idea of where the, where the story was going. I think that would have helped me a lot.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Emily:

Yeah. But you don't work that way, so tell me about it.

Rachel:

No. Oh, well, okay. So I think mine. I started this book, I started my first book planning four books, so I knew there were going to be at least four. And I made that decision early because I had read other books in my genre and really enjoyed the. I'm thinking of a specific comp title of mine, which I really love. And I was like, I could write four books like that and this, this series does incredible. I could comp to this. I will think about writing 4. How am I going to fill it? That was really my first question. And we've, you know, all of the work we've done on planning a series, we did that before I started writing this. These books. So I already kind of knew what to set up for myself, what to expect of myself, what to look for. Where my process differs is like, I know the big problems. This is not a huge spoiler. But in the first, in my first book, my main character, during her all is lost, uncovers that her father is basically the root of three big problems. And that's the plot of my three remaining books. So we have the first book, which is like uncovering the mystery. And then like the second book is about the first problem that her dad caused. And the third book is about this, the second problem that her dad calls. And the fourth book will be about fixing the rest, all of it. So, like, I knew what each book was going to Be about as far as the problem, I had no idea.

Emily:

Sounds nice, though.

Rachel:

I was like.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

So I knew what it's about because I had set that up for myself in the first book in a very clear way. When I wrote that, I was like, these are going to be the plots of the other book. But as far as, like, what. How we go about solving those problems. No, nothing. Blank, blank, blank slate.

Emily:

What about goals? When you reach the end of the first book, did you, like, know what your characters were going to, like, want be after as soon as the second one started?

Rachel:

Goals. Big picture. External goals. Yes. Internal goals and internal obstacles. No. So, like, for example, in the first book, Leona. I'll just use it as details. Leona discovers that there's a problem with. My books are Mafia romance, which deal with the criminal underworld. So I'm talking about criminal things right now. So the first. The first thing she uncovers is that there's all sorts of problems with, like, the drug trade, like selling of cocaine and heroin, whatever. So the second book, the external goal is, like, fight the people who are selling the bad drugs. Right. Not to, like, eradicate the drugs, but so she could sell drugs. I want to be clear. She is a criminal. So, like, we knew that the enemy are the South Americans. Like, that's the enemy, because we knew that they were the problem in the first book. So external goals, she's. She's still trying to do that. She's trying to fix the problems that her dad created. But internally, I didn't know what her internal goal was, and I didn't know what her internal obstacle was because she had a growth arc in the first book. She overcame her need for revenge in the first book. So in the second book, I really had to discover, well, if she doesn't want revenge, what's her internal struggle about? And it ended up being about proving herself that she deserves to be a criminal mastermind, that she deserves to be the queen. She deserves to be taken seriously and that.

Emily:

At what point did you figure that out?

Rachel:

After the first draft?

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. I mean, I wrote because I feel.

Emily:

Like it was there parts.

Rachel:

I mean, parts of it. I was like, I. You know, like, we know we're looking for flaws, so I'm exploring what are the little flaws, you know, Like, I know that she needed them, but I don't think it fully. It didn't take full. You know, Only Fools Russian is about making mistakes.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And, like, I didn't realize it was about everybody's mistakes until after I had written the first Draft, but, like, her need to prove herself was there. Her. Her feeling like she's inadequate is there because coming off the first book, I mean, she is a 21 year old princess.

Emily:

What.

Rachel:

How does she think she deserves to be in this arena? You know? So, like, that. That wasn't a logical jump to be, like, what I was. I asked myself a lot of questions, like, what would I feel like if I was her age, if I had no experience doing this, and then all of a sudden I was trying to be in charge.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Why would I think that I was capable of that?

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And what would. What would prove to me that I was? Or, you know, what inherent qualities would I already have that would make me capable of it to begin with? And, like, that's really what her growths are. Was. There was no need for her to prove herself to begin with because she's badass. So, like, period, we're done.

Emily:

So.

Rachel:

Yeah, I feel like I. I took a lot of those questions on the fly.

Emily:

Mm. That makes sense.

Rachel:

Yeah. So then the plot of book three, like, there's a cliffy at the end of book two, and then now we're in book three, and I'm still drafting it, so I'm like, I don't quite know exactly. I have an idea of what her internal obstacle is.

Emily:

Mm.

Rachel:

But it's not there yet, you know?

Emily:

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

Rachel:

It takes drafts, as you know, to get to them. It takes a while to figure him out. Yeah. But I did know. I knew what I was aiming for. For, like, there's a problem she has to face, so her goals are gonna be about that.

Emily:

And, like, having that external clarity, I think, is. It's something, you know, if you have clarity in one or the other ends. I feel like that was my challenge is like, at the end of book, at the end of behind the Crimson Curtain, I blew everything up. And, like, the villain takes power, right? And I was like, okay, I have this con artist main character who's pretty selfish. It's like, okay, is she gonna just go, like, build her own life? Is she gonna try to take this guy down? Does she want revenge? Is she like, what is. Does she want freedom? Like, what? I didn't even know where I wanted to take her, which gave me, like, so many different options for what the external plot could be. And I finally just sort of landed on an external plot that didn't quite feel right because I was like, I don't know if she would make the jump to, you know, assassination so fast, because the plot becomes an assassination plot. But it was sexy. And I was like, well, you know, it's a sexy plot. So she ended up having, like, in my first drafts, like, all these different reasons. Um, and it was kind of muddled, I feel like. And it wasn't until, you know, the second and third drafts that I really feel like I figured out exactly why she was after that goal. Um, it takes. It takes place. It takes time and iteration.

Rachel:

Yeah. But it does sound like if you were to do it again, you would have given your. Not giving yourself more options, but you would have had an idea in mind of, like, this is the arc she might need to have, or this is the. The plot that she's gonna go on.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Even if you don't didn't have all the, you know, a fully plot edit book, you still would have ended in a different state.

Emily:

Yeah, I feel like if I was to. To do another series, which I'm. I'm sure I will, I would love to have an idea of just, like, what is the internal goal? Like, what does the arc just, like, really generally look like? And then, like, what's the big plot problem? Because I think that was where, like, I'm not a. I'm not a plot forward kind of person. And so there were just, like, so many things that could have happened. You was in chaos, and it just was overwhelming to me. Like, I didn't have something to, like, latch on to to drive the story forward. And so, yeah, I would probably sketch, you know, even just a one pager of, like, this is just generally where I think I'm gonna go with this, just so I have that direction, because it was. I mean, it was really a black hole for me. So then once you started, right, like, once you start a new story, like, how do you pull through, like, threads and stuff? Like, are you pulling through all the same threads? Are you dropping some threads, pulling others forward? Like, how are. Do you give any conscious thought to that at all? Or are you just kind of like.

Rachel:

No, I give a lot of conscious thought to it. It's a lot to hold at one time, so it's not something that I am planning to have. All those threads make sense, but, like, a lot of the ideas that I have, when I have them, I'm thinking about how is this gonna continue showing up. But I also reread books one and two a lot. I mean, I'm, like, skimming books one and two kind of frequently now that I'm drafting to be like, what did I say here? You know, what did I bring up. I know I had an idea for a thread. How can I not forget it? And I also know that since we're dealing with a problem that's going to continue to get bigger until the group has to fix it in the fourth book, I have to start laying that groundwork, and I did in book two. So I was conscious of that being like, well, book four has to solve this problem, so I have to make it a problem already. So I, like, started to pepper in some. Some of those things. And now in book three, I'm having to build these plot threads that will not be relevant until the fourth book. But otherwise, if I don't do that, the plot's gonna come out of nowhere. You know, you're gonna be like, oh, why is this happening? It's just a random thing. It's like, well, no, it's not a random thing. I kind of decided on that a long time ago. But again, I. I don't have any idea how those plot threads are gonna come back up. Just that they're. I'm chewing on em in my head and, like, they're gonna be important again.

Emily:

Yeah, that makes sense.

Rachel:

Yeah. Um, and I do feel like I thought a. I also have, like six. Six characters. And I think the biggest challenge is giving them all actionable pursuit of goals that have consequences that, like, actually result in things. Because in the first book, they weren't really all together until the end.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And so they. They kind of could have their own separate goals that drove them towards each other. But, like, let's say that in the second and third book, you know, I have two characters, main characters with conflicting goals. Something. Something's gotta come of that, you know, like, we've gotta resolve it somehow or there's gotta be consequences. So I think, like, the challenge that comes from there is making sure that each person feels like they have a degree of agency and that they're affecting the greater plot, even if it's not large. Because, like, in the second book, some of my guys took a little of a backseat on purpose. And then in the third book, the guys that were in the backseat are now going to the front seat. But then that means some of the guys are moving to the background because now we have to experience their arcs of change. So that's tricky. I don't feel like that's a fun part of this.

Emily:

That's. That was, I think, the hardest because, like, mine, my. I had subplots, but I don't have like, as many, you know, moving pieces in terms of like, like the Mafia underground, moving parts. And I also don't have six POVs and like all those, you know, relationships to. To manage. But I do have a ton of characters in behind the Crimson Curtain Fear and is part of a theater troupe that has a lot of people in it, right? And then like, it's a very political book, so there's a lot of like political figures and then there's a backstory timeline, so there's a lot of characters there. And I had to figure out like, who is going to be because I didn't want it to feel one note, right? So I had to bring some people forward, push some people back, and I wanted to have some fresh new faces to make the book interesting. And so that was a lot of the work that I did to try to figure out kind of what subplots I wanted to include, was figuring out, okay, which characters am I gonna like, you know, get rid of in a sense, like send away or like, put off page. Because, like, I can't bring every. I can't develop everybody as much as I wanted to. I couldn't take every theater troupe member and give them like, you know, their day in the sun. Unfortunately, I had to, like, I had to move some of them backwards, which really sucked and was really hard because, like, I had histories and stories for all these people, right? So I had to move some people back and then, and then I had to pick a couple characters that I really wanted to bring forward a lot. So like, Bregan's mother is one of those people where it's like, she's mentioned in book one, we don't really know what happened to her. And I was like, I want to bring her back. I want him to deal with that. And so I actually ended up writing a lot of backstory for those major, like her and the President, like some major characters that I wanted to bring forward and add. So I added really two big characters to book two that are totally new and I had to kind of graph them in. So again, like rereading book one, I had to make decisions in book one that I, especially in Fear and Past timeline that I was like, I don't know if this is ever going to make sense. But now I'm locked into these rules about what happened when and who was where. So it was tricky. Um, but yeah, I don't know. It's tricky. It's tricky, guys. It's hard.

Rachel:

I think though that there's. I feel like I picked up a couple tricks of, of telling these long form stories that, like. So I'll seed information that, like, seems relevant at the time, but in my head, I'm like, I'm going to develop that further if it comes back. So, like, it makes sense in the. Like. For example, there's. There's five Mafia dons in the five families, and one of them's name is Don Rossi. And I've done nothing with him, but I've always planned that he's going to be an ally later. So, like, in the first couple books, I've, like, mentioned details about him.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

That I just have made up details about him that, like, had relevance in that moment, but knew that eventually I'm gonna call back on John Rossi and, like, he's gonna be a bigger deal. So there were. There were a couple ideas where I.

Emily:

Did stuff like that of like, gotcha.

Rachel:

If I want to do something with this, it exists. If I don't, nobody cares. It was relevant at the time. We moved on.

Emily:

That's smart.

Rachel:

That's really smart. I think I. I think with the threads that I was working with, I did a lot of that knowing that, like, I can insert a little detail here, which I could make bigger later if I want to. And if I don't want to, if there's not a place for it, then I don't have to. So, like, this is another one where I've mentioned a couple times that one of my characters, Ryuji, really wants to kill his old boss. Like, if I want to go to Japan and kill that guy, great. But if I don't, no one's gonna care. So, like, I have that zone of, like, if we ever need to involve the Yakuza again.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Then I have the door.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

But I don't have to walk through that door because ultimately it doesn't matter.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

So I think I. I thought a lot about how I could give myself opportunities to use information in that way and then forget about it if I didn't need it.

Emily:

Yeah. I love it.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Emily:

Cool. Well, hopefully that was helpful for anybody thinking about sequels. Like, I think. Right. Ultimately, as always, it comes down to there's no right way to do it. But hopefully by listening to our different approaches, you know, some ideas might come to you. They're tricky.

Rachel:

They're tricky. They're tricky. I think being flexible, having trust, they can be done. They could be. Yeah, for sure. They could be done. It's never going to be perfect. Yeah, yeah, it's never going to be perfect. But we do have. In tenacious writing, we have a two hour class on planning series, which was really helpful for me to give myself boundaries, I guess. You know, the planning of arcs, which I did a little of, you know, I dabbled. The planning of plot, you know, dabble in. So if you're like, oh, my God, how am I ever going to do this? We've got classes on it and it's going to be okay.

Emily:

And we're here for moral support.

Rachel:

Yes, exactly. Because it's tricky.

Emily:

Cool.

Rachel:

If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.

Emily:

Sign up now for our free email course, the Magic of Character Arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.

Rachel:

Link in the show notes. We'll see you there.

Emily:

Bye.