Mette Ivie Harrison, Children's writer, triathlete, marathons, Ironman, training, fitness, workouts, The Princess and the Hound, Mira, Mirror, The Monster In Me, The Hound and the Bear, Young Adult Books, Fantasy, Romance, yoga


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Sequels Part 3 A few more thoughts on sequels: I have heard from a lot of editors/agents that they hate it when an author who has planned out a whole series of books answers a question about book one with "Well that has to happen because of x, in book x." You can't sacrifice believability, fun, character development, or really anything else in any of the books in a series just because of one of the other ones. Which is what tends to make some series really stink, because the authors get lazy (Hey, I sympathize. They have deadlines, and real lives.) But think about it, if you're writing a book that stands alone, you work yourself into a corner (at least if you write without any idea of where you're going, like I do) and then you think hard and pull something out of the air and work a story around it to explain why it works and your readers love it. Problem is, you have a lot fewer options if you have one book already in place. For one thing, you can't use the same device. For another, you have limitations on what is possible. And the more books in the series, the more difficult it becomes. A lot of people (authors included) make the mistake of thinking that fantasy is easy to write because you can make up any old rules you like to the magic. Well, uh, that doesn't work. Magic has rules, and you can't break them once you've set them up unless you have a really good reason, and even then readers will complain unless you break the rules to make your life as an author more complicated rather than easier by using them to get a character out of a sticky situation. Another question with writing series is how to figure out where one book ends and the next begins. This happens with a particular kind of series, mostly. And I think there is only one good answer. You have to go back to the beginning. Orson Scott Card told me once that you can tell a good book by its beginning, because everything is set up there. I think this is at least partly true, although I'm not sure you can tell how good the beginning of a book is until you get to the end. Lois Bujold dealt with the problem of where to end when she wrote SHARDS OF HONOR and BARRAYAR. From what I understand, she wrote about 50 pages into the second book before she realized she'd gone too far. Then she had to go back to the beginning and figure out where the end was by carefully unraveling the arcs she had set up and seeing which main ones she had finished (and by arc I mean threat--every book has a threat in it that is resolved by the end, if it works well. Series books often have one smaller threat and then a large threat that hangs overhead through all the books, like Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter, not vanquished fully until the very end). Next up: what I hate in sequels. Return to home page

Sequels Part 3

A few more thoughts on sequels:

I have heard from a lot of editors/agents that they hate it when an author who has planned out a whole series of books answers a question about book one with "Well that has to happen because of x, in book x." You can't sacrifice believability, fun, character development, or really anything else in any of the books in a series just because of one of the other ones. Which is what tends to make some series really stink, because the authors get lazy (Hey, I sympathize. They have deadlines, and real lives.)

But think about it, if you're writing a book that stands alone, you work yourself into a corner (at least if you write without any idea of where you're going, like I do) and then you think hard and pull something out of the air and work a story around it to explain why it works and your readers love it. Problem is, you have a lot fewer options if you have one book already in place. For one thing, you can't use the same device. For another, you have limitations on what is possible. And the more books in the series, the more difficult it becomes.

A lot of people (authors included) make the mistake of thinking that fantasy is easy to write because you can make up any old rules you like to the magic. Well, uh, that doesn't work. Magic has rules, and you can't break them once you've set them up unless you have a really good reason, and even then readers will complain unless you break the rules to make your life as an author more complicated rather than easier by using them to get a character out of a sticky situation.

Another question with writing series is how to figure out where one book ends and the next begins. This happens with a particular kind of series, mostly. And I think there is only one good answer. You have to go back to the beginning. Orson Scott Card told me once that you can tell a good book by its beginning, because everything is set up there. I think this is at least partly true, although I'm not sure you can tell how good the beginning of a book is until you get to the end.

Lois Bujold dealt with the problem of where to end when she wrote SHARDS OF HONOR and BARRAYAR. From what I understand, she wrote about 50 pages into the second book before she realized she'd gone too far. Then she had to go back to the beginning and figure out where the end was by carefully unraveling the arcs she had set up and seeing which main ones she had finished (and by arc I mean threat--every book has a threat in it that is resolved by the end, if it works well. Series books often have one smaller threat and then a large threat that hangs overhead through all the books, like Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter, not vanquished fully until the very end).

Next up: what I hate in sequels.

Return to home page