Junie's Reviews and Promo Book (Closed)

Tip: Planning Sequels

Hello there. Welcome to another chapter of Junie's helpful tips! Today's topic: planning sequels. To anyone who has popped open a sequel book, then you know how hard it is sometimes continue reading a sequel. Sometimes, you may even notice the numbers are significantly lower than the original.

Here's the cold hard truth about sequels: they'll never surpass the original when it comes to the amount of readers and planning them will be a lot harder. Don't let that discourage you if you want to write one. Some readers just want one good book to read before moving on. Even with a good cliffhanger at the end of a book, they still won't look into your next book for many reasons.

But that's okay. If planned correctly, they can still be very successful. I'm not using my own books as an example here, but Red Lightening, a sequel to the very well known Pokéfic called Blue Lightening. Red Lighting became very successful due to its popularity. Sure, there's not as many votes or reads as the first one, but as a writer, you need to know that it's okay to lose readers. Besides, it's their loss for not looking into an amazing book! Both Blue Lightening and Red Lightening are phenomenal!

Once you stop worrying about that aspect, everything will become more successful. Besides, planning a sequel will turn out to be one of the harder steps. The more you open this option up, let's say, like a trilogy or something, the harder it will be to write. Why? Because as a writer, you want to give your best to your readers, and seeing that there is less feedback given, less readers to discover the book, etc etc, it can be discouraging.

Because of this, you need to think the sequel to be it's own standalone book.

Wait what?

Did I write that right? A stand alone? But that's why sequels are there, to accompany books, so why is this even a thing? Well, let me explain. Has anyone ever read the book series, Matched by Ally Condie? If not, let me tell you about this particular trilogy. It's a published book made by this author who has a thing for romance novels.

Condie's Book, Matched was made to be created into a Trilogy. It's sequel, Crossed, was what most of its readers would consider to be the worst book in the series. But it's a sequel! We know everything about what's going on in the plot. How can it be so bad?

That's the thing...there isn't a plot to it. Bit of a spoiler alert to those who haven't read it, but the main character is traveling across the country to find the boy she wasn't supposed to be matched with to reunite with him. That's it. Not much drama going on. There's countless chapters...no...the entire book was made up of filler chapters. Filler chapters aren't bad. Every good book needs a few of them to add fluff and some good warm fuzzy feelings or provoke some other emotion, but they can be annoying if overused.

How can you beat this trap? Make a plot. Make sure there's a purpose to each book made. Think of it like the Pokémon Anime. Every season is made up of the same plot: Ash and company sets off on a journey to get Ash to the Pokémon League so that he can (hopefully) become a Pokemon Master. Very generic, but it works. This is why there's subplots to each season (Hoenn Saga has Contests for May, Team Magma and Team Aqua to face, and a battle frontier at the second half of it....Kalos has Performances for Serena, Bonnie's partnership with Squishy, and even Team Flare creeping up in the background). All are based on Ash being the very best, but there's other stuff that makes it more interesting.

This is the secret formula that writers of tv shows and successful series of books use. After all, you don't want to read the same thing, but with well-written characters and an interesting plot in the first book, you don't want to completely change what's going on from the previous book. Readers who absolutely adore your first book will come for more expecting a Pokémon-journey-like tale rather than something completely different like Condie's book, Crossed.