I think that if you're a professional writer, sequels are a bitch.
People get ideas about your characters, things that you didn't put in the book, but which seem reasonable to them. Oh, Archie Goodwin, he's probably fairly thin, a little above average height. Oh, the starship captain, she'd figure out how to realign those injector coils using cellotape and two wads of gum (one has to be cinnamon, though). The desk in the library is probably pretty big, and it commands a view of the window. Then you come along and casually mention how Goodwin's always been a little on the short side, or the captain can't figure out how to realign the coils, or that the desk is over on the other side of the room, and the reader thinks what? Thats not how I imagined it. Usually, its not that big a deal -- you scrunch your image of Goodwin, you allow that maybe the captain can't fix everything, you see the desk over there instead of over here -- and you move on. Sometimes, though....
I'm reading a sequel to the novel Polaris. I really liked Polaris. I read it slowly, because I didn't want it to end. When I came across Seeker, the other day in the bookstore, I got it immediately, and I've been reading it, interspersed with Solar Eclipse. And what I'm finding is that I'm reading it slowly -- but not because I don't want it to end, but because I'm thinking Oh, no, another two pages of well lets go look here, huh, nothing there, okay, lets go look here, nope, well, lets go see if .... C'mon, already. In Polaris, you guys had brilliant insights all over the place! What happened to you? The story feels like its running in second gear.
Would it feel this way if I didn't know what to expect from the main characters? Probably not as much, but a little, yeah. Reading this one first, I might not have been excited to see a sequel. Oh, yeah, I read those guys, I'd think. I'll take a glance at it. Which has got to be a killer for an author - spend your life plotting this stuff, working it out, writing, rewriting, all so someone standing tapping their feet in a bookstore can glance at it and shove it back on the shelf. Gee, thanks a lot. But once you get those expectations on the part of the reader, you have to meet them ... and then some. It has to be both the same as what you've written, with the same qualities for the characters, but it has to be better, too. Better in a believable way.
Sequels can be a bitch.
4 comments:
I agree. In a sequal, especially with the characters you love, you want to see the same characteristic that make you love them, but you want to see more. You want deeper insite into what makes them the way they are, keeping on par with the continuity.
SS
Yeah, I'm not a lover of sequels; too often I am let down.
Have a great weekend!
The only sequels I like are the ones where the story really was so big that it took three books to tell it. Then the author is faced with Hobson's Choice....he can either make each book "stand on its own two feet", or he can write it as a trilogy. Readers tend to like the former, author's tend to like the later choice.
The former choice (stand on its own two feet) is preferable in the world of aftermarket books which I inhabit...I almost never buy a new book...rather I buy them at garage sales, remainder tables, and library discard tables. I have a whole shelf right behind me made up of books 2 through 6 of Jack Chalker's and Piers Anthony's books.
Come to think of it, why would an author care about the 90% of her fans who don't buy her books new...its not like they make any money on second hand books!
I think each of you has grabbed a different part of the elephant, and you've created an interesting gestalt. (now go wash your hands).
The idea of seeing more about the characters, where they come from, what moves them, I like a lot. My own insights there are on the level of Junior High Lit Appreciation, so I will spare you them, but I do agree. There's something about some characters that makes you want to come back, and when you get there, you want them to be the same as they were before (ah, comfortable familiarity) but you also want them to be better, however you define that. I stopped reading Robert Parker's Spenser novels when I realized that most of them could be described in the same general flow, including the obligatory scene(s) where the impressionable person was awed by his combination of manly prowess and quiet humility. He never *grew*. Makes me wonder: Sherlock Holmes never changed (well, he did, but only a bit); is it our need for novelty that makes us want an improved version now? What's 'satisfying' about some sequels and 'same old, same old' about others?
I'm not sure about the trilogy idea. I sometimes will pick up a novel and think well, gee, I'd like to read this, but its Book Two of XXX, I don't want to go read that one later and find out that the character I liked dies in later books, so the hell with it. For example, I really, really liked Patrick OBrians Aubrey/Maturin novels, and was irritated to find that in his very last one, he killed off a minor supporting character who had been present from the start. I cared about that character. On the other hand, I realized a long time ago that if Hornblower liked a character, that guy was a goner; I think only one shipmate of his survived to the end. Makes me wonder if Hornblower was a bad luck charm.
I think the best series hang together, inhabit the same universe, but don't rely on sequential reading. I'd bet that's tough to do.
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