Writing sequels that stay fresh

[storyguy62]

I have a question for the gathered assembly of wisdom here. I have written a story based on a roleplay I did, and the story was quite well received.

(Now, let me say up front, so nobody feels misled, it is a story about consensual adult incest. If that's not your cup of tea, that's fine. I think the questions I'm asking, though have much broader applications, though, than just that one genre or that one story.)

In the story, a father and daughter both work for the CIA, on separate missions. However, when her arms dealer crosses paths with his druglord, they wind up becoming intimate in order to keep from blowing their covers. In the end, the bad guys lose, father and daughter escape in time with the help of a beautiful Latin American woman, and the three of them come back to America. The story is here if you are interested in reading it.

Both my role-playing partner and some of the readers who left feedback have suggested taking these characters and writing a new story with them, and I'd like to try that. We would be talking about a sequel, though, and not just another chapter in the old story because that story did reach its ending.

However, the thing that made this story fresh and (I think, anyway) unique was the circumstances that brought the two main characters together. Those circumstances can't simply be repeated without becoming unoriginal and borderline-cliche. I don't want to write a new story that simply rehashes the first story again. However, I also don't want to abandon these characters if there are more stories to be told with them.

Consequently, I was wondering, for those of you who have written sequels, both that you considered successful and that you considered less than successful, what do you feel is the key to writing a new story with old characters without becoming stale rehash?

-SG

 

[SadieRose]

There are as many stories out there as there are days in a person's life. Some writers work periodically with a set of characters throughout their careers (It hasn't done Tom Clancy any harm, has it?) The trick is to keep coming up with circumstances then sitting back to consider how your character will rebound from them.

If you like a character enough then you can make it work. The material I've submitted here revolves around one character in particular and I write about him because I'm hot for him. When he gets boring I'll drop him and write someone else, but I always come back to him after a while because sooner or later I think of another situation that's SOOOO appropriate to him.

Other people never use the same characters twice, but as a bookseller and library employee, I do think that readers enjoy continuity and like a story with a cast they know and can relate to easily.

When you're writing them down, what you do with them next is up to you. I've found that watching soap operas is actually helpful, not so much from a plot point of view as to see how the writers develop their continuity (keeping on top of the current news/trends and how that relates to the storyline. And following up scraps of side-story that the reader/watcher may have forgotten about)

Good luck with the development.

xx.Sadie

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

However, the thing that made this story fresh and (I think, anyway) unique was the circumstances that brought the two main characters together.

Storyguy62

I agree. You came up with an imaginaive action/adventure plot. In a way, it's a shame your protags are father and daughter. While the incest angle is interesting, especially at Lit, it really limits the story's future commercial appeal. If they were a divorced couple and ended up back in love, it'd be blander, more predictable and a lot easier to sell as a novel or screenplay.

IMHO, the easiest way to pump out a sequel would be to have buddies of the people the protags busted come after them for revenge.

Good luck

Rumple Foreskin

 

[NoJo]

In the story, a father and daughter both work for the CIA, on separate missions. However, when her arms dealer crosses paths with his druglord, they wind up becoming intimate in order to keep from blowing their covers. In the end, the bad guys lose, father and daughter escape in time with the help of a beautiful Latin American woman, and the three of them come back to America.

If you want to write "Company Man II" you need to work out some twist to the relationships. You can also create a bit more back-story for some of the people.

The main setting is the CIA. Lots of exciting possibilites there. What you can't do is drop charatcers summariliy without explaining why they're not in the sequel.

So to write a sequel you have to extend your original story BACK, i.e give more background to the poeple, and FORWARD a certain space of time (say a year, maybe single peorpe are now married or with children, etc). Then you can think of the sequel.

Personally, once father and daughter have got intimate, I think you're a bit stuck to continue it without it being silly. I'd suggest killing one of them off and writing a revenge story.

 

[Weird Harold]

(Now, let me say up front, so nobody feels misled, it is a story about consensual adult incest. If that's not your cup of tea, that's fine. I think the questions I'm asking, though have much broader applications, though, than just that one genre or that one story.)

In your specific case, there is the "guilt card" to play -- Your protagonists have the conflict between their feelings and society's rules to deal with once the circumstances that forced them together are removed. Whether you choose to have them try to stay apart or try to stay together, there will be some pressure on them to make the other choice. Perhaps they find there is no thrill without the danger of breaking cover in their relationship? Perhaps they get assigned cover stories that force them to abstain?

In a broader sense, a sequel continues the previous story. If your story winds everything up too tightly, a sequel won't work -- no matter how inventive you get with plot twists.

That doesn't mean you can't reuse characters in another independent story set in the same universe, but it won't be a "sequel."

The key difference, is that a sequel builds on loose ends left in the original story, while an independent story is just set in the same "universe." I haven't read your story, so I don't know if you left a "hook" for a sequel or not.

Either way, the CIA setting allows you to place all sorts of restrictions and obstacles in the way of their relationship and should allow you to tell a new story instead of re-hashing the old one.

 

[snooper]

It isn't always easy to write sequels. I have two successful attempts and one failure (which I have kept to myself). The best set of sequels are now ten novels all set in the same country and at the same era, with the same characters. They just show different aspects of their lives, and different incidents. A taste of these is on Lit in two short stories: A Hunting We Will Go and The Training Ch. 05.

The second set takes five people who meet at one point in their lives under difficult circumstances (in a jail) and shows in five separate novels how each one got there, and how each coped with the adversity.

The abject failure was a book written as a single story of a series of people who went through the experience of a civil war. When I tried to write an "after the war" sequel I discovered that I had no idea what might have happened to them, and little wish (other than reader encouragement) to find out.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

If I understand you right, the problem you have is that the circumtances that brought them together were highly contrived, and so you can't use that device again to get them into bed.

I guess you have to use your author's judgment on whether it was the circumstances of the sex or the sex itself that made the story so popular. A true sequel would follow the same characters through a different situation, otherwise it's not so much a sequel as it is a retelling of the same story. If it's the sex that was the best part, just have them having more of it. Have them dealing with the fallout from their affair and continuing it. Or if you're looking to maintain the forced-into-incest angle, why not bring in Mom and a son?

In my opinion, the key in writing a sequel is identifying what made the story good in the first place, and then giving the readers more of it. Easy to say, tougher to do.

---dr.M.