Writing a Great Sequel – Starting Off

In this week’s blog post, we will be looking at how to write a sequel to a book you have already published or have self-published. Maybe you always intended to have a sequel, or maybe you just feel that your characters have more to do before their story ends. Alternatively, it could be that the original book is one of your most popular and you or your publisher want to use this popularity to boost your sales and fanbase. However, writing a sequel does present its own problems – above all, you need to make sure that it lives up to the expectations set by the last one. In addition, it will need to still be accessible to new readers without having a long summary that will put off readers of the first book.

First Chapter

Often, the most difficult thing about writing is just getting started. If you are writing a sequel, it can be even worse! Not only do you have the normal issues (how to choose a good opening line, introducing your protagonist, picking a scene that sums them up), but you also need to make sure it works as an opening to a sequel. As with any first chapter, it needs to be something that will encourage your readers to carry on and hook them into the story. You may find this is easier with a sequel, or it may be more difficult if you are trying to avoid immediately repeating everything readers of your first book already know.

The advantage of a sequel is that your protagonist will already know what has happened in the last book and the premise behind your story. Therefore, you can use them to do a lot of the introduction work and get your readers back into the story (or set the scene, if you have new readers). However, you will still need to have some sort of hook that will make readers carry on with the story. In addition, you will have to set the scene again and reintroduce your old characters, which we will look at more in the next section.

Recap First Book

Another common roadblock authors face is how to recap your first book within your sequel. This requires striking a balance between not boring readers of the first book with backstory they already know and making sure that new readers understand enough of the background to follow the story of the sequel. You also need to decide whether to get all of the recapping out of the way in the first chapter, or whether to spread it out a bit more over a few chapters. You also have the option to reintroduce the events of the first book only as they become relevant, for example, with characters and places. The downside of this is that you need to be very careful your story still makes sense.

A good way to start is to go through your first book and pick out all of the important events that will affect your sequel. Remember that you only need to include anything that is both relevant and crucial to understanding the sequel, not everything that happened in book one. Once you have this, summarise it more if you can. You should then have a condensed version of your first book to work from. Try treating this as the backstory to a whole new book and write your sequel this way. Think about how you would normally incorporate all the details into a book and work from there, making sure your story flows well and is easy for every reader to understand.

Identify Strengths of the First Book

Naturally, you want your sequel to be just as much of a success as the first book you wrote. To achieve this, it often helps to go back to this first book and consider what worked well about it. What made it popular enough that a sequel was necessary? Try reading reviews that your readers wrote – what do they identify as the best points about your book? If they liked the humour, try to keep this tone in the sequel. If they loved the world you have created, add new elements to this while still keeping the same overall style. Also, it almost always makes sense to stay in the same genre, as this will be what your readers are expecting and what they connected with last time.

However, you don’t want your sequel to just be a carbon copy of the original. Make sure there are plenty of new elements and plot points to keep readers interested. One way to achieve this is to introduce new characters, either with your existing characters or instead of them. A new cast can help keep things feeling fresh!

Wrapping Up

Once you have decided to have a sequel, getting started is often the hardest part. I hope that this blog post helps you with this! My next blog post will continue in the same tracks by looking at how to continue your sequel.

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