Christian Speculative Fiction discussion

Nearly eight years ago, I wrote my first novel, Skydwellers.

It was pretty bad.

But for some reason, a lot of people liked it. They asked me when a sequel was coming, but I had other novel ideas I wanted to work on first.

In the meantime, about three years ago I heavily revised Skydwellers so I wouldn't cringe every time I looked at it. Unfortunately it is still not my best work, and the revised edition got a 2-star Amazon review. Which was... kind of depressing, but not entirely undeserved. Yeah, I know it's awful. Sorry.

I actually seriously considered taking it off of Amazon and pretending I'd never written it, except fans of the book keep gushing to me about it, so I think disowning it would be a disservice to them.

It's a weirdly polarizing book I guess.

Anyway. This year I actually did start putting together plans for a sequel, and now I'm nearly done writing it. As I finish the last few chapters and prep to send it off to the editor, my mind has turned to marketing, and I've started to wonder... how am I going to market this sequel to a lame first book?

Should I just not market it as a sequel at all? But then I'm worried that people who have read the first book (and liked it) won't know it's a sequel and will be like "So where's that sequel you said you were working on?" and it'll be awkward.

On the other hand, if I brand it as a sequel to Skydwellers, that might make new readers think they have to read Skydwellers first. And they'll think it's so awful that they won't even touch Earthkeepers, despite the fact that Earthkeepers is vastly better written. And there goes my reputation as a writer.

What have I done to myself.

Any suggestions from my fellow authors would be great.

Tricky business, this. My advice to you:

1) Ask yourself is a sequel is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY! Many, many times authors and directors make a sequel even though it was a complete story in itself. All you have to do is look at Toy Story 4 to see that you need to really have unanswered questions and potential for continued story to need to make a sequel. If book 1 ended nicely wrapped up, crisis over, nothing left to solve, then you shouldn't write a sequel because the original story didn't demand it.

2) At this point, if you choose to still write a sequel, you have two choices:

A- write the sequel for the fans of book 1 only, not for anyone else.
B- write the sequel as a separate story, but flesh out the events of the first book as background information, not indicating that there is another book before it, but rather that stuff happened and now because of that, this new stuff is happening. This can be really hard, though, because often when authors do this, I wonder if I missed the first book because there's so much history and background information.

Can't really say what you should do, but from a moneymaking perspective, if you're positive that Skydwellers 2 is going to be much more marketable towards a general audience, then I would just make it a separate series from Skydwellers 1 and mention 1's events as background info.

Hope this helps somewhat!

Well, I'm on the final chapters of the manuscript for the sequel, and I'm completely in love with it, so I'm not sure I want to scrap it at this point. :)

It is definitely not a necessary sequel, just a subsequent adventure undertaken by some of the protagonists from the first book. But I also wrote it because there were some worldbuilding elements that I never gave much explanation to in the first book, and I thought it would be fun to use the sequel to fully reveal everything about the history of this planet and its unique features.

There were also some characters introduced later in the plot first book who I didn't get the chance to develop very much, as I was more focused on the development of the two main characters. I made those secondary characters the MCs in the sequel, and I dare say they're a lot more interesting than the MCs of the first book! I've also really enjoyed revisiting this world I made up in college with nearly a decade's worth of more writing experience, and I think the result is a richer and more vibrant iteration of the fictional universe than the first book offered.

Also, I think we are thinking of different types of sequel. You're describing what's known as a "direct sequel", which often directly follows the events of the first work and wraps up unresolved plot elements. Earthkeepers is more of a "legacy sequel"/"standalone sequel", as the plot of Skydwellers was fully resolved within Skydwellers (and I was not even planning a sequel until just this year), Earthkeepers takes place six years after Skydwellers and has some of the same characters but a completely unrelated plot, and I have been writing Earthkeepers with the intention that people who have not read Skydwellers will not miss any vital information they need in order to understand Earthkeepers.

That being said, I get what you're saying about marketing and I'm definitely leaning toward Option B. I made sure to give background information from the first book as necessary, and I tried hard not to give the impression that one has to go read the first book to see what the characters are talking about. I don't feel like deliberately obscuring the fact that the book is a sequel, because I think readers should have the option of reading the original if they want, but I also don't want them to feel as they read the sequel that the author is constantly nagging them to read the original--I know I hate that as a reader.

Maybe I could include somewhere in the book blurb that it's an indirect sequel rather than a direct sequel. I don't want people to see the word "sequel" and think that requires them to read the first book. But I also don't want to confuse people by seeming to pretend that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the first book, because I do have fans who loved the first book, are eagerly anticipating the sequel, and would likely want to think of this sequel as the complementary other half of the original. So I think by clearly labeling exactly what kind of a sequel this book is, that should help clear up any confusion for both parties.

Thanks for your input! It gave me a lot to think about.

I think you've answered some of the questions I would ask, but maybe not all of them.

I think the first, fundamental question is "What did the fans love about the first book? What are they looking for in a sequel?"

If they loved the world you built and want to explore it more, then you can write stand alone stories in that world using the world as the common thread.

If they loved your MCs and want to see them develop and grow, then the sequel should include the MCs from the first book.

If your fan base for that first novel are really gushing about it, and I don't doubt you, then they should be gushing forth clues about what they want in a sequel.

If there is no discernable answer to that first question, then you have to decide what you want in a sequel.

And, for the record, there are some long series of novels set in the same world with the same protagonist with a sucky first novel. You probably already know that. So, I'd encourage you to press forward with the sequel, and maybe future sequels, writing as high quality output as you can.

Thanks for the input, Stan!

You have some great ideas about how to write sequels with fans in mind, and I do love receiving fan feedback and taking it into consideration when planning future works set in the same universe. Sometimes, even editor feedback can help jog my creativity and inspire follow-on works.

This actually happened with a fanfic that I wrote--my beta reader pointed out that one of the minor villains didn't seem to have any clear motivations, and in the process of figuring out a motivation for him, I ended up giving him a sympathetic backstory. And then I just had to write a sequel that involved the MCs from the first fic befriending him and working together with him to stop another villain. From there, I kept getting more story ideas about the core group of characters, and it turned into a very long series of fanfics that I'm rather proud of and have been serializing on my blog. So I do appreciate the value of reader feedback and how it causes me to look at my own work with fresh views.

I am actually nearly done with this manuscript--almost 60,000 words in, and coming up on the final few chapters. The initial concept for it started as a purely hypothetical doodle of two of the child characters in the first book as teenagers. I was not planning on pursuing the idea at first, but in thinking about the original book, I realized how much fun those characters had been to write, as well as another secondary character who really ended up being the breakout fan favorite (and well-deserved, I think). It made me start thinking about what their lives would be like six years after the world-changing events of the original, how their own dynamics with each other would have evolved, and what might be going on with their careers, as the fan favorite character was close to retirement in the first book, and with the other two child characters as teens, they would have had impending careers to figure out.

I had also been doing some unrelated research (I am all about unrelated research) on gifted children and the traits and challenges of giftedness, and I thought it would be really interesting to write a story about gifted people being oppressed and ostracized in their society because they were unusually intelligent.

Then, in one of those "a-ha" moments, I realized that plot idea would work great with one of the aforementioned teenage characters, who was portrayed as a precocious child prodigy in the first book. In retrospect I realized she was likely gifted, and it made me brainstorm about how she would respond to her society's treatment of her as a teenager, especially in contrast with the treatment she gets from her friends who are from different, less dysfunctional cultures, and who are just plain nice people.

Parallel to that, I was also thinking about some unusual elements of the world where the story takes place, realizing that there was a lot I showed in the first book but never fully explained (because I myself didn't really have explanations for it). I noticed it almost seemed to confuse some readers, so I thought I would make up for that by finally filling in the world-building gaps with a sequel. And from there, the whole plot fell together wonderfully.

But yes, I did make that breakout character in the first book one of the MCs in this book partly because I knew how much readers enjoyed her. :) I enjoyed writing her as well, so it was really fun to give her a more prominent role in this story. I think fans will be delighted to read more of her heroism and deadpan comments in the sequel.

And you're right, the first book in a series is usually the most clumsily written. I've definitely run into series like that. It makes sense, because that first book is a) written the earliest in an author's career and thus has the least writing experience behind it, and b) only the first foray into a world and characters that the author gets a better handle on with future stories. In my own writing experience, I know that the first time I write characters, even in the final drafts I feel as though I'm just starting to get to know them and figure them out. If I write a second story about them, suddenly their characterization becomes a lot smoother and flows easier, because they are more familiar to me.

But as a reader, even in those cases I still like the first books unless they are truly awful. (But even if they are truly awful, I still find them interesting reads because I always find it fascinating to see the genesis of an author's ideas.) To me, "less-polished" does not equate to "a bad read", especially if I like the author's writing in general. I'm a rather forgiving reader, so it makes sense to me that most people who read my work will not be as harsh of a critic of my writing as I am. Not saying everybody's going to love it, but I also don't think most people are going to feel like they wasted part of their life reading it. To them it's probably just another somewhat interesting book, nothing more and nothing less.

T.K. wrote: "I had also been doing some unrelated research (I am all about unrelated research) on gifted children and the traits and challenges of giftedness, and I thought it would be really interesting to write a story about gifted people being oppressed and ostracized in their society because they were unusually intelligent."

Thanks! I'd like to comment on this part of your reply. I'll have to say that Ender's Game is probably the classic in dealing with this subject. He probably takes it a different direction from the one you'll take though. When I finally read Ender's Game I knew Card had a better handle on child prodigy/teacher's pets than Rowling. Harry Potter got that completely wrong.

Yeah, hopefully I won't make it too much like Ender's Game. :) I don't think it will be. It's about a girl who discovers a forgotten underground city of robots that her institute's headmistress subsequently tries to use to take over the world. But I also hope I do a good job portraying the gifted characters. I wanted to write a story for kids who feel different because of their intelligence, and reassure them that although they face unusual challenges, they are also blessed with unusual strengths.

T.K. wrote: "Yeah, hopefully I won't make it too much like Ender's Game. :) I don't think it will be. It's about a girl who discovers a forgotten underground city of robots that her institute's headmistress sub..."

Sounds good! I wish you much success!

Thank you! :)