I love to get reviews and comments. They’re generally either the kind that leave you walking on air (somebody said something nice about my writing: hooray!) or they’re the kind that provide food for thought: things I need to know if I’m going to get better at this.
But there’s another kind: the ones where a reader says that they’d like to see a sequel.
Further adventures with the same characters? Don’t they get it? Doesn’t the reader – who professed satisfaction with what they read, after all – recognise closure when he or she sees it? Can’t we allow the characters their happily ever after?
Sequels are something that executives in big corporations demand, because they’re pathologically risk-averse. They daren’t take risks any more: they’re successful, so they have to keep on cranking the handle on the success formula.
This strategy has given us an awful lot of sucky movies. Turning ‘The Matrix’ into a trilogy: instant awfulness. Following ‘Highlander’ with ‘Highlander II: The Quickening’ was practically a crime against humanity. There was even (shudder) ‘Basic Instinct 2’.
George Lucas managed two good Stars Wars films before they descended into drivel, so it’s sometimes the threequel that’s awful, not the sequel, but why risk it? There are tens of stories sitting half-finished on my hard drive. I’d much rather complete one of those than grind out another story with Denise and Carol (from ‘Into the Unknown’), who we left quite happily exploring their budding relationship. Some things don’t need to be spelled out. (Or do they? You can use the comments section to tell me. Consider it my market research. I’m working on a budget of zero, here.)
Never say “never”, though.
I’m working on just one thing that might be loosely described as a sequel. A reader of my time-travelling body swap story, ‘Door Candy’ suggested that we need to know more about what happens to the person who goes back to the 1950s. And you know what? That reader is probably right… but you won’t ever see a story called ‘Door Candy 2’. I’m working to expand the original instead.
Elsewhere, to the extent that I can manage, each project I’m engaged with features new characters, settings and MacGuffins. It’s the surest way I know to avoid the literary equivalent of ‘Honey I Blew Up the Kid’. (Dishonourable mentions also to ‘Grease 2’, ‘Robocop 2’, ‘Speed 2: Cruise Control’… in fact, you know what? Anything with a two in the title.)
Write to me. I’d love to hear from you: but please don’t ask for a sequel.
Small update:
I shared ‘Three Steps’ on BigCloset yesterday: a story in which the narrator is killed off at the end. I think it’s fairly clear that the story is complete. I also ticked the little box that indicates a completed work.
And what do I get?
Well, you know what they say: always leave them wanting more…
Sugar and Spiiice 
So I have mixed feelings about sequels. If done well they can be incredibly great and powerful things. The problem is (as you have already hinted), they are invariably studio execs saying …. we want more of that. There have been very good sequels … The Colour of Money, sequel to the Sting as well as The Two Jakes which was a sequel to Chinatown. Done right, with its own distinctive story and not just a rip off of what had gone before, is key to writing a sequel.
The thing is with sequels, it cannot just be more of the same. It has to be a story in its own right as well as having some continuance with what went before it. Its a tricky thing to do, but really powerful if you can do it. I like your idea Bryony for a semi sequel to your time travelling body swap adventure. It connects with what has gone before, but tells a whole new story in its own right.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Perhaps I should qualify what I wrote and say that sequels don’t work for me… your mileage may vary. From what you wrote, it sounds like a good sequel is a knife-edge balance between too much familiarity with what has gone before, and too little. Tricky!
LikeLike
I think its very tricky and you are right it is a knife edge balance. There are sequels that work, but they tend to be few and far between. There’s also a balance between sequels and multi book stories, where the whole story is written over several books, though these could be classed as ‘sequels’ in a way.
Its easier with some types of fiction to write sequels. Detective novels for instance work in this regard because each case is different and has a different resolution. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote lots of Sherlock Holmes novels which could be said to be sequels, but in TV terms would be described as serialisation.
LikeLiked by 1 person