5 Lessons I Learned Writing My First Sequel
Reflecting on writing Book 2 in the Seen in Silverbridge series
For more than two years I’ve been writing within a single universe: the Seen in Silverbridge series. I spent eighteen months writing You Heard It Here First, the first book, and then the last year writing You Should Have Said.
I’ve been spending so much time thinking about and writing from the perspectives of the characters of Luce, Huds, Faven and Rodney that they feel like real people to me now. It’s immensely gratifying.
Now, with the second book in the series published widely and making loads and loads of money*, I’ve been able to reflect on five lessons I’ve learned from writing my first sequel.
You Should Have Said is available to buy on Amazon and Kobo (Barnes & Noble, Google Books, and Apple Books to come soon).
*Not 100% accurate†
†Not even 5% accurate. Sales have been modest due to my shockingly laissez-faire approach to marketing. If you have any recommendations or want to help, please get in touch by Replying to this email.
📗 Five Lessons I Learned Writing My First Sequel
1. You Must Love Your Characters
A common piece of feedback I’ve heard about You Heard It Here First is that the main character of Luce Sharp is mega annoying.
Luce is overly confident (bordering on arrogance), comes from a wealthy family, and oftens lacks empathy. Those are three ingredients for an unlikeable character. In the book, she’s still at university and has never really had to work a day in her life. She dates a handsome football star and often ignores her best friend’s feedback.
Despite all this, I still really dig her. I like writing her dialogue and all of her bad behaviour is completely warranted and justified to me. I’m biased, basically. I know that her arrogance is actually a smokescreen to cover insecurity, and I know she’s in fore some rude awakenings later in the series.
I’m happy to report that other readers love her like I do and don’t find her annoying. So, I haven’t decided to go back and make any significant changes to make her more pallatable. And even if everybody hated her, I still don’t think I would. I don’t think I could change her, actually.
Throughout writing You Should Have Said, I was never bored with the characters. Sometimes, the timidity of Faven irked me, and sometimes Huds’s cowardice in the face of dealing with Luce frustrated me, but these are important character traits. It’s part of their character growth.
2. You Must Know Your World
The Seen in Silverbridge series is set in a fictional New Zealand city called Silverbridge. In the first book, I’d throw out place names and locations willy-nilly, not giving too much thought to ever having to revisit them.
Luckily, I had the good sense to jot down the names in a Google Sheet as I went. This meant with You Should Have Said, I was able to revisit this spreadsheet, add to it and alter it, and end up with a fairly hefty list of places.
It’s an easy list to read and contains little in the way of detail. It’s nothing compared to my character sheets. But it does the job it’s meant to do.
Sometimes I think about how cool it would be to have a comprehensive map of Silverbridge that includes every location I’ve ever mentioned. Then, I’d be able to see exactly how far each location was apart, giving me the ability to time exactly how long people’s journeys would take.
… Maybe one day.
3. Sticking Power is Key
How do you write? Do you sit down and write when motivation strikes? Or do you set a time each day and stick to a schedule?
I am a schedule guy. A little bit each day. This helps because I tire easily. I can smash out 1-2 hours of writing (if my environment is devoid of distraction) but then my productivity falls off a cliff. It’s important for me to remember that it’s okay to call it when I’m feeling done. I can push and push but the quality of my work suffers.
Luckily, I’m never in danger of spending too much time writing because there are plenty of other tasks demanding my time, like you know, paid work.
But I need to do a little bit every day (or every weekday at least). If I break the habit, then I’m doomed. Unless I schedule my writing time and stick to my schedule, the book is in danger of being forgotten.
This can be difficult with a sequel. Because I’ve already written the first book in the series, the friction to writing in the same world is less, but so is the burning need to tell the story.
To help, I use three things to help me stay on task: I do daily bullet journaling where I diarise my progress, I set deadlines and task lists in Notion to make sure I’m on track with new drafts, and I have a habit tracker app on my phone that graphs my writing streak.
You read that correctly: I have three accountability checkers in place to ensure I write. Over the last few years, I’ve experimented with different ways of keeping myself accountable, and these are the strategies that work for me. I encourage you to find what works for you, then find a couple more and use them all.
4. It Gets So Much Easier
Writing You Heard It Here First took a year and a half, go-to-whoa. The actual drafting process took a fraction of that time. After three and a half months of writing every day, I had a decent 90,000-word manuscript.
Then came the rewriting. Reading the book, making notes, and seeing the glaring plot holes brought on exhaustion. However, I persevered.
After my second pass, I felt confident enough to send the manuscript to some trusted friends who agreed to read it and give feedback. The feedback, while gentle, was difficult to stomach. The plot worked fine and the prose was good, they said, but they struggled with the character journeys sometimes.
I didn’t give up. I looked at my characters, interrogated their motivations and their emotional responses, and rewrote the entire book again. By the fourth rewrite, I was feeling much better. The feedback from fresh readers was significantly more complimentary.
I sent the manuscript to a professional editor, got over three thousand edit suggestions back, made the necessary changes, got it proofread, made more changes, then started formatting, and finally, after more trial and error, released the book.
It went like this:
Write the thing (4 months)
Rewrite the thing (2.5 months)
Send to beta readers and get feedback (4 months)
Rewrite the thing again (2 months)
Send to new readers and get more feedback (2 months)
Rewrite again and send to editor (1 month)
Get edits back and accept suggestions (2 months)
Proofread and format (1 month)
With the second book, the process was so much faster and easier.
I knew the characters deeper. I knew the world better. I knew that most of the words I wrote in my first draft would be replaced in later drafts, so I could take the handbrake off and go for it. The feedback was equally helpful, but it was easier to take. No exhaustion!
As you can see above in my nerdy time (I track the ‘writing phases’ of each of my works), I managed to finish a workable draft, get it beta reader, make more changes, edit and format and release the book in under a year.
A lot of writers can churn out books faster than this. But for me, this is extraordinarily quick. I made the decision at the beginning to never compromise the quality of my books in order to go fast, and I’ve kept to that. The second book took half as long to publish as the first, and it’s of the best quality I can muster for my readers.
Sequels are easier.
5. Be Prepared to be Cruel
As mentioned earlier, I think it’s vital to love your characters, especially when writing a sequel.
It’s also imperative that you, as the writer, are prepared to be cruel.
If one of them dies, you have to pull the trigger. If one of them is due to be heartbroken, you must rip their heart out and stamp on it.
Whatever foul twist of fate befalls them, you must take responsibility as the Foul Twister.
I struggled with this. I found myself constantly pulling my punches and taking it easy on them. But who was I helping? My characters? These characters aren’t real! My reader? No, on the contrary. By taking it easy on my characters, I was writing a bland story.
So I had to harden up and write beats and scenes which made me feel gross and sad. It’s worth it.
You owe your readers the courage to be cruel and indifferent. Make a good story and RUIN YOUR CHARACTERS’ LIVES.
Then, you know, make it all right again, if you’re into happy endings.
🌊 Stormhouse News
As I’ve mentioned, You Should Have Said is available now.
You Heard It First is also available, if you feel like starting at the beginning of the series.
Get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo.
And, if you feel like a treat, A Student Has Drowned is the introductory novella to the Seen in Silverbridge series, available as a free download.
📣 Shout Out to: The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
I’ve been obsessed with this book since I started it. It’s the second book in the series and it packs as much of a punch as its predecessor The Tea Rose.
Set in the early 1900s, it’s lengthy and epic, written in third-person-limited and following multiple characters. It’s first and foremost a romance story but has plenty of action and intrigue. I especially like the character of India Selwyn Jones, a plucky female doctor who dreams of opening her own free clinic for the poor women and children of London’s East End.
Highly recommended.
Links
✍️ Stormhouse website