Susan Boulton
The storyteller
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2006
- Messages
- 2,039
This is the blog post I did for Alex Davis as part of his July blog hopping adventure (find his super blog here http://alexblogsabout.com/the-blog/ ) I just thought I would put it up here so people can read it and perhaps add their own thoughts about "the sequel"
To sequel or not to sequel?
This is a question that has been rattling through my brain for a number of months and am I any nearer an answer? Yes I think I am.
I honestly wanted the ending of Oracle to be, “open-ended”, with regards to a number of story’s threads, characters’ fates and futures. The core story I wanted to tell was Oracle and Pugh’s. Their journey was complete as far as I was concerned. It was not a completely happy ending, but it felt right to me. Once I had done that, I felt the book was finished. I never thought of writing a sequel, of even a series of novels set in the same world. It is possible of course. It is my world I can go back and play in it at any time
To enter Oracle’s world again one thing I am sure of I would need a new main protagonist. Would Oracle and Pugh be secondary characters in another book? Yes I believe they could, but the main story would take the reader on a different journey through fresh new eyes. Would this protagonist be a secondary character from Oracle? No, though a number of characters that are currently on the side lines could come centre stage, but I feel if I go back into Oracle’s world I would need a new story to tell. If I attempted to stretch out aspects of the existing story it would fail. A new character entering this world would keep nudging me in the ribs and saying, why this, why that? It would make me begin to look on everything with fresh eyes.
My antagonists, oh yes they would be there, in fact their story, if anything is just beginning. Could I write the sequel from the main point of view of one of my trio of antagonists? It is very possible, but I would worry that I would start to turn he/she into the hero, and that would never do. I know their eventual fates. They are in my notes. (I make tonnes of notes about my characters )
Now that Oracle has seen the light of day, thanks to Gary of TicketyBoo Press, I worry that if I do write a new novel would it be what my readers expect? Just because you can write a sequel, doesn’t mean you should. A number of times I have picked up the second book in a trilogy, or one containing the same characters and been bitterly disappointed. Whether this stems from the writer losing the freshness of the original, or my annoyance that the writer did not take the characters in the direction I, as a reader, wanted them to go I am not sure. The same can be said of films. Sometimes the second film eclipses the first, but rarely does the third in the series or god help us the forth. (Save for Star Trek Undiscovered Country, but by then they were poking a little fun at their own characters, woops I am digressing.)
Carrying a reader’s expectations when it comes to writing a book is something I never envisaged happening to me and to be honest it frightens me a bit. Oracle was conceived and brought into being because it was a story I wanted to tell, just for me, written when I never believed I would be published. I know the thought of writing for the market and to sell has killed my inspiration and creative process before. Could it again? Would I allow it to do so again?
This leads me to another thought. The mind-set and circumstances in which the first draft of Oracle was written were very different than they are now. I know I am not the same person. I am older, perhaps not much wiser, but certainly more clued into the business that is publishing. Can I set this knowledge aside and write just for the joy of writing and apply that to the characters I breathed life into in Oracle? Or would I be writing and continually glancing over my shoulder.
I know after I had written Oracle my style of writing changed. My novel, Hand of Glory is nothing like Oracle. I chose to try and write in a style that suited the time period Hand of Glory was set in and it worked. The novel flowed onto the page and at times it felt as if it was writing itself. I have a fear that this style would creep into a new Oracle novel without me being aware. I know that during the editing of Oracle, when I had to re-write scenes or create new ones. The ones that were finally submitted had taken a long time to produce, and still I could see the change in voice.
So am I any closer to making a decision? I am closer, but still not quite there yet. There are great changes afoot in my personal life at the moment. I am on the point of moving from being employed to being retired. (Early retirement lol) So my writing can for the first time in over fourteen years have the time it needs to grow. In what way will it develop that is the important question? Will there be a sequel to Oracle? Will I take the characters in Hand of Glory on another spooky adventure? Both are possible. But there are a few dozen ideas and a half complete duology lurking on my hard drive, so the adventure is really just beginning.
To sequel or not to sequel?
This is a question that has been rattling through my brain for a number of months and am I any nearer an answer? Yes I think I am.
I honestly wanted the ending of Oracle to be, “open-ended”, with regards to a number of story’s threads, characters’ fates and futures. The core story I wanted to tell was Oracle and Pugh’s. Their journey was complete as far as I was concerned. It was not a completely happy ending, but it felt right to me. Once I had done that, I felt the book was finished. I never thought of writing a sequel, of even a series of novels set in the same world. It is possible of course. It is my world I can go back and play in it at any time
To enter Oracle’s world again one thing I am sure of I would need a new main protagonist. Would Oracle and Pugh be secondary characters in another book? Yes I believe they could, but the main story would take the reader on a different journey through fresh new eyes. Would this protagonist be a secondary character from Oracle? No, though a number of characters that are currently on the side lines could come centre stage, but I feel if I go back into Oracle’s world I would need a new story to tell. If I attempted to stretch out aspects of the existing story it would fail. A new character entering this world would keep nudging me in the ribs and saying, why this, why that? It would make me begin to look on everything with fresh eyes.
My antagonists, oh yes they would be there, in fact their story, if anything is just beginning. Could I write the sequel from the main point of view of one of my trio of antagonists? It is very possible, but I would worry that I would start to turn he/she into the hero, and that would never do. I know their eventual fates. They are in my notes. (I make tonnes of notes about my characters
)Now that Oracle has seen the light of day, thanks to Gary of TicketyBoo Press, I worry that if I do write a new novel would it be what my readers expect? Just because you can write a sequel, doesn’t mean you should. A number of times I have picked up the second book in a trilogy, or one containing the same characters and been bitterly disappointed. Whether this stems from the writer losing the freshness of the original, or my annoyance that the writer did not take the characters in the direction I, as a reader, wanted them to go I am not sure. The same can be said of films. Sometimes the second film eclipses the first, but rarely does the third in the series or god help us the forth. (Save for Star Trek Undiscovered Country, but by then they were poking a little fun at their own characters, woops I am digressing.)
Carrying a reader’s expectations when it comes to writing a book is something I never envisaged happening to me and to be honest it frightens me a bit. Oracle was conceived and brought into being because it was a story I wanted to tell, just for me, written when I never believed I would be published. I know the thought of writing for the market and to sell has killed my inspiration and creative process before. Could it again? Would I allow it to do so again?
This leads me to another thought. The mind-set and circumstances in which the first draft of Oracle was written were very different than they are now. I know I am not the same person. I am older, perhaps not much wiser, but certainly more clued into the business that is publishing. Can I set this knowledge aside and write just for the joy of writing and apply that to the characters I breathed life into in Oracle? Or would I be writing and continually glancing over my shoulder.
I know after I had written Oracle my style of writing changed. My novel, Hand of Glory is nothing like Oracle. I chose to try and write in a style that suited the time period Hand of Glory was set in and it worked. The novel flowed onto the page and at times it felt as if it was writing itself. I have a fear that this style would creep into a new Oracle novel without me being aware. I know that during the editing of Oracle, when I had to re-write scenes or create new ones. The ones that were finally submitted had taken a long time to produce, and still I could see the change in voice.
So am I any closer to making a decision? I am closer, but still not quite there yet. There are great changes afoot in my personal life at the moment. I am on the point of moving from being employed to being retired. (Early retirement lol) So my writing can for the first time in over fourteen years have the time it needs to grow. In what way will it develop that is the important question? Will there be a sequel to Oracle? Will I take the characters in Hand of Glory on another spooky adventure? Both are possible. But there are a few dozen ideas and a half complete duology lurking on my hard drive, so the adventure is really just beginning.
