Returning to the Well
I’ve noticed a disturbing/lazy trend lately. It seems as if every high profile author is returning to their well in their most known series that they’ve worked on. And in the case of JRR Tolkien, it doesn’t matter if they’re dead or not.
You have Stephen King and The Dark Tower, JK Rowling and Harry Potter, Orson Scott Card and Ender’s Game, Terry Goodkind and The Sword of Truth, George RR Martin and A Song of Fire and Ice, and others I’m sure I’m forgetting. Those are BIG NAMES. What I don’t understand is why?
Those famous authors have the luxury of writing pretty much what they want and people will buy it. At most, some of them may be restricted in the same genre they’re known for. In either case, they don’t need to write in the same world. I’ve read most of their magnum opus(pi?) and while I thought the stories were mostly overall good, I never felt any need to return to their world. If I, as a reader, felt that the story was complete. Why did they, as an author, feel the need to return to their world? It certainly didn’t have to do with money.
I’m not saying that they shouldn’t write more in their world if they truly want to. If it’s a sequel, a prequel, or involves side characters who become main characters with their own adventures, it can have merit, and would possibly be stories that I want to read. But I find that usually their weakness isn’t that the story is in their world that they’ve created. Their weakness is that it doesn’t depart far enough from what they did before.
Their first series are world breaking events. At the end, the Hero saves the day and all is well. Much like everything post S5 Supernatural, where do you go after you’ve averted the apocalypse? Downhill. I’m not a fan of prequels, but prequels can only work if it’s far enough from the original. But a lot of the times, a prequel isn’t far enough. It’s 30 years or less. Because of that, we’re bound to see characters from the original story. We kind of expect to. And because it’s so close in the timeline, we already know how not only the story will end, but how the characters will too. What’s the point if it doesn’t bring anything new?
A good prequel is worldbuilding. It will tell you how the world you already created ended up that way. How the laws were passed, how the land become ruined, how empires crumbled, why people chose to settle there, how did the two factions split, etc. Those questions don’t have to directly lead to your original work. In fact, it’s better that they don’t. The reader’s mind will fill in the rest and it will be better than anything you could have written.
A good sequel will also expound upon somethings and take them in a different direction while still being faithful to the original material. Things such as Star Trek: The Next Generation and Cobra Kai excelled in doing this. They don’t disregard previous versions nor do they tell the same story that’s been done before. They explore things that weren’t previously touched upon while updating it for today’s audience.
If you’re one of those BIG NAME authors, I’d love for you to tell me why. Not that you need to validate your reasoning with me, I’m just genuinely curious. And if you’re just a regular writer like me, I’d love hear from you too. I may write a prequel in my Hellsfire world somewhere down the line, once I’m done with it. Then again, I might not.
Marc Johnson
