Give Us the Same Thing, Only Completely Different: Tips on Writing Sequels

So, I’m working on the sequel to Dream with Little Angels. Kensington have now committed to it, so it’s official, there will be a second book. They hated my original title, Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing, so, after I came up with a list of about fifty potential new ones (which I think my agent paired down to a dozen or so) they picked Close to the Broken Hearted, which I am more than happy with. Actually, the longer I live with it, the more I like it. I think I like it better than Cry now, to be honest. The problem with putting the word “blessed” in a title is that it can be pronounced two different ways and if one were to pronounce it as a single-syllable word, the title’s rhythm would be completely thrown off and it would be terrible.

No such problems with Close to the Broken Hearted. And it fits the story very well, too.

So now that the excitement has all died down about getting the second book green-lighted, reality has set in: I have to write another book. Not only that, I have to do it under pressure of deadline because this time, they’re paying me upfront. I’ve never had this problem before. When I first came to this realization, it nearly locked up my creativity completely.

I do have a couple of things going for me, though. I wrote a very detailed outline for the proposal that I managed to sell the book on. It’s about forty pages long. And I’ve already got the first five chapters of the book laid down (that’s about fifty-five pages). So the tone’s been set, and the scenes are pretty much all there. There are some things missing from the outline, but–in theory–those things will fall out organically as I write.

One would think that writing a sequel would be easier than writing the original book because “the world” is already set up. The main characters and a lot of the surrounding situation is already in place. This was my way of thinking, too. That was, until I had to reread the original book last week to do my page proof corrections.

I hadn’t read Dream with Little Angels for probably eight months and so a lot of the details were fuzzy. When I started reading it again, I realized I needed to make every minor detail unfuzzy very quickly. The two books had to jibe with each other, and not just on a superficial level. They only take place nine months apart, so not a lot will have changed in the lives of the main characters or the setting. If my main character’s house has gold drapes in the first book, it should probably have gold drapes in the second book, for example.

All I can say, is thank God I had to reread that book now, before I got too far into Close to the Broken Hearted.

As soon as I started into it, I realized I needed to keep detailed notes of, well, everything. So I pulled out my iPod and started throwing any little detail down (I use this cool little free app called Scatterbrain for this). The color of the drapes, the color of the carpet, the color of the kitchen light, how the kitchen is set up, the layout of the house, the layout of the police station, the layout of the police chief’s office.

I had already made a map during the writing of the first book (just with pencil and paper) which I had had the brains to scan into the computer so I didn’t lose it like I did the rest of the notes which were only on paper. Since then, I’ve made a digital version of that map using The Gimp (another free program like Photoshop–are you starting to see my penchant for anything free?) that allows me to overlay different things on top of each other. So I can see a version without rivers, or without road names or with everything if I want to.

Now I’m going to go and start building a Dream with Little Angels bible. Because it is my hope that this book won’t be the last in the series and I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, I’m going to make sure I do this right upfront. If I had my druthers, I’d set the whole thing up as a wiki site, but I don’t know if I’m going to go that far. For now, having all the resources digitally available and also in a binder for easy access will be good enough. Maybe the wiki will come with the next book.

Some of the work was already done for me by the kindness of the copy editor when she put together my style sheet. I have character names (first and last) along with descriptions and, in most cases, how they are related and even where they live. That’s a good start. When I read through the book last week, I made notes on anything strange, like eye colors that I didn’t remember ever mentioning or little facts like when my protagonist’s sister gets upset with her mom she always refers to her as, “Mother!” and her mom pretty much always refers to her daughter as “Caroline Josephine” (her full name) when everyone else in the book simply calls her “Carry”.

I’m hoping that by doing all of this it will take some of the load off trying to recall exactly how everything is set up in my little town of Alvin so I can concentrate on what really counts: and that’s the story. It might also ensure that there’s some cohesiveness between this book and the first which I would really like to see. I had forgotten how innocent (in its own little way) the first book really is and how disturbing the events that transpire are magnified because of that innocence. I want to strive to continue that same feeling of innocence in this book, although it will be slightly harder, given that the first book is not only a murder mystery but also a coming of age tale and my eleven-year-old protagonist learns a lot about life through the ordeals he is forced to face (without giving anything away). I can’t have him arcing backward before this book begins, so I have to start him at the growth point I left him at in book one.

But that’s all academic stuff. Stuff that doesn’t need to be bothered by me wondering whether or not my protagonist’s best friend, Dewey, has blue eyes or brown (they’re actually green–who knew?). See? This is why I need the bible.

Unfortunately, I’m probably looking at a week to put all this together. But I think it’s a week well spent as it will save me probably many weeks in the coming months as I race toward a September deadline.

I’ll keep you posted.

Michael out.