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art of writing, authors, book sequels, novelists, On Writing, the craft of writing, the writing process, vampires, writers, writing, writing a book, writing a novel, writing a story, writing advice
Writing a book teaches you a lot of things. You think you know, but you don’t know, and writing a book is quite an experience.
Writing a sequel is the same thing, only more. You continue to grow as a writer, while also learning tons about writing a follow-up.
Click here for original image on Jim Delorey’s website
One thing I am learning about writing a sequel is, don’t overdo it.
Heck, you shouldn’t overdo it when you write a first or stand-alone book.
But as I write my sequel, I realize there are times when I lose focus and I start to overdo it with my storytelling. Writing a sequel means picking up where you left off with the first book, and carrying on into another story or extending with the first book’s story. It is not as easy as it sounds. Especially when you realize there were some things that could’ve gone into the first book, and now you’re mentioning it in the second book.
And then you realize others things could be brought up. It’s like opening a can of worms when you write.
As I mentioned in my post about writing about vampires, world building is so much fun. But at times, it can be too much fun, and you might lose direction. That was a problem I had writing my sequel; I was having too much fun exploring the vampire world that I lost track of what I wanted the story to be about. When I revisited my work recently, I saw this and had to delete or re-arrange a few things.
Writing a story is so much fun. Writing a book is such a delight. But don’t try too hard. Don’t overdo anything. You can lose track and overwhelm yourself, your characters and the story altogether.
