Imagine this. You’ve written a novel with characters who speak so loudly, they’re demanding to get back on the page in book number two. How great is that?
So, you decide to jump in and turn that novel into a series. The hope, of course, is that this new book holds up as well as the first one. Maybe even better. All too often, however, authors fall victim to second book syndrome.
Symptoms of second book syndrome can include:
- An anemic plot that hasn’t achieved its own identity.
- Characters who aren’t faced with new challenges and don’t grow or change.
- A lack of purpose other than serving as a bridge to future novels in the series.
Articles about avoiding second book syndrome advise writers to “revisit how many books your series actually needs.” The writers I’ve worked with as a writing coach, however, had no way of knowing that. The only reason they wrote their second books was because the characters and locale kept calling to them–although in one case, reader requests for a follow-up book didn’t hurt either. As time went on, conversations about a third book logically sprung up with each author.
Fast forward, the initial novelist I started working with, Barbara Hinske, is now working on book nine in her original Rosemont series having just finished the fourth novel in her Guiding Emily series. Meanwhile, as Jeff Hutcheson writes book two of his Lost Key Mystery series, he and I are already talking about plotlines for book three. Much like an unplanned pregnancy, that, too, has come as something of a surprise.
Jeff sidestepped second book syndrome by shifting his novel’s main character from Bailey, the fun-loving, community-saving realtor, to her best friend Keri, a marine biologist grieving her fiance whose disappearance four years before remains unexplained. The novel’s point of view has shifted right along with the main character. And although a new villain has appeared on the scene, all the other players remain in the story, their roles morphing right along with the new and utterly different plot and theme. In the third book, they will play this fictional version of musical chairs all over again.
Barb took a different approach to her evolving series. Since she opted for a third-person point of view in the opening novel, that has remained the same. But each plot has confronted her initial main character, Maggie, and/or the rest of the townspeople of their fictional town with their own opportunities to seize and challenges to overcome. Barb has also made a point of learning from past mistakes or shortcomings. The result? One of her beta readers just announced that her most recent novel is even better than the series’ first one.
Now that’s something to aspire to.
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