Most of my beta reads have come back and I figure next month I can get the next draft done and send it off to my editor. I’m confident that Lost Lives will be a very satisfying conclusion for those who have enjoyed Lost Souls and Lost Cargo.
But it’s not the end of the journey.
I wrote this trilogy to be a complete and standalone saga, but I never wanted to stop with it. This universe was designed with growth in mind, a place where any number of adventures (and misadventures) could take place.
However, when I was growing up, and hell, even today, what annoyed me most was how so many “franchises” get their sequels wrong. They always seem to take away the wrong lessons as to what made the original work. Most believe that subsequent stories have to have bigger stakes than the last, and goddammit, that’s just not true.
Let’s look at some movie examples. The Mummy with Brendan Fraser. Great movie. But when I watched The Mummy Returns, all I could see was how it tried to hit ALL the same beats as the first, and make them bigger.
Pirates of the Carribean really tried to up the ante, and darken the mood, and was the poorer for it.
The Force Awakens was enjoyable, but it also felt like a retread of A New Hope, mostly because of Starkiller Base. Hey, a space station that could blow up planets just wasn’t big enough… now we have a planet that can blow up whole star systems!
Heck, even the old Star Wars books did that, but went both smaller and bigger, by introducing a ship called the Sun Crusher, which could make any star go nova and wipe out all its planets.
I could go on.
What all these things had in common was a basic misunderstanding of what the audience wanted. Things don’t have to be bigger to be better. That’s why shows like The Mandalorian were such a hit. It felt like Star Wars, but it was different, and the stakes were much lower… yet no one cared! A desperate last stand surrounded by stormtroopers can be just as exciting as attacking a planet destroying battle station if you do it right.
But when you see things as an ongoing franchise, then things can swing too far the other way. You end up going from one adventure to the next with no consequences in between, like hitting the reset button each time. The James Bond franchise is mostly like that. A lot of early Star Trek was like that, too. The Next Generation had to fight tooth and nail to get any sense of ongoing storylines happening, and Deep Space Nine managed to break the mould.
Where am I going with all this? Well, there are a lot of things that bug me when it comes to world building in books, TV, or movies. And I very much hope to avoid doing them in my series. I want to learn from those who did it right (like Terry Pratchett) as well as those who I think did it wrong (see above).
So when the next trilogy gets started later this year, I’m not simply going to go bigger… nor am I going to hit the reset button. Not the way you think, anyway.
I’m also not going to forget about the big revelations that Lost Lives will introduce, either… and there are some doozies.
But if I were to follow up on those revelations directly as the basis for the next series, I’d only be going bigger, and if I do that, the die will be cast and I’ll have no choice but to continue doing it.
So, my plan is to pull back a bit. Start a new trilogy with a new adventure arc and a number of new characters, as well as some old ones. Keep the focus where it’s supposed to be, on the characters.
But by the end of that trilogy, the larger story in the background will also be advanced a bit. And, in time, as more of that larger story in the background is revealed, it will eventually end up in the forefront…
…but not quite yet! 😉
Anyway, that’s an update from me to you about where I’m going with this. Ever onward.
For the future!
Excellent summary of “Sequel-itis”. The only comment that came to my mind is the Mandalorian focuses on “the little people” whose stakes are naturally smaller, against a vast and epic backdrop of “big things happening”. We know the big things are out there, but our stories don’t have to be about them. Now Moss and the Lost Saga flirts on the edge of Big Things and sticks a finger (or spanner) into them but you can really feel the big things will get along fine if our Little People go back to their own struggles. Avoids the “gotta go bigger, gotta go boomier!”. A fence well-straddled!
Agreed, but I would also point out a series like Babylon 5, which also avoids it, but eventually does build up to a point where the galaxy changing stuff comes to the forefront. For the first couple of seasons it’s mostly small stuff with some signs and portents as to what’s to come, as well as some big events… but it’s not until Season 3 that it really hits with a bang.
That’s the kind of balance I want to hit.