And it is time for another Open Mic! Chat amongst yourselves while I get life stuff done, like taxes and renewing my driver’s license…
And it is time for another Open Mic! Chat amongst yourselves while I get life stuff done, like taxes and renewing my driver’s license…
I’m working on a story (purely for my own entertainment) where one of the MCs is the niece of the hero of a story I wrote a few years ago. It’s interesting to take the characters from the first story and work out what they would be like later in life, but it’s also tricky to keep the focus on the current protagonist instead of getting distracted by what her uncle and his husband (whose romance was a major part of the first story) are up to these days!
I like those because they have a better chance of not undermining the ending of the prior book.
I agree. Carrying on with the same characters frequently ends up undermining the original ending. Shifting the focus to new characters can avoid that, while still providing an opportunity to see how the original characters would develop.
Rick
I have somewhat the opposite situation. I have a prequel (call it A) in which one of the important characters in the original work (B) should die. I’ve thought of making her almost die, perhaps going into a coma, but that would not have the same emotional impact and, because of the mechanics of the story, wouldn’t really work.
Prequels are a lot harder than sequels. Much more boxed in.
I did a series of short stories for MZB’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies, about Cynthia, aka the witch of Syracuse. The sixth story found her sitting on the deck of a small sailboat, asking the man who had abducted her what the hell he thought he was doing.
As soon as I saw him, I knew he was going to become Cynthia’s second husband–and that he was going to die shortly thereafter. He was such a nice guy, I didn’t want to kill him, but I had to. I managed to give him one more story, but the following year I was stuck. Ithrashed about for weeks, till my husband said, “you’ve got to kill him,” so I did; and Cynthia spent the rest of her 16-story cycle trying to get him back.
Here, the revision slog continues, along with needing to do taxes. My revisions generally expand word counts, and the long revision that started a year ago added 17k words. So progress in a sense.
One construction I’m trying to rein in my overuse of is “Statement A, but contrasting statement B.” E.g. “She wore the silver necklace of a witch, but without the amethyst pendant of a High Witch.”
I’m especially looking for ways to rephrase it in dialog. I figure that some of my characters will use it as much as I do, but that many (most?) characters will use it more rarely, and some won’t use it at all.