As a writer, have you ever started writing a book that you meant to be a standalone and then realize that there’s too much going on with the plot to wrap it all up in one book? That’s where I’m at. As hard as I try to make standalone stories, I happen to find a way to turn it into a sequel, trilogy, or even a series.
I’m currently in the throes of writing Infectious, my Inkitt work-in-progress, and I can safely say that I’m at the midway point in the story. With that being said, I have so much going on in this world that I’m debating on if I should end it with one book. I could easily create a sequel to it with all the ideas I have going on with the main plot and all the little sub-plots going on. But is that a good idea?
I don’t think readers generally mind sequels to stories, but what they might mind is the amount of time it takes for the author to get their butt into gear to write them. There have been plenty of abandoned books out there, especially by indie authors, where the sequels take years to come out, or, well…never. I don’t want to rush a story to its conclusion, but I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to a sequel to this story since I’d really like to finish the last book in my Brimstone Trilogy that’s been waiting since 2022.
I suppose it’s a good dilemma to have. It means that I have a lot of creative ideas that mean I have a lot of writing to do. I hate having to make the fans of the story wait. I can write one story while editing another, but I wouldn’t dare try to write two stories at the same time. My brain won’t run that program.
All I can do is give a general timeline and hope for the best. When I near the end of Infectious, then I’ll have a clearer path as to what I should do. But, since I’ve already picked out the title to the sequel, I’m thinking I already know the answer.
If I were to give advice about sequeling, I think I would tell a fellow writer to take a look at the content of their story and determine a general length they want it to be. I would say, depending on the genre, to do some research on word counts for stories similar to yours. Find a target word count and if you can’t finish up the story within, say, 20k words within that count, then you might want to consider writing a sequel. I feel that if you have enough content for roughly a quarter of another book to be written, then it might be best to bite the bullet and shoot for another one.
Now, I suppose I should take my own advice and see how it goes.
Author Lauren Eason 