Previously, on . . .
By Dave King | February 20, 2024 |
In the comments section of last month’s article on how series can go astray, someone asked how to set up a sequel for readers who haven’t read the first book. How much recapping of the first book do you need to do to bring them up to speed?
The answer, almost always, is less than you think.
Ask yourself how much your sequel’s plot answers questions you raised in the first book. Most of the time – in most mystery series, for instance — the plot of your sequel is completely independent of what came before. There may be aspects of your characters’ lives that develop from book to book. But the stories themselves are self-contained, with the end of the book answering the questions asked at the beginning. Readers don’t need a recap on the history of the friendship between Archie and Fritz in every new Nero Wolfe novel.
Or consider how an expert – Sue Grafton – does it.
The opening paragraph of A is for Alibi is all background on Kinsey Milhone – her age, where she lives, why she likes where she lives, what she does. Less than a page later, we get a paragraph on her office and the nature of her business. This is a fair amount of background right off the bat, but it’s easier to digest because we get it all in Kinsey’s distinctive voice. (“I don’t have pets. I don’t have houseplants. I spend a lot of time on the road and I don’t like leaving things behind.”) The information is also mixed with the fact that she’d just killed someone for the first time, which catches readers’ attention despite the information dump. And the background is over by the middle of page two, when we’re into the main plot.
The opening pages of Y is for Yesterday (setting aside the first chapter, which is effectively a prologue) give us, if anything, even less information, even though there are 24 whole books of background behind them by this point. Same breezy voice (“I’m also single and cranky-minded, to hear some people tell it.”). Same quick summary of Kinsey’s living situation, her landlord, and the weather at the moment. Same shocking revelation — that she was recently nearly killed and has since gotten a concealed carry permit and stopped jogging at night – to heighten the tension. And within just a couple pages, we’re in the middle of the current case.
The recapping question gets trickier when the plots of the two books are sort of intertwined – where what happened in the previous book affects decisions made in the current one. Over the 32 books of Anne Perry’s Pitt series, Pitt moves from being a police inspector to being knighted by Victoria. In between, he goes through various career ups and downs, and his feelings about recent changes affect how he reacts in the current crisis. When this happens, Perry inserts only as much information as readers need to understand what’s going on.
If you’re in this situation, you can also work background in unobtrusively with interior monologue – current events remind your characters of what came before. Or you can have a recurring character fill in a new character on the background.
All novels have a backstory. And all writers tend to put in more backstory than they actually need. It’s an understandable temptation. After you’ve put in the work developing your settings and your characters’ history, you want to showcase the work in your novel. This is especially true if you have an entire book – or several – full of backstory clogging your mind as you write.
Resist the temptation. Readers really get to know your characters not from learning where they’ve been but from seeing who they are now. Of course, who they are now grows out of where they’ve been. But as long as you have a solid grasp on their characters – and that’s one of the gifts of writing an earlier book about them – you can bring them to life in front of your readers. And that’s all they really need.
I invite you to join in — and keep checking back on — the discussion. You can often learn more from the comments than the article itself. And if you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, feel free.
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
[coffee]
Good points — it really is too easy to get sucked into background dumps, especially when it’s a second book and the reader either remembers it or is willing to race ahead anyway.
A related point is, often a character’s best defined not by the facts but by how they interpret whatever they’re dealing with. “The bartender sees the crowd, the interior decorator sees the barstools, and the SEAL is counting the exits.” Putting the reader properly in the character’s viewpoint (and in an opening scene that brings that out) counts for far more than slowing down to sum up the facts, and it can justify humming along and leaving most of that for later. As long as what’s said still *fits* with the character, the backstory, and the last book — and knows when to make it clearer and then move on.
Ken, you’re absolutely right. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
(I think you did.)
Great post. Though I am not writing a series, many of your comments could be applied to longer novels. “Readers get to know your characters not just from where they have been, but where they are now.”
As I say, every novel has a backstory, and every writer wants to put in more backstory than they need.
Thank you for this, Dave. I ran smack into this dilemma when I began drafting Book Two in a series. One of the things I started doing was reading series (serially!) to observe how the others do it. At present I’m in the ninth book of Bernard Cornwell’s Last Kingdom series, which is not the genre I write. But it hardly matters. Craft is craft, and he has the backstory thing down.
Cornwell is another example of a skilled writer. And it can get even more tricky to summarize your backstory when that backstory involves obscure Dark Age Saxon history. Can you go into more detail on what you’ve learned from him?
He seems to have struck a balance between not boring a ‘consecutive’ reader with backstory, but giving a new reader enough to not be lost. And he does often let other characters carry the load in a snippet of ‘do you remember when’ dialogue. Also, throughout the books, he revisits and circles back to locations from earlier books, making the giving of information from the past feel natural rather than shoehorned in.
I have found Anthony Horowitz did a great job in recapping just bits of Magpie Murders in his follow-up Moonflower Murders. The pertinent bits are woven in as recollections of the protagonist. The result is a cosy familiarity if you have read the first, but certainly unnecessary to have done so.
I haven’t read the followup, but you make a good point that I’d missed. Keeping your recapping to a minimum not only lets readers who skipped the earlier books get into the story easier, it’s less likely to bore readers who have read the earlier books. You want to generate a sense of familiarity rather than impatience.
Hello Dave. I’ve put myself in the position you describe: leaving matters in a previous book to be resolved in the next (books two and three in my mystery series). Since only one reader expressed frustration (she hadn’t read book two), I think I brought it off. All I would say is that approaching every book as a stand-alone is always a good idea. That’s what I consciously sought to do with my series. The trick is to give seasoned readers a sense of belonging or familiarity without raising confusing questions for new arrivals. Thanks for another valuable post.
I remember working with you on the second book of the series. And you did get the balance right. Enough background to understand your characters’ reactions without making them feel like they’d read two books in one.
I SO needed this. Thank you for this timely post, Dave.
Happy to be of service.
Dave, your post came at just the right time. I’m writing a sequel and have rewritten the first page over and over! Trying to establish where the characters are years later. Even though the main character is married, by the 7th year, a new worry is on her mind, that her husband is now sick and tired of her and wants more in his life. This is prompted by seeing the movie, “The Seven Year Itch.” The theme speaks of possible infidelity. The main actor taken by blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe. His family away for the summer. In the debut book she had not been good enough for the physician boyfriend. All stemmed from her parent’s divorce when she was 15-years old, pushed aside and unwanted. The beginning now setting reflects where she is now in nursing with a measure of contentment where she lives, but she questions her marriage and physician husband’s behaviors. That’s page one. Page two starts the story and how she works through this with her best friend and boss at the hospital. Mindful of info dump, I shortened the history, and related it to the now. Not easy, writing a sequel and getting it right. 📚🎶 Christine
Hey, Christine. Sorry I missed this.
And from what you’ve said, it sounds like you really don’t need much more backstory in the second book than you gave in the first. The first had tension developing out of the heroine’s past — that divorce. The second seems to have a new source of tension from the same source. The backstory is a bit longer, but it’s essentially the same backstory.
I’m not sure you need to tell any of it to readers at the beginning of the story. It should be possible to tell readers what they need to know through flashback and dialogue as the story progresses. Of course, I haven’t actually read the manuscript, so take all of this with an appropriate amount of salt.
As I said, writers generally include too much information rather than two little. Try cutting the first page and see how your opening reads.
Dave, I appreciate your comment. I read the sequel’s first page again, and immediately cut the first 3 paragraphs. All backstory. New. Titled: August 1968. (Shortened version. There’s more descriptive words)) I kept the setting; lake view, shorefront home’s peaceful view (described it). How the main character left work at the hospital, changed from her nurse’s lab coat & scrubs to blue jean shorts and tie-dyed tee-shirt. Her long brown hair shaken loose from a required hairnet. On a screened in porch, she gazed out on the lake and backyard. Watched her husband and young son play catch with a baseball. As good as her life got, a new fear surfaced that evening. In town at the Palace theatre, she & her husband took in the comedy-romance, “The Seven Year Itch.”
(Second page goes into the why, which is a worse fear she had about her worthiness in the first book that anyone would stay with her (divorced parents and she was pushed aside). She got into dialogue with her best friend and ER boss. Backstory sprinkled into that. And she got advice what to do about it. I’m back in track thanks to you. 📚🎶 Christine
Good stuff, Dave. Thanks. I write series crime fiction and read a lot of it, and I like to see the impact of past crimes, investigations, and injuries on the protagonist, especially an amateur sleuth. That might involve a bit of backstory to set up the reference to the ongoing physical or emotional effects, but only a bit, and when done well, the focus remains on the present.
Absolutely true.
The way I think of it is, you would include the backstory of your earlier books the same way you would include the backstory of your characters in the first book. You may know the backstory in more detail, but your readers don’t have to.
Good post, Dave. As a reader, I avoid picking up a book that’s midway in a series precisely to avoid the clumsy, often poorly-written info dump you described.
That’s one way to avoid the risk.
Something I’ve seen with popular series that took a while to catch on? The first two or three books will be published to modest success and a slowly growing readership. Then when the readership gets big enough, the publisher will collect the earlier books into an omnibus collection. This happened with Cynthia Harrod Eagles’ Bill Slider series, for instance.
Another reason to make all of your books work as standalones is so you can grow your readership slowly, drawing more readers in as the series progresses.