Planning for sequels

This isn't about a specific work of mine, but something I've been grappling with in general: how does one give a work enough interesting plot, to make the multiple pieces of media it spans worth reading/watching/playing?

The Lord Of The Rings can be summed up as: "kill Sauron by destroying the Ring". The whole Star Wars saga is "the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker", Avatar The Last Airbender is "master three types of bending before Sozin's Comet arrives", and Harry Potter is "stop the return of Voldemort". From these examples, I can tell that a work benefits from a relatively simple metaplot, even if the actual proceedings get very convoluted - Kill Bill parts one and two, for example, have the metaplot of intentionally causing the death of a fellow named William.

But how do you keep this metaplot from becoming about collecting or disposing of plot coupons or plot devices? Even works like Kill Bill or Scott Pilgrim have characters that are more device than person: the Bride has to kill four named characters (plus mooks) before she can kill Bill, and Scott has to kill seven evil exes (plus mooks) before he can win the heart of Ramona.

So are plots of multi-part stories inevitably about collecting things (Horcruxes), destroying things (the One Ring), or getting past 'gates' that allow you to continue (learning Water, Earth, and Firebending, killing members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, killing evil exes)? Is there any other way to do it while still having a strong metaplot?

I think the thing is that without such devices, there is the risk of not having a good point to make a "climax" for each installment. I don't think you need that to make a satisfying string of sequels, but you've got to have something that serves as a big event as the end of each film without killing the plot forever (or at least so convincingly that you make later sequels seem forced).

Look at Star Wars, that isn't about collecting things or going through pre-determined "checkpoints." Look at Saw for that matter; although the metaplot sort of suffers in that series because one can say the writers didn't give enough of a damn about their story, a steady plot thread is maintained due to the complexity of Jigsaw's plans, as well as how many plot points are left mysterious.

As for HOW you make such a plot, there are many ways to go about it, depending a lot on how complex/long of a plot you want. You can have main characters win and lose several indecisive but character-building conflicts before one big climax, you can have several installments with different sets of characters converging, you can have one character trying a number of things in different installments to reach their goals...

edited 24th Jul '11 9:44:40 AM by DoctorDiabolical

I don't think Avatar's "learn the bending arts" are technically plot coupons, but I could be wrong.

Either way, there's nothing inherently BAD about plot coupons either. As you wrote, Harry Potter does it and that series is solid. It's what happens between point A and B that makes or breaks the awesomeness.

I did it via worldbuilding. I make stories where the planned sequel is merely in the setting. Characters can talk about what happened before hand, but it's usually a different set of characters and a totally different plot. Sometimes it'll be immortal characters so they can come back for the sequel but do different things.

For example, I had one plot where the Grim Reaper is framed, has to convince his parents, the gods, to not kill everything, and to do so he has to gather enough armies to stall them and kill the angels and demons, who are the real masterminds. The sequel is about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who work for the gods, on a totally different continent, about some totally unrelated problem in the world. I just dropped random worldbuiling and foreshadowing hints in, and boom, if I ever feel like doing a sequel, I have all the groundwork laid out.

There are two qualities that a sequel needs. The first is to be a worthwhile work in its own right. The second is to have a story that's not over yet.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you're probably familiar with the first one.

We'll take a few examples to illustrate the second. The original Star Wars trilogy kept going because Vader yet lived, and so did the Empire; while these went on, the story could never end. This extended into the EU, and it's not a coincidence that the EU's lesser children were usually the ones that blew it on the Empire connection, (the Jedi Academy trilogy, Darksaber, The Crystal Star), while its darlings usually incorporated it well (Timothy Zahn's works).

You can say something similar about Harry Potter. The plot coupon nature of the Horcruxes was in the end secondary to the fact that Voldemort and his Death Eaters still posed a threat. The Horcruxes were a part of that, something that had to be overcome before the threat could be dealt with. You could make a similar argument regarding At LA and learning bending styles, with the important exception that had it been possible at an earlier time not all the plot coupons would have been required.

One of the reasons why comic-book superheros have lasted so long is that Superman's struggle for truth, justice, and the American way may eventually end (today's a better time to be alive than any other in history and all trends continue to improve), but not within the lifetimes of anyone we could specify. Batman and Spiderman are still around because the fight against crime will last as long as crime remains an option. The X-men will be with us as long as we have prejudice.

Sequels depend on defining your conflict as something that cannot be eliminated in a single go.

edited 24th Jul '11 2:21:33 PM by Night

^^ I kinda did the same thing of sorts. I intentionally planned out a trilogy and divided the whole story I have into three parts. (Each part on its own can stand alone in terms of a concrete beginning and a relatively concrete conclusion however Continuity Lockout I expect to be in full swing for many things.)

Indeed, it works very well. Trying to think about it in terms of "same characters, new story" will make your life hard. Instead, it's easier to think "same setting, different characters, new story." If it really must be about the same characters, with zero additions or changes, it will be really hard to avoid plot recycling. In the one plotline I had with immortal characters, I just made sure that not all of them were. Thus, I had a different Cast of Snowflakes for each round, and writing up a new plot and whatnot was simple because the worldbuilding was geared up for it.

I avoid plot recycling (well excessive amounts of it) by planning all the major plot points through in advance. Connecting each is an exercise in freewriting with a full sense of awareness what I have and have not done plotwise.

Also each installment has a fundamental shift to it. From one conflict to another, from one antagonist to another (with the previous antagonist basically joining protagonists essentially), each new twist and change reflecting the flow of the overworld arc.

Yeah, basically. I always get a bit too bogged down in the worldbuilding, though. I'll spend days deciding all the different pros and cons between a chemical laser or a railgun/coilgun and whether or not it's realistic or not. In a steampunk setting. Otherwise, it's much simpler to plot things out in advance, for me, than to try and go "ok, character X does Y and Z, go."

Thus is why I will never do Na No Wri Mo. I'd sit down and immediately start clawing my eyes out because I'd have no time for worldbuilding or character plotting. That, or I'd cheat and come up with crap in the 11 months before hand.

One of the most important things about sequels to me is avoiding some kind of character-development Bag of Spilling. Having someone go through a huge amount of trouble in the original only to do it again in a sequel gets really annoying.

I wouldn't call them plot coupons, more plot...gates. Like, you still sort of collect them, but they're things you have to do, not get.

That's some damned good advice.

So the generally agreed upon idea is either leave the original open-ended enough, or write a giant story in one go and split it into multiple parts?

I've created a Dark Future setting in which I can have any number of stories by bringing in different characters and even bring back some or all of the characters from earlier stories if I find a worthwhile story for them.

And as they are people living in a problematic world, there's bound to be plenty of "newsworthy" stuff to report at various stages in their lives. e.g. one group of characters is a team of bodyguards. Obviously I don't write about the hundreds of times they get a contract to protect someone, go through the lengthy "advance" then take their protectee to the venue and back again with no hassles. Instead I write about the jobs that are unusual - like having to find a missing person (they're not P Is, this is "fish out of water" territory).

When that's finished, they're still doing very dangerous work in a dangerous place. If I can't think of another suitably interesting storyline for them, I've still got the setting and the potential to tell a story about other people living there. And then maybe later I get an idea for another plot for the bodyguards - like someone has decided to murder their leader or at least attempts to or someone tries to set them up or something and there's a story worth telling set a couple of months or years after the first one.

It's not an original way of doing it - Larry Niven uses the same idea to great effect in his Known Space universe (and other universes) - but it works to create free-standing sequels that can be read singly or even out of order without any problems.

Prequels can even be written if a suitable plot occurs to me.

Depends entirely on one big decision:

Are you planning on making the work able to be standalone neither requiring nor needing prequels/sequels or are you planning a multi-part story from the get-go?

Multi-part from the beginning.

I create a setting, then write stories within that setting. Rarely do I use the same characters for multiple stories, though.

^^ Then write the full story out and divide it amongst however many sequels. It's better to have a trilogy and be cancelled after 1 or 2 parts than make a standalone and have to Retcon and hackney up some weak ass sequel.