Back to the Future was intended to be a standalone movie.
When it was a huge success, the studio asked Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis for a sequel. The script for that sequel was so long that they broke it up into two parts.
The first movie had wrapped up all of the loose ends – except the ending where Doc Brown comes back from the future to tell Marty that his future kids are in trouble. This was never meant to set up a sequel, but simply as a funny closing scene.
The problem was that the emotional beats from the first film had also been concluded. Marty’s fear of failure, his father’s similar introversion, the problems his family had (alcoholism, lack of motivation). So what to do in the sequels?
Back to the Future II introduces a few new beats: suddenly, Marty can’t stand anyone calling him ‘chicken,’ and his future fell apart after he was injured during a road race (from someone calling him ‘chicken,’ natch). None of this shows up in the first movie…because they hadn’t planned for sequels.
I wrote Talio’s Codex as a standalone novel. And now we’re into sequels…or at least the first sequel. The emotional beats were all wrapped up:
- Talio’s return to the law and trying to regain his license
- Talio and his facial scar
- Pazli’s internal religious conflict
- The big conspiracy
- Resolving the love triangle
Now what? I used the following four steps to outline a series of sequels and emotional beats that would feel like they flowed naturally from the first book, instead of being tacked on.
Back To The First Book
In Talio’s Codex, I’d deliberately left in what I call hooks and pegs: bits and bobs that were never followed up, but provided places I could hang later plots on. Some examples:
- The medical-legal aspect: This became the primary focus for Talio Rossa and the Elixir of Life
- Emara’s parents
- Cale’s father
- Vinne’s (sweet, sweet Vinne) internal conflict about his sexuality
Cale deciding to file a hearing to have his father’s care removed (a right-to-die issue) in the sequel follows naturally from what we see of him and his father in the first novel, for example.
Nobody Calls My Plot Threads Dangling
Next, I took a close look at the reviews for Talio’s Codex. Yes, it’s said never to read your reviews, but I’m a contrarian.
Talio’s Codex starts off slowly, but then accelerates into a pell-mell pace at the end. That means a Sanderlanche-type affair with a whiz-bang set of endings…but also not a lot of time for the main characters or readers to reflect on some huge changes that happen.
Talio Rossa and the Elixir of Life gives me the opportunity to go through the emotional impacts in much greater detail, and to elaborate on issues that were (as more than one reviewer suggested), sort of swept under the rug. In the sequel, I handle:
- Talio’s guilt/PTSD over another character’s death (no spoilers)
- Talio’s continued journey towards accepting his facial scar
- The troubled mixed-religion relationship at the core of the novels
- Talio and Gawani
Where We’re Going, We Do Need Roads
I started planning out the entire series of novels (if I have the chance to write all of them, and get them published). Even a bare-bones outline of the series enables me to drop in foreshadowing and elements I’ll need in later novels. Some examples in Elixir of Life (no spoilers):
- I introduce a location that will be part of a key action sequence two books later
- A throwaway line about one character will be crucial in the next novella. By putting it in here, I avoid the problem of it ‘coming out of nowhere.’
- The idea that gold is incredibly rare (which is why their currency is based on silver). Not quite sure what I’m going to do with that, but as I mentioned earlier, it’s a peg I can use later.
- Emara’s parents, again.
- The prayer wheel. Oh, the prayer wheel…
Whoa, This is Heavy
Lastly, I thought about themes.
In Talio’s Codex, the two main themes are that culture is downstream from law, and that formal systems of rules do not take into account every contingency.
I wanted to go further in the sequel. In Elixir of Life, Talio and Pazli face ethical dilemmas that law and religion can’t help at all with. They must struggle to define their own ethics and morality, and often make wrong decisions and have to face the consequences.
I think of it like a 1980s video game: beat one level, and you’re up to the next level of difficulty. The ethical/moral challenges faced in book 2 are far tougher than in book 1. No idea how I’ll up it for book 3, however…
Enchantment Under the Sequel
I’m revising Talio Rossa and the Elixir of Life, and hope to have it to the publisher by year-end for a projected publication date in 2025 (hoping, hoping). With any luck, these four principles I discussed above will help it feel like a natural sequel to Talio’s Codex, and not something bolted on to what was meant as a standalone novel.