Writing 2's and 3's

Current Desk Top

I am currently neck deep in the plotting throes for books two and three of my YA Steampunk series, The Blackburn Chronicles.  Having received a green light on the series and a synopsis request for the second and third book, I began to really wrestle with not what to include...but what to take off the table.

Book one, The Tremblers, was such an amazing ride to write. The genre is certainly one in which you can just reach high into the aether for inspiration. From floating cities to underground caverns...it was so much fun!  And the characters were certainly a pleasure to meet and mold.

However...

Book two is both an exhilarating opportunity and a daunting task. Over-arching themes and exploration of deeper personality and psychological issues are easier here because the character is more fleshed-out after an entire arc in the first book.  She is not the debutante she was in chapter one...yet not exactly who she needs to be and therein lies the challenge.

It needs to be larger in scope, more sweeping in consequences, and yet more personal in stakes.

As I go back in my memory over the trilogies I've enjoyed as a reader, I hope to learn as an author how to maintain the fervor and fascination of a first book and yet deliver the meat so essential in a second and third volume.

So...

My question to you readers and authors out there...what do you look for or hope to see in a second and third book?  Continuation of story?  Deeper change in the character? Something else entirely...?

Until next time -- Go Write!

+Raquel Byrnes