The more difficult thing about writing the sequel to my novel for me is that everything is now planned. My first novel was written 'Stephen King style', which is to say I sat down, began writing and things just fell in place. Although I had an idea where I was going after the first fifty pages I did not plan that well. Fixing some inconsistencies is not that hard and the structure felt natural to most of my test-readers. But with the story in the sequel growing more complex, partially because it was not simple to begin with, and with two different time lines, things are getting trickier. The most satisfying part of experimenting in writing is the 'fractured narrative' and how it reflects the narrator's mind. The more difficult parts have to do with the untangling of the mysteries central to the story's myth arc.
This is separate from open endings or unreliable narrators, where obfuscation is part of the flavour and the reader has to put things together themselves. My first novel ends with a small victory and many mysteries solved, but larger mysteries and driving questions remain for the characters. But its easy to set up a mystery in a grand narrative but choosing the right moment to unknot one has to be planned carefully. If the dialogue, discovery or the tone is slightly off then the reader will not find it satisfying.
Examples; I'm a big fan of LOST, but I think that the final season did a terrible job at unknotting what the authors bothered to explain (the things they chose not to explain is a different subject altogether). Compared to the rest of the series, a series that truly pushed the boundaries of serial story-telling, it was not really satisfying. It could be because of a stretched-out, padded production, or because they did not really know what they were building up to. Or perhaps nothing could satisfy. Either way, it could have been better. A more extreme example is the original series of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, where budget-cuts and an extremely troubled production meant the animators literally had to throw something together. When the company got around to making a movie that was supposed to wrap everything up they made something somewhat incomprehensible and morally horrifying, though many think it was out of spite to counter the death threats the director received for the series' ending. Congratulations. (I should add there is a tetralogy of movies that's supposed to remedy that, two of which are so far available on DVD). Most of the back story was eventually released through various other means, which is not useful if it has direct bearing on the events but is never relevant to the narrative. These days only think The Lord of the Rings can get away with appendixes. But I digress.
The danger I'm dealing with is ultimately to write
like I'm connecting dots; like I've been given a list of plot points and must draw lines of prose to make sure they connect. The flow of
narrative, information and twists have to feel natural, or else they
wont feel like anything at all except arbitrary. A good instance I
averted was in one chapter where the stakes of the second novel are
laid bare. Despite being important I cut it from the chapter and decided
to put the information in much further down. The relaying of the
info was too sudden and too convenient, and I think the readers would sense this and object. This cosmetic cut taught made me realize that writers who write multi-layered stories must not be lazy and not just dump things on the reader because its convenient, otherwise you lose them. If you don't care about the plot, your characters wont really care either and neither would your audience.
