Writing A Sequel

It’s been two years since the publication of 29 LOCKS, my YA novel about a 15 year-old boy navigating a dangerous childhood. The launch parties felt like the end of a wonderful but nail-biting process, and I certainly hadn’t given much thought to going through the whole thing again, especially as I had schools to visit and events to attend, from the Hay Literary Festival to libraries and literary societies.

But not long into finding my feet as an author, Rosemarie Hudson from HopeRoad called to tell me, ‘We’d like to publish a sequel in September 2023. Don’t keep your readers waiting!’

Gulp!

She was right, though; readers were waiting. These same questions came up again and again during my secondary school author visits: what happens next? Does Donny’s mum get better? What happened to his dad? Does Zoe become Donny’s girlfriend? Tell us!

Without realising it, these engaged young readers helped me to plot the sequel, 21 MILES, giving me an insight into what they wanted (and needed) to hear, and how they saw an older, wiser, more confident Donny move through his last teenage years towards adulthood. It was also the start of the war in Ukraine. Many children were preoccupied with the question of why Britain was welcoming desperate Ukrainian refugees but not those from other conflicts or those fleeing the effects of climate change. In this way, visiting schools allowed me to connect with the concerns of young readers and gave me ideas for my hero’s development.

Before I began to shape a new story, I considered the changes teenagers go through between 15 and 17; the new freedoms, independence and responsibilities. It’s a beautiful but vulnerable age when young people feel passionately about the world, their place in it and the future they will forge for themselves.

Having decided that the sequel would visit Donny as a 17-year-old, I thought about my own experiences at that age. I’d had a friend who, not long after passing her driving test, ‘borrowed’ her parents’ car to drive us to London for the day. Were we children or adults? How on earth did we get back in one piece?

As a sixth former, I thought I could stop nuclear proliferation, end poverty and shrink the ozone layer just by writing pieces for my school newsletter. I wanted things to be better. 

Certainly I was naive, but one thing I have not grown out of is worrying about young people, which is perhaps why I went to Calais in 2014 after reading about child refugees there whose numbers had risen to nearly a thousand. 

I found it shameful that just twenty-one miles from the coast of Britain people were living in makeshift shelters in the cold, filth and disease of a refugee camp called ‘The Jungle’ and along the French coast.

I collected donations of food, books and clothing with the help of parents, teachers and students at the school where I taught – many of whom were themselves refugees or the children of refugees. Then I filled my campervan and took the car-train to Calais.

During subsequent trips, I volunteered with a refugee charity, distributing meals and spending time talking to young people. On one occasion, I met a thirteen-year-old girl who begged me to smuggle her to England. I desperately wanted to help her find her family but knowing the law, I didn’t agree to take her. Instead, we swapped phone numbers and promised to keep in touch.

I am sure that the 17-year-old version of myself would not have thought twice about breaking the law on a point of safeguarding. I think about that girl often and hope she found her family and safety. Not long after we swapped numbers, her phone line went dead. Was she among the 400+ refugees known to have drowned in the Channel?

Years later, I was left with the ‘what if’ of her request and that became 21 MILES.

As a character, Donny remained so alive for me that I decided to connect this story of injustice and separation to 29 LOCKS, and see how he would respond to meeting the young refugees who had made such an impression on me. Would his bravery, openness and sense of justice make a difference? And what could we learn from teenagers who have travelled across the world to find safety and family?

In some ways, having a cast of already living and breathing characters in my head made the job of writing a sequel easier. My task was to set them in motion in the locations and situations I had experienced in Calais.

But writing a sequel is not as easy as this sounds. Deadlines are not open ended as they are when writing a debut. I had to quieten the fears that came from the success of 29 LOCKS; could I make it as good? 

But overall I found writing a sequel more straightforward than when I was teaching myself to write a novel from scratch. With my editor’s words ringing in my ears, I was able to self-edit mistakes before I wrote them. The novel needed as many drafts as 29 LOCKS, but it was easier to structure.

I also benefited from talking to teachers in a wide range of schools, many of whom wanted 29 LOCKS to be suitable for Year 7 as a class reader. I remembered this when planning 21 MILES; I kept it under 70,000 words, with chapters teachers could read and discuss within the span of a single lesson, and activities at the end. The result is a novel that I hope will be as moving and funny as 29 LOCKS, but with an in-built awareness of how it will be used by teachers and meet young readers’ expectations.

My top tips for sequel-writing?

●    Play with a new structure or time frame. The action in 29 LOCKS takes place over ten years; 21 MILES over a single day. Structural constraints can be very freeing! 

●    Listen to your readers at events and online. Respond to their needs and wishes in some way, especially if they are children or YA readers.

●    Remember what your first readers - beta readers, agent, editor, agent, authenticity reader - told you about your first novel. This saves an enormous amount of time. You know your weaknesses, so cut them off at the pass!

●    Re-read your first novel to ensure continuity - you’ll be surprised how much you forget! - but remember that characters and the way they think and speak can change subtly over time. I spent a lot of time thinking about how Donny’s idiolect would change after two years living outside London.

●    Remember George Saunders’ observation that writing a novel is like turning an transatlantic ship. It may not feel like it is moving, but each change - at word and sentence level - will alter its direction. Trust in your writing and keep working on those small incremental revisions until the whole novel is facing the right direction.

●    If you’ve done it once, you CAN do it again!

Nicola Garrard’s first novel, 29 LOCKS, was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and the Mslexia Children’s Novel competition, and longlisted for the Branford Boase Award 2022 and the Berkshire Book Award. It was picked by Suzi Feay in the Financial Times as one of their ‘Best Books of 2021’. 21 MILES is her second book. She has appeared at the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts, Chichester Festival and Petworth Festival Literary Week and on BBC Radio. Nicola gives regular talks for schools, libraries and colleges, as well as prisons. Her words and poetry have been published in The Frogmore Papers magazine, IRON Press Publishing, Mslexia magazine, The Guardian and the Writers & Artists Children’s Yearbook 2023 and 2024, and Guide to Getting Published.