Prequels, Can They Ever Be Good?

The year was 1999. My generation hadn't had a new Star Wars movie in sixteen years. We believed the series was done. Over. The trilogy had been groundbreaking, but it was in the past never to be revisited. Then, George Lucas announced the release of The Phantom Menace.

It is difficult to convey to my Gen Z kids how big a deal this was, how over-the-top excited we all were to walk into that theater to see the first new Star Wars movie in sixteen years...

...and how thoroughly disappointed we were walking out.

I did not enjoy The Phantom Menace. A lot of us didn't, and this experience cemented my skepticism toward movie releases for decades.

It's pretty easy to find examples of prequel let-downs. The Star Wars prequel trilogy. The Scorpion King. The Grindelwald movies. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. X-Men Origins: Wolverine.* It happens so often that it raises the question: Is it possible for a prequel to be good?

* And I apologize if you love any of these examples I chose. Although you might be in the minority, I love that these bring you joy anyway. Don't let me or anyone steal that from you.

My answer—informed as it was by my teenage Star Wars disillusionment—used to be no, of course not, prequels, by definition, are a bad idea. But as more counterexamples appear, I'm beginning to change my mind. What makes prequels bad is what makes any movie bad (e.g., when it's a blatant cash grab) but they can be done well.

I think a good prequel requires three things:

• An intriguing question
• A story that stands on its own
• Characters who grow

Let's take a look.

An Intriguing Question

For a prequel to be interesting, it has to promise an answer that fans of the original actually want. Why does Maleficent hate the king and queen so much? How did Mike and Sully become friends? How did Vito Corleone become so powerful?

An intriguing question isn't enough to make a prequel good, but it's a necessary start. If the fans don't care about the mystery that connects the prequel to the original, then it's hard to care about the prequel at all.

Also...

The question can't be dumb. We don't care how Han swindled the Falcon from Lando or what Obi-Wan was doing in his cave while Luke grew up. We don't need to see how the wizard came to Oz or learn why Cruella de Vil wants to skin puppies. The originals give us enough information that we can fill these gaps in our head. The questions might be interesting, but they're not worth making a whole new story about.

The answer can't be dumb. Han Solo's name can just be his name; it doesn't have to be a thing. And God help me but the mystery of the Force was so much cooler without a scientific explanation. If you're going to use a prequel to answer some outstanding mystery, your answer has got to be cooler than any fan theory out there (spoiler: that's very hard to do).

A Story That Stands on its Own

If the goal of your prequel is solely to explain where the protagonist got all her character quirks, then it might not be a story worth telling. If you're going to write a whole novel (or make a whole movie) out of an origin story, that story should be just as compelling to a newcomer as it is to the fans.

How to do that is the same as telling any story: give the protagonist goals and motivations, obstacles, stakes, difficult choices... all the things that go into telling any story.

Do not just walk us through the protagonist's upbringing as they pick up each piece of their iconic outfit.

Characters Who Grow

This is part of telling a standalone story, but it's important enough that it demands its own section. In a prequel, your fans already know how or where the protagonist ends up. We know Elphaba becomes the wicked witch. We know Cassian ends up a jaded pilot for the Rebel Alliance. We know Obi-Wan ends up an old hermit in a cave on Tatooine. What we don't know is how they got there.

This can be great (an intriguing mystery even!) if your protagonist starts off in an unexpected place—Elphaba as a misunderstood sorceress with a heart of gold or Cassian as a down-on-his-luck orphan who wants nothing to do with the rebellion against the Empire.

It works less well if your protagonist starts in the exact same place, physically and developmentally, as they finish. The end of Revenge of the Sith had already placed Obi-Wan on Tatooine. He had already learned to keep his head down, just wanting to keep Luke and his family out of trouble from the Empire—the same place and with the same goals and motivation he had at the beginning of A New Hope.

This makes it very hard to care about his actions in the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries. He's already where we know he's going to end up! There's nothing he can learn (that wouldn't undercut the action of the original movies)! He doesn't really grow, so there's no compelling reason to watch.

Ensuring that your characters grow and change in the prequel can prevent this.

What a Good Prequel Can Do for You

Done well, a good prequel can be a joy to fans of the original while also fully entertaining the uninitiated. It can give your audience those dopamine hits of fan service while still delivering a new, fantastic story.

A good prequel can also make the original better—adding depth or new perspective to an old, familiar story. It can create new fans and make existing ones want to revisit that world again.

I'm still wary about prequels. More often than not, the backstories in the audience's heads are cooler than the one you can give them. But there are ways to do it well, to expand the world of your story and tell a new story that's worth telling.

You just need to care about it and put in the work.

Writing as Resistance

Politically speaking, a lot happened since I left. I knew it would—I was traveling to the US on Election Day, after all—but the results are not what I hoped. (According to current voting counts, they're not what a majority of voters wanted either.)

It's been almost a month since the election, and people are still hurting. Still scared. Still anxious. And why wouldn't they be? We don't yet know what will happen next. I know not everyone believes the US is headed toward an autocratic hellscape, but historical precedent does us few favors here.

To those of you who are worried like me: It's okay to be anxious. Feel what you gotta feel. I'm still considering what I can do in the coming months and years, but here's one thing I do know:

We can write.

Stories give us hope. When the protagonist gets back up after being left for dead, it makes us believe we can do the same. When the heroes win against all odds—when Katara defeats Azula, when Sam carries Frodo to Mount Doom, when Luke strikes the Death Star's core—it reminds us that those in power are vulnerable.

Even the coziest stories give us joy and an escape, and these are every bit as necessary as hope. Stories also share the power of love and connection. They remind us what we are fighting for.

Stories give us symbols. Alan Moore inspired the face of Anonymous, and Katniss's three-finger salute has been considered cause for arrest. Symbols are powerful. They remind us that we are not alone. They terrify oppressors by reminding them how outnumbered they are.

Stories foster empathy. Empathy is the antidote to fascism. It is vital to creating a world we can all live in together.

No matter what you feel about the present time, even if you feel powerless, know that your stories matter and are absolutely necessary.

There's a reason fascist regimes always ban books.

It is the same reason we need to write them.

Personal Status

Some quick, personal updates for those of you who have been lacking such things.

As I said in July, my long-term gamedev contracts ended, and I am all in on the freelance train again. Honestly, I'm happy about that. I love editing. It lets me help authors (which I love) and maintain an incredibly flexible schedule (which I need). Only problem is I have to constantly find jobs.

Here are some burners I've got going to address that:

• I'm a contractor for Scribendi, Inc., editing everything from resumes to research papers to admission essays. It's not my dream job (and the pay is only okay), but it keeps me somewhat afloat (and has done since 2017; I'm very thankful for them).
• I'm now also a contractor for Cambridge Proofreading (because Scribendi work was sparse, but my daughter said, "Hey, aren't there other companies like Scribendi?"—turns out she was right).
• I have recently contracted as an editor/coach with KN Literary Arts. This is very cool in theory. Among other things, I love the idea of coaching, and this would let me work on novels and memoirs. It's still early days, though. We'll see how this pans out in terms of stability.
• And of course, I'm always seeking clients right here on the site. These are my favorite (and not just because they pay the best). I am always excited when one of you sends me an e-mail about helping you with something you've written.

All of this is slow going, but it's going. There was a time, years ago, when I was getting clients semi-regularly and also, like, streaming and playing D&D online and stuff. I hope to find some of that again.

The hard part is building trust and patience in myself. There's a lot (A LOT) to be said for predictable work and income. But freedom's pretty great too. If I can create some stability with it, that would be amazing.

What about writing?

That's happening, but it's very much back-burner at the moment. It's difficult to allocate time for it when I could be making money instead, but I haven't quit yet. Just seeking a bit more freelance stability first.

Ah, but I do have something new sitting with Broken Eye Books. Gotta wait for that, though.

Publishing, man. It's slow.

And the kids?

Well, a bunch of them have recently graduated high school or are about to, which is going to change my schedule in unpredictable ways. Theoretically, I'll have more time when they leave and/or take care of themselves, but we'll see what happens.

Like Master Yoda says...

One last administrative note: I'll be traveling for a couple of weeks, and the blog will be quiet during that time. I should return by December at the latest. Subscribe or watch my socials to stay up to date.

What Improvement Actually Looks Like

One of my favorite games of all time and one of the hardest high-precision platformers I have ever played is Celeste. This game asks you to traverse a series of deadly rooms through a combination of jumps, dashes, and wall climbs. Most rooms can be traversed in a matter of seconds, though you will often die dozens of times before that happens.

Some rooms are much longer. A successful run through the final room, for example, can take more than two minutes. Here's a clip if you want to see it (SPOILER):

I spent hours of trial and error trying to traverse this room. My kids watched sometimes, and I found an interesting phenomenon: Every time I said, "I'm getting better! Look how far I can get," I would immediately die several times on the early, "easy" parts that I thought I had figured out.

It was frustrating (and embarrassing). I felt like I'd learned nothing, like my previous successes had been luck, and I was lying to myself that I was improving at all.

That's because, like most people, I believed this:

It makes sense, right? Put the time in, and you will get better (and you'll never go back down to a previous level, because you can't! You're better now!).

But what happened to me was this:

I would get consistently better and then suddenly get worse—a lot worse, in places that I thought I had already figured out. It led me to believe that I hadn't gotten better at all. I became disillusioned, frustrated, and discouraged.

I bet you're familiar with this feeling.

This pattern—trying to improve, getting better for a bit, then failing more than we think we should—can be seen over and over again in everything: playing piano, learning to snowboard, writing more words per day, lifting weights, breaking a bad habit, improving ourselves through therapy, and on and on.

It can be frustrating when we feel like we've slid backwards, like we're not improving at all and will maybe never improve.

But if you keep going, you find a strange, new truth:

Improvement doesn't happen in a straight line. It has peaks and dips and plateaus and more dips, but so long as you continue, it always, always goes up—even when it doesn't feel like it.

Failing repeatedly in Celeste (while telling my kids, "Look what I can do!") helped prove this to myself. I wanted to finish the room, and I got frustrated every time I died. To succeed, I had to change my goal from "finish the room" to "practice toward consistency."

I would celebrate the small victories: when I did an early bit of platforming well, when I became more consistent at a part that used to give me trouble, even when I died in a way I never had before. I wasn't reaching new lengths in the room, but I was slowly improving and, perhaps more importantly, enjoying every run even though I died hundreds(!) of times.

This applies to writing too. Maybe I don't hit 1,000 words every day, but I can celebrate that I am hitting 500 every day—or 200! Or 50! I can even celebrate that I just sat down to write multiple days in a row. I can celebrate writing a sentence or even simply opening my document without fear.

And when I fail at these things, I can remember that's part of the process too. Improvement doesn't happen in a straight line, and I'm going to fail sometimes. It's impossible not to! But forward is forward.

All of which is to say: don't give up. So long as you keep going, you are improving, even when it doesn't feel like it.

Trust the process.

Using Description to Convey Emotion

I have a confession. Historically, I have been very bad at description. I didn't like it. I skimmed it when I read it (do you know how much description there is in The Count of Monte Cristo or Les Miserables?), and I paid it little attention when I wrote it (I still do in my first drafts).

Over time, I recognized how description could be good, but I still thought that I wasn't good at it. I thought I wasn't "that kind of writer."

I have since learned that description is not only vital for grounding the reader, but it is also a useful—often critical—tool for conveying emotion.

And like every skill, it is something that can be learned.

A lack of description is one of the most common weaknesses I see when editing authors' fiction. I talked about grounding the reader before. Today, I want to talk about using that grounding to convey emotion.

The Con Artist and the Ninja

This example is adapted from an old WIP of mine. Domino is a young con artist, and Ko is basically a ninja. In this scene, they have just been arrested and are on their way to the governing authorities. Domino is worried that things aren't going as he planned.

Domino and Ko sat across from each other in the locked carriage on their way to see the Marshal. Sweat stained Domino's silk shirt. He'd hoped Ko would fight or at least try to escape. He didn't think the ninja would just turn himself in. The charges against them might have been trumped up, but there was enough real evidence available that Domino could be in serious trouble.

This short description is fine. Serviceable. We know who's here, where they are, and what they're doing, and the sweat on Domino's shirt even gives us a hint of his emotional state.

But we can do more. We might describe the carriage ride, for example, and use that to convey Domino's worries.

The wheels clattered across the cobblestones, jerking and jostling at every pothole. Domino felt every jolt in his chest.

The jolts don't directly tell us what Domino's feeling, but they imply it. If he were calm or happy, he wouldn't feel "every jolt in his chest." Instead, he might "sway with the rhythmic rocking of the carriage" or notice "the music of the wheels against the cobblestones." All of these accurately describe sound and feel of the carriage, but each one evokes different emotions.

We could also describe Ko a bit more, conveying not only how the ninja appears but how Domino feels about him.

Meanwhile, Ko sat perfectly still, eyes shut. He didn't even seem to be breathing—just sat there, irritatingly calm and measured.

Here, we get the contrast between Domino's and Ko's emotional states, and the word "irritatingly" tells us how Domino feels about it. In doing so, the reader can feel what Domino is feeling—not just worried about seeing the Marshal but frustrated that Ko doesn't feel the same.

That's probably enough description to paint the scene. (It might even be too much, but that's what editors are for.) Let's put it together and see:

Domino and Ko sat across from each other in the locked carriage on their way to see the Marshal. The wheels clattered across the cobblestones, jerking and jostling at every pothole. Domino felt every jolt in his chest. He'd hoped Ko would fight or at least try to escape. He didn't think the ninja would just turn himself in. Meanwhile, Ko sat perfectly still, eyes shut. He didn't even seem to be breathing—just sat there, irritatingly calm and measured.

Sweat stained Domino's silk shirt. The charges against them might have been trumped up, but there was enough real evidence available that Domino might be in serious trouble.

It doesn't take much, just an extra line here and there to paint more of the scene while also showing the emotions you want the reader to share.

Think about what's happening in the scene—what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or even tasted. Then, think about what the characters are feeling and use that to color what is described and how.

It'll take practice, and that's okay! The original passage I started with had been through several edits and beta reads, and I still found ways to improve it just now. (Kinda makes me wanna go back to this WIP, to be honest.)

Just keep writing, keep learning, and trust that you are improving, even when it doesn't feel like it.

Should You Keep Writing?

Like I said last week, publishing is a difficult business. And there will always come a time when you wonder whether you're wasting your time—whether you should even be writing at all.

How do you know when to keep going and when it's time to quit? Ultimately, only you can decide, but personally, I would first ask...

Do you enjoy it?

If you have time to write and you enjoy it—not getting published but the act of writing itself—then don't quit! Why would you? We only have a limited number of days on this Earth. You might as well spend them doing something you love.

But nothing is fun forever, so...

What if you don't enjoy it?

This is a harder question. If writing pays your bills, that's fantastic and maybe a good reason to do it. (MAYBE.) If it's not and you're just hoping to get rich, well... that's a bad idea, statistically speaking.

So, if writing doesn't bring you joy, and it's not sustaining your existence, then that begs a more difficult question....

Why are you writing?

Truth-telling time. I've been writing seriously for decades, but the last few years, I found an increasing fear every time I sat down to write. I enjoyed being done with something, but I only got that feeling once a year or something. I wasn't making money with my novels, and I had very low prospects of doing so.

All of that's par for the course, but I was also dreading the act of writing itself. The thought that I "had to" write every day was stressing me out.

It took me a lot of therapy and inner work to figure out that a large part of why I was writing was for external validation. I wanted people to read what I wrote and think I was cool—that I had worth. Turns out, that's not a great reason to write.

But I do love writing. My mind is spinning worlds and stories all the time, and I want them to go somewhere. I've done game design, D&D, novels, short stories, and I love them all! But novels are such a great medium for the stories I want to tell that I haven't been able to give them up yet. As I'm learning to let go of the need for validation (NOT! EASY!), my self-inflicted pressure to write has eased, and I've found myself enjoying the act of writing again.*

* Not always. It's still hard, but I'm motivated to work through it. Everything's a process.

Figure out why you're writing.

Your own motivation might be a mix of things, healthy and otherwise. And that's fine! Virtually all of our motivations are like that. But when writing or trying to get published becomes hard—and it will get hard!—understanding yourself is the only way you'll know whether it's worth it to you.

And fun fact! Even if you give up writing for a time, you can always come back to it. It's not like it's going anywhere, and you might learn a lot about yourself in the process.

Control What You Can... Let Go of What You Can't

Publishing is a difficult business. Millions of new books are published each year, yet the average book sells only 1,000 copies in its lifetime and fewer than 500 become NYT bestsellers. Traditional publishers account for maybe one million of those books, and still, that's only 1–2% of the projects submitted to them.

The odds of making it rich or even just making a living by writing novels are... not great.

I don't say this to be a downer. I say it because I love data and find it very useful for making plans and managing expectations. I say it because I'm also a writer who wants to be one of those statistics (the good ones, at least), and data helps me understand what I'm getting into.

Here's some slightly more encouraging data:

• More than 95% of books that publishers reject are "poorly written, have a bad or unoriginal premise, or are irrelevant."

They call it the slush pile, but it's entirely avoidable. As you improve your writing, you'll easily rise up above the slush. This is a thing you can control.

• Nearly 67% of sales are in authors' backlists.

The odds of good sales might be bad for one book, but they increase with each book you publish. As you write more, you sell more. This is also a thing you can control.*

* With self-publishing, at least.

In every area of life, there are aspects you can control and aspects you can't. You can't control whether somebody makes you angry, but you can control what you do with that anger. You can't control whether somebody likes you, but you can control whether you like yourself.

In publishing, you cannot control the publishers, the readers, the market, or virality. You cannot control whether people will buy or enjoy your book. You cannot control how much money you make or what people say about you. But there are things you can control.

You control your writing.

You decide what words go on the page and whether there are words at all. You can improve your skill through practice. You alone decide what and how many stories you tell.

You control your schedule.

You decide how many days you write, for how long, how many words. You decide whether you're going to write a ton in one sitting or a little at a time—and both are fine! You alone decide how to balance writing with the rest of your life in a way that brings you joy.

You control whether you keep going.

You decide if you will keep writing, take a break, or stop altogether—again, all are fine decisions so long as they are your decisions designed to fit your life!

If you want to keep writing no matter what, nobody can stop you. The more you do so, the better you'll get. If writing is something you want, then the only way to fail is to give up on it.

It's important to let go of what we can't control so that we can focus our energy on what we can. I'm not saying it's easy—I know from experience it's not!—but it's possible, and it's the only way to find joy in what we do.

Control what you can. Let go of what you can't.