I saw The Hobbit the other day! Brilliant film! I was quite wary and very much prepared to dislike it after hearing a lot of middling comments about it, but ended up being completely blown away. Yes, it was very long, but it didn’t feel very long. I could have quite happily sat down and watched the new two films straight away had they been released (I did need to go for a wee halfway through though, and I have a strong bladder – let that be a warning to you when deciding on how big a fizzy drink you want to buy at the concessions stand!)

The film’s an absolute bloody joy to watch, pretty much everyone involved nails The Hobbit completely. Perhaps that’s the problem though. The Hobbit was a very different book to Lord of the Rings. Maybe the people who disliked the film went in expecting to see Lord of the Rings 4, when what they got was a much more fun adventure film. If The Hobbit was the same tone as Lord of the Rings, then half the characters would have been horribly dead by the halfway point. Rather than gritty fantasy we have fun fantasy, and it’s really refreshing. Doctor Who rides a sleigh powered by rabbits, the evil Goblin King is voiced by Dame Edna Everage, and once Benedict Cumberbatch pops up in the next film as Smaug, opposite Martin Freeman’s Bilbo, then I think we’ll get some very interesting edits of Sherlock!

Despite being a sequel that is a prequel to Lord of the Rings, coming after it helps it a lot. It expands Middle Earth in a lot of ways, and adds some interesting and fun twists on things. The actual structure of the film is very close to Fellowship of the Ring as well, which helps demonstrate the lightness of tone (for example, Gandalf vs the Balrog and Gandalf vs the Goblin King are at the same points in both films, and not wanting to spoil things, very different!) Ironically, coming after Lord of the Rings strengthens the Hobbit, whereas I think had it come first it might have suffered somewhat.

That’s the funny thing though. Yes, the Hobbit is released after Lord of the Rings. It’s a sequel. But it’s set before the events, so it’s a prequel. Really though, it’s neither of those. Because the book of the Hobbit was published first; Lord of the Rings followed 17 years later.

Imagine that. Lord of the Rings, one of the greatest achievements of modern English Literature (whether you like it or not, you can’t deny that), was a sequel (it was originally titled ‘The New Hobbit).

This is relevant because I’ve noticed a lot of ‘sequelitis’ encroaching on the site as of late. A week back, the entire feature box was jam packed with sequels or adaptions or alternate version of other people’s stories. There are sequels to sequels and stories with are pretty much carbon copies of others just with Rainbow Dash swapped for Fluttershy or whatever. A slim minority are good, but the vast majority are absolute rubbish, and yet people lap them up.

Look, I know how it works. You write a good story. Perhaps it’s called ‘Rarity loves Fluttershy’. It does well, really well. It’s your most popular story. You get thousands of hits on it, whereas before you got tens. You get addicted to the sweet sweet hit of success. You want that again, you don’t want to risk going back to being ignored. So you write ‘Rarity loves Rainbow Dash’. Sure it’s not as popular, but it still gets thousands of hits, and all you’ve had to do is swap out Fluttershy for Rainbow Dash! Then comes ‘Rarity loves Twilight Sparkle’ and again your built-in audience leaps for it, even if it is almost exactly the same. Soon you’re scraping the barrel with ‘Rarity loves Bloomberg’ but you know the saying, if you build it, they will come’.

Perhaps you’ve never had a hit but want one? What better way to get noticed than to write a sequel to someone else’s popular story? As we’ve noticed, people barely look at the names of the writers anyway; before they realise they’re reading an inferior copy of their favourite story they’ve already given you the coveted thumbs up. ‘My Roommate is a Small Village in the Algarve’ can leap up to number 1 before anyone realises it’s not the same writer as the original it’s aping.

Maybe you just have no ideas of your own. Thinking up stuff is hard, after all! Why not adapt an already popular film/computer game. Bioshock is popular, why not just write a story which is literally the plot of Bioshock with the characters names ripped out and pony names put in their place. Fans of the game will upvote it because they like the game, rather than actually liking the story. Again, instant fanbase!

You’ve written a popular story but are worried your readership has tailed off? Well, why not write a ‘sequel’ that is a barely disguised next chapter? Your fans will be all ‘oh, new story by FAMOUS WRITER’ and leap on it, pushing it into the featured box and making you even more famous! Don’t worry though, because your story can include the words “This story is a sequel to ‘The Adventures of Turnip, the Beige Triple-Horned Alicorn’ and will LITERALLY make NO sense if you haven’t read that already so you better read it now, bucko!” This will double your hits because people are forced to read your old stories to understand your nonsensical new ones!

This isn’t counting the opportunities to grab a popular fic, rip part of it out and replace it as your own. Cue the five million “My Little XXX” stories that infest this site.

I know it’s only fanfiction. I know. It doesn’t really matter. But come on, have some class! Just because you’re writing a sequel doesn’t mean you have to throw away literally everything you know about writing to eke out a poor carbon-copy of the original. Just changing a character is not enough reason for a story to exist; it needs to stand on its feet on its own merits, not hanging off a superior original!

It’s fine to write a sequel, as long as you do something with it! If I wanted to read the original story, I’d read the original story! A sequel should grapple with the original’s ideas, it should expand on the themes and ideas, take things in new and unique directions which you couldn’t do if there wasn’t a previous work. There’s nothing wrong with writing crossovers or adaptions as long as you add your own unique spin on things (because again, if you wanted to read the original, you’d read the original). There’s some fantastic fics out there which are based on films and games, but also lots of rubbish ones where lazy writers just do a cut-and-paste job with a few names.

There is something wrong with the idea of a sequel where you need to have read the original. That’s not a sequel, that’s another chapter. Even the most incompetent writer can reintroduce concepts (after all, the concepts were introduced for a first time!). There should be no occasion where a sequel cannot also stand alone. It’s also against the rules of the site to upload new chapters as new stories. If you find yourself writing the words “You need to read story XXX before you can begin to understand this one”, then you’re doing it wrong.

The same goes for readers too. Don’t just randomly mash the upvote/favourite buttons because you see a story that is a sequel to one you like, or is an adaption of your favourite film. Read it first, judge it on its own merits. ‘My Roommate is a Potplant’ might actually be written by an insane clown who lives on a graveyard and posts to fimfic by shouting “BEEP” down a phone loudly; just because it’s a sequel to something you like doesn’t automatically make it good!

Don’t lower your standards. Just because something is a sequel doesn’t mean it needs to be a boring retread. Silence of the Lambs is a sequel! The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is a sequel! They can stand on their own two feet! There wasn’t an announcement at the beginning of Wrath of Khan telling everyone to leave and watch Star Trek the Motion Picture before they were allowed to see that one!

Again, yes, I know it’s only fanfiction. But let’s have a bit more originality and effort put into things, on all sides. A story needs to have a reason for existing, and if that reason is “I want to get lots of hits with zero effort,” then you’re doing it wrong and you’ve become the Hollywood sequel-churning machine which you all hate.

Let’s do it right!

TL;DR: If you’re going to write a sequel, make sure it has a reason for existing beyond “I want to do exactly the same thing again”.