Every author publishing a sophomore novel should prepare for the question, “Is your second book a sequel to the first?” Sometimes, the answer is a straightforward yes or no. Sometimes, the answer isn’t quite as clear. In that case, the odds are good that the author has written a companion novel. But what exactly is a companion novel, and why do authors write them?
Generally speaking, companion novels are books that exist in the same world but focus on different characters and tell different stories. Oftentimes, the main character in a companion novel will be a minor character from the previous book, one the author or audience felt deserved their own story. A great example of this is Gary D. Schmidt’s Okay for Now, a companion novel featuring a main character first introduced as a side character in the Newbery Honor-winning book The Wednesday Wars. Ingrid Law’s Savvy, Scumble, and Switch make for another great study of how to use familiar characters to create companion novels.
But it’s not always the case that companion novels have to share characters. For example, I always knew that I’d explored everything that I wanted to explore in The Wolf’s Curse, and the character arcs all felt complete to me. At the same time, I thought of the story as my middle grade “death” book, and I really wanted to explore what a “birth” book would look like. Because the magic/mythology in The Wolf’s Curse was so specific, I didn’t feel like I could explore the “birth” subject with as much freedom as I wanted to. Rather than invent an entirely new world, I set my upcoming book, The Rabbit’s Gift, in a neighboring country––one with its own set of magical rules and a completely different cast of characters.
Very nearly everything about these two books are as different as two books could be—The Wolf’s Curse features an omniscient great white wolf as a narrator while The Rabbit’s Gift is a dual point of view that alternates between a rabbit and a human. In The Wolf’s Curse, the villagers believe that a Great White Wolf steals souls, preventing them from reaching the Sea in the Sky and sailing into eternity. In The Rabbit’s Gift, human babies are grown in cabbage-like plants tended by rabbits. One of my critique partners insisted that my stories couldn’t be companion novels because the magic was so different between the two stories, seemingly breaking the rule of thumb that companions have to take place in the same world.
To solve this problem, I turned to Tahereh Mafi’s companion novels, Whichwood and Furthermore. Although the books share characters, they exist in countries with different magical rules; Mafi pulls this off by making the differing magic between the countries something that is known about and accepted by the characters (and thus, the readers). Additionally, the mode of transportation between the countries makes them feel almost like portals, thus priming the readers to believe that the magic in the two different countries would be different. I leaned the other direction and placed my countries side by side; in fact, they share a geographical feature that looks like a rabbit on one side and a wolf on the other. Because the characters are aware of the boundaries of their magic and the magic that exists in neighboring countries, readers are willing to buy into the premise that both countries exist in the same world.
That’s not to say that writing companion novels is always the way to go. Specifically, it’s important for writers to undertake a thorough and honest assessment of their first book to determine whether there’s enough material to justify a companion. Readers will quickly grow frustrated if the second book feels too derivative of the first; they want to experience and learn something new, not feel like they are reading what essentially amounts to the same story over again. Writers must also ask themselves whether or not there are side characters with enough of that “special something” to carry an entire book, whether there are unanswered questions that remain from the first book, or whether there are new plots or themes to be explored.
Another potential pitfall writers need to be aware of is the fact that new readers might be reluctant to pick up a book labeled a companion, believing that it won’t make sense or they won’t enjoy it unless they read the other book first (whether this is true or not). Self-published authors could solve this problem by designating their books as “standalone companion novels,” thus making it clear that they can each be read independently. In my case, the decision was made when my publisher printed “Companion to The Wolf’s Curse ” on the cover of The Rabbit’s Gift . In this case, they obviously decided that the cross promotion, and benefits of reaching the audience that had previous read and loved The Wolf’s Curse, outweighed the risks.
The bottom line is that when approached with a clear awareness of the goals and potential pitfalls, companion novels can be a powerful tool for writers to continue to grow their readership by inviting them to remain in a story world in which they already feel deeply invested. So go ahead: take that side character you’ve always secretly loved, put them front and center in your next book (with their own unique journeys), and give them a chance to shine!
Jessica Vitalis is a Columbia MBA-wielding writer on a mission to write entertaining and thought-provoking literature. As an active volunteer in the kidlit community, she’s also passionate about using her privilege to lift up other voices. She founded Magic in the Middle, a series of free monthly recorded book talks, to help educators introduce young readers to new fantasy books. She was recently named a 2021 Canada Council of the Arts Grant Recipient and featured on CBCs Here and Now. Her first novel, The Wolf’s Curse, published in 2021, and a standalone companion novel, The Rabbit’s Gift, comes out October 25th.