Have you written a prequel before?
Let’s face it— you’ve done a lot of worldbuilding for your novel. But there’s not enough space for all the backstories.
Or you’ve finished your novel and you’re going to self-publish, but you don’t know how to kickstart the excitement for your book.
One of the most effective ways to generate hype around your story is by creating a prequel. You can either release the prequel as a freebie, or you can make it a boxed set with your other books.
You can check out some of the benefits of publishing a prequel here.
And if your story’s already published, it’s a great way to give your readers more content with their favorite character.
Black Widow has only been out for a little over a week, and I’ve already seen it two and a half times. I’m obsessed.
So how do you write a prequel that actually works? Let’s take a look at how Marvel’s Black Widow is structured, and how you can use the same tools in your own prequel.
Add Conflict ASAP
For most writers, this should be pretty obvious. But a lot of prequels fail to do this.
Black Widow opens by showing a young, blue-haired Natasha at home in Ohio. Notice how fast something goes wrong: her sister Yelena hurts her knee.
Of course, this isn’t a major plot point. But we don’t get very far before something goes wrong.
Add conflict to your prequel, as close to the first sentence as you can. This is not just a bunch of happy stories about your character living a happy life. There needs to be conflict.
So where do you find this conflict?
Conflict Comes from Two Places
The first place you can find your prequel’s conflict is in the character’s backstory.
Has your character been abandoned? Tortured? Traumatized? If there’s a skeleton in your character’s closet, now is the time to pull it out.
In Black Widow, the whole movie focuses around Natasha’s backstory. This is most obvious in the flashback scenes when she was a kid. Then the story transitions to her training in the Widow program. The conflict is always present.
The second place you can find conflict is in the story world. When the conflict starts to lag a bit, ask, “How can the story world get in my character’s way?”
- We see this in Black Widow when she struggles to find the Red Room. The story world gets in her way.
Once you have some ideas for potential conflict, it’s time to work on setting the story goal.
Don’t Change the “What,” Only the “Why/How”
This is a big one.
Before you write your prequel, re-read your original story and make a note of all the things you want to reference in the prequel.
You can’t change what happens to your character. If you amputate their arm in the prequel, but it’s never mentioned again, your reader will notice.
That also works in reverse: if your character has a disability or some other noticeable trait in the original story, mention it at some point in the prequel.
Also, make sure to set up any special skills your character has.
For example, Natasha has always been a trained killer. From the other Marvel movies, we know she was trained, sterilized, and controlled by a program in Russia. So the Black Widow movie didn’t change her story, they merely added details to explain why and how this happened.
Your Prequel Should be a self contained story.
What does your character want? Why can’t they get it?
The Black Widow movie is supposed to bridge the gap between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. But hypothetically, you could watch it as a stand-alone.
Your prequel should be able to stand on its own.
Sure, it makes a lot of references to your other book, but not everyone who reads your prequel is going to understand these references. Some people will read the prequel and never get around to your other book. So your job is to grab the reader from the very first page and give them a good story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
(If you’re looking for resources about plotting a story goal, check out my post on story goals here.)
Also, make sure your prequel has a story goal that the later books won’t undo. Don’t double dip and use the same goal twice, it just cheapens the story for your readers.
Answer some of the big questions.
Remember how Marvel used to keep hinting at what happened to Clint and Natasha in Budapest? Well, we finally got an answer in Black Widow: they tried to kill Dreykov so Natasha could deflect to SHIELD.
If you come up with 20 main questions that readers want to know about your characters, answer ten of them. Don’t wrap up every lose thread, but give readers enough to understand your character better.
And last but not least,
Introducing New Characters that don’t come back.
Depending on when your original story and prequel take place, you might need to add new characters that won’t come back later.
This is the case in Black Widow. The movie added Natasha’s parents, the Red Guardian and Melina, the renowned scientist. They also added Yelena as a major character and set her up for a future role in the MCU.
However, you always have to consider, “why do I need to add these characters, and why don’t they come back in the later stories?”
- Perhaps they die in the prequel. (Although if you go that route, make sure that your character deals with the grief accordingly.)
- Or you could do what the writers of Black Widow did, and give the characters a reason to not come back.
In the case of Yelena, she decides to help the widows rehabilitate and recover. This offers an explanation for why she didn’t appear in Endgame.
Of course, the easiest way around this is to stick with your original cast of characters. But if you must add new ones, make sure to explain why they won’t be coming back later.
And there we have it– some top tricks for writing your own prequel!
Have you written a prequel before? If so, what was your experience?
Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back soon with a new post!
This is Awesome!
Thank you Abby!! 😁