Using Fandom Principles to Write an Interconnected (but Standalone) Romance Series

Everyone says second novels are hard, but there’s something particularly tricky about writing a standalone “sequel” to your debut.

(Writing Big Flat Characters in Fiction.)

Catching Feelings lives in that tricky in-between space. It features everyone’s favorite characters from Heart Check, but it follows a new couple and expands their social circle; it builds on arcs I laid the foundation for in my first book, but new readers should be able to enter mid-stream without confusion; it needed to satisfy those who loved my debut, but I was terrified of it feeling repetitive or formulaic.

Luckily, I’m a fangirl first and a writer second. I love an interconnected romance series—nothing tickles my brain so much as spotting connections between books, predicting which couples will receive their love story next, and revisiting a world that feels like home. So I tackled this challenge with gusto.

My guiding star: Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s writing on the psychology of fandom. After receiving a PhD in psychology and writing a number of articles on storytelling, social cognition, and imagining fictional scenarios, Barnes put many of her theories to the test in The Inheritance Games—since that series went on to inspire a massive fandom and become a bestseller many times over, her advice holds some weight!

She’s found that when readers do some mental work, their engagement with story, world, and character skyrockets. This results from mechanisms like co-authoring (interpreting subtext, theorizing about a character’s backstory), gap-filling (addressing elements of the story left open or vague), and theory of mind (considering characters’ motivations, imagining how they might act in other scenarios). Fandom emerges from a setting with the right balance of structure and permission: a world you can picture clearly, but which leaves space for you to imagine yourself in it.

I considered four fandom-studies-inspired principles essential as I laid the groundwork for an immersive world in book one of the Varsity series. My main goal: How could I use these principles to bring readers even deeper into this universe with an interconnected but standalone book two?

We’ve seen theory of fandom play out in many a fantasy setting (hence the prevalence of groups or skills that readers can use to categorize themselves), but I wanted to recreate it in a contemporary setting. I tried to make Hamilton Lakes a town readers would love returning to—one that had enough structure to picture themselves in, but enough permission to continue creating, as fandom studies teaches us.

Using a familiar set-piece location is one popular strategy. In Hamilton Lakes, it’s the Lakeside Diner: Harper and Luke from Heart Check work there, and Tyler, our Catching Feelings hero, takes over the job Luke has recently vacated. A metaphorical changing of the guard, and also a handy way to bring readers back to a place they love. But we explore new territory, too—the Spirit Committee office, the football field, the pep rally, the fundraising car wash—and each location gives our new characters a chance to put their own stamp on this world.

Return to readers’ favorites, but expand the world to make it feel limitless. If readers are still discovering new locations in book two, they have permission to continue imagining the rest of the map.

Hamilton Lakes teems with secondary characters: Some we don’t hear from much (Ms. Moore, the challenging but excellent Calculus teacher; Shannon Bittle, gluten-free lover of the Lakeside Diner) and some we think we know, but reveal themselves to have hidden depths (like Sam, the superstitious hockey goalie who turns out to be doing something else entirely when the team thinks he’s muttering his pre-game rituals). The key is to hint at the lives characters lead off the page—they’re real enough that I could imagine they exist, but open enough that we can still imagine possibilities for them. Ask yourself: Could someone write fan fiction about them? Do they have enough information to build off of, but enough space to play?

For readers who were visiting Hamilton Lakes for the first time in Catching Feelings, I made sure to include enough context that they could catch on to this web of relationships without reading an info-dump that made them feel like outsiders. Chapter one includes a quick, in-dialogue recap of Harper’s love story with Luke in Heart Check, and we see him swoop in for a cute kiss that rewards readers who’ve been longing for more time with them together. Similarly, Dawson later jokes to Tyler about one of fans’ favorite scenes from book one. If you’ve been here a while, you’ll appreciate this moment on a deeper level; if you’re new, like Tyler, it’s still a cute moment that serves a narrative function. Barnes reminds us that readers enter a fictional world to fulfill the “need to belong”—I sought to deliver it in everything from my tight-knit teams and close friend groups to the inside jokes that make readers feel like they’re a part of the town’s gossip themselves.

Harper and Dawson enter the frame, but we just see Dawson tucking her under his arm as they exit the diner for their date. What happens from there? Your guess is as good as mine; off-page, they belong to readers as much as they belong to the writer. Resist the urge to close the gaps readers love to play with!

Perhaps most importantly, our new main couple, Sabrina and Tyler, are designed to build on readers’ desires to go deeper into the world. Sabrina appears in book one as a pretty one-dimensional, school-spirited go-getter. What’s beneath her surface? What’s she grappling with, and how will she grow when given her own story? Book one sees her flirting with Ryan, but book two opens with her avoiding him—what happened between them? And what’s it like to be a new recruit to Hamilton Lakes’s lauded football team, like Tyler? What would happen if whatever secret he’s guarding finally leaks?

When writing Heart Check, I was deliberate about delivering the ingredients readers would expect from a hockey romance. One of Barnes’s most famous tips is the “id list”—what elements scratch your most essential storytelling itches, and how can you cram as many as possible into your work? What moments make readers scream about these books to all their friends? This made it essential to include a romantic skating scene, a raucous team party, and a violent hockey fight; the tension between a beloved golden boy star and a somewhat skeptical, jaded female lead would make a great pairing; hockey dynasties and rabid town fandoms would elevate stakes.

In order to satisfy expectations in a companion novel without being repetitive, I needed to return to some of these ingredients, but in a new way. How about a great player who’s starting all over and has lost his confidence? A female lead who loves the sports scene at her school, but refuses to get seriously involved with its flirty athletes? Another hateable villain: but this time one who is responsible for a secret that could destroy our hero?

Each of these ingredients reinforces the central message of my world and my series—that community is life-sustaining, but it’s something we must actively protect, cultivate, and expand. The plot of Catching Feelings begins and ends with Sabrina and Tyler, but the concerns of the series are evergreen. As if this place exists somewhere in Michigan, and any of us could stop by to catch a game and hear all about today’s drama as it’s whispered down the bleachers.

While I needed to tie up all the bows this installment promised to deliver, I wanted to leave a few open loops that promise more. Ever since Heart Check, I’ve been slowly planting seeds for a romance dynamic I would really love to write, and Catching Feelings ends with some hints that I hope will leave readers screaming for more. If my ultimate goal is to create a craving to return to this world, I need to include some unanswered questions!

If we apply fandom studies to this arc, the slower the burn, the stronger the romance. I wanted readers co-authoring and gap-filling based on every clue I dropped. I thought about the approach the writers of The Office took to Jim and Pam’s relationship: When they received notes like “we need to make sure what Pam is feeling is really coming through here,” they’d nod, agree—and then leave it on a longing glance. If you layer the tension thickly enough, readers will feel what they want you to feel; and they’ll keep tuning in so they don’t miss the moment that tension finally breaks.

I haven’t announced Varsity 3 yet, but if I’ve done my job correctly, I bet readers can guess—and I hope they’re already screaming into their pillows imagining how the story will unfold.

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