sequel help before I require some sequel therapy

[raballard]

Is adding a partial chapter or full chapter from book one into book two? Or do I really need to go into detail how protagonist became immortal.

I know book 2 needs to standalone, but to be truthful, I have never bought a book two of a series without reading # one, especially if # 2  states BOOK TWO of the BLAH  BLAH BLAH YADDA YADDA YADDA SERIES, Amundsen-Scott Times best seller.


(google Amundsen-Scott, it's an actual city)

[Tabris]

It depends on how much detail you really need at that moment.

EG, if the reader needs to know the dude is immortal, just let us know it. "Well, as a survivor of the Bubonic Plague and the Crusades, I'm having trouble mustering sympathy over you having the wrong jelly for your bagel."

But if there's a reason the reader needs to know all the details of how the dude became immortal, then it needs to be laid out. EG, if he became immortal by eating a bagel with raspberry jelly AND cream cheese, and the bad guy is trying to make everyone immortal by tainting the raspberry jelly factory, then yes, we need that information.

I've seen sequels where the second telling of How Something Happened is far more detailed than the first because in the first book it only needed to be a given, but in the second book the how-where-when-why rose in importance because another character was using it for leverage.