Series--thrill or threat?

[sartorias]

Over at the Tor.com site, Jane Lindskold talks about series and stand-alones. The nice thing is, she doesn't sneer. I've taken to avoiding the sneer posts. Most of the time they just slang fat fantasy altogether (lumping it all together) or point to one or two examples that the poster didn't like, and again assuming they are All The Same. Life's

Comments

[danceswithwaves]

Considering that I have not yet written a story long enough to include in the discussion (plus since I know my beta readers aren't completely honest with me as they're my friends) I'll go at this from a reader's POV.

I commented in the article that often expectations of a story create better or worse feelings about the story. If you think you're getting a duo and it ends up being a trilogy you might not be too annoyed, but if it ends up being an eight-book series you might feel a little put off. I don't know that there's a good way to address that -- it's more that readers have to do their own research, and if they pick up book one of something, look in the cover or on the shelf to find out how many books following there will be. (Though this doesn't always work with a series-in-progress, it's a good start on the reader's end.)

Otherwise, I think the same logic works for roman fleuve as for serial series and companion books with the same characters. If I like the characters, I'll continue reading. If I like the characters, I'll like the long story with twists and turns and ups and downs and futures I start guessing.

As an example, a lot of people have said that Wheel of Time got too long. It got long, but I would still say I loved the series (and am waiting for a last book). This is because I started reading for the characters and not the plot, when the plot got too predictable -- at least, Rand's plot is predictable, but the other characters' plots no longer are. I continued reading not for Rand, who I think turned into a block of wood (though I can see the transition, I think Jordan missed a turn somewhere), but by the end for Mat and Egwene, who I thought were awesome and I wanted to succeed.

So I guess the answer I would say is if the characters are real and I want them to succeed, I'll keep reading.

[sartorias]

That's a good point about both things--both the episodic and the foman fleuve: the key is the characters. Just because I got bored with Miss Marple because she never seemed to change, doesn't mean that millions and millions of readers were not fascinated by her. And were perfectly content for her never to change.