In which somebody else supplies the meta, and I nod my head....

[jinxed_wood]

I09 has written a thoughtful post about the standalone episode versus season story arc debate. Or maybe I just thought it was thoughtful because it ticked so many boxes on my own personal genre bingo card

Comments

[kerravonsen]

I feel that the only thing that is fairly consistent in my stories is hope. Even when things go bad, it's still there, blinking in the distance, - and that, I believe, says more about me than anything else.

For me, hope is essential, both as reader and writer (points to icon). Drag your characters through the wringer, by all means, but finish the story with hope at the minumum. Doesn't have to be a happy ending, just a hopeful one. If "the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train" then you haven't reached the end of the tunnel, have you?

I feel that half the kick is seeing what my readers think is going on, rather than me spelling it it out to them. I like making my writers think. I like the fact that I leave a lot of people scratching their heads,

I like making my readers think, too. I delight in giving them clues that they don't realize are clues, so that when the mystery is revealed, they hit themselves on the head and say "oh it was so obvious, why didn't I notice that

[persiflage_1]

One of my biggest pet peeves about the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who was his habit of pretending he was doing more arc-based storytelling than he was actually doing. If the Doctor mentions the "Medusa Cascade" in random conversation half a dozen times, that doesn't make it an arc - just makes it clumsy foreshadowing.

Oh man, I SO agree!!