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

[asakiyume]

If you never get bored, then you are my target audience :D

Well... I suppose one answer to your question is the beta reader, though, as you've pointed out in other posts, we need fresh people who are not too forgiving of our quirks or too familiar with our worlds.

I think, for me, I feel I'm beginning to cross a line when I feel I've altered the plot just to work in some research material... but hmm, not always. If it fits in smoothly, if it makes it extra interesting...

Okay, back to beta readers, I guess :-P

[sartorias]

Wrenching the plot to fit a thing in can tend to create Datadump Bits, but what if research opens a new door that you thought was a wall? And you just have to walk outside, because it gives you a wider view of the whole?

[asakiyume]

That seems all to the good. I think I had something like that. I had an element of a story, and it was mainly decorative, and then, with a little more research, I found a way to make it play a more important part (I think... I hope). So, yeah, I do think that what you describe can happen, and be good.

I have to ask myself--is this helping the story build or maintain momentum? Or is this charging us off down a blind alley, which we'll then have to laboriously return from?

[sartorias]

Sometimes answering that question is . . . complicated.

[pameladean]

I actually don't agree that it's true that if the author is bored, so will the reader be. I've been terminally bored with various bits of my books, and most of them have been singled out by fans as particularly fine.

And I sure do know a lot of writers who are fascinated with stuff I can't even begin to get through. I think the whole relationship is non-existent, like quality and sales numbers.

P.

[sartorias]

I've found it can be true when doing workshops. Mostly these situations turn out to be either author-maunder bits, like when the author is not sure what to do, so writes a scene of a character eating a meal and asking herself questions about what to do next, and what does this mean? Many times, that entire bit can be judiciously cut and replaced with a one-sentence transition--especially if the reader can peg the very sentence where the writer went AHAH! I know what's next!

The other one is when writers will put in stuff they think they should put in, to give verisimilitude. Like, one time, a writer in a workshop wrote carefully constructed and absolutely true-to-life scenes of setting up a camp, just because she'd heard people slanging fantasy quests in which campfires magically appear, and there's always food and fodder. Unfortunately, the scenes were killingly dull to read--and she'd admitted they were dull to write, but she felt she "had to."

[pameladean]

Oh, that's very interesting. I guess I'm lucky that the bits that bore me silly (while writing; they read all right) are required by the logic of the story but for some reason are like pulling teeth to get down.

P.

[marycatelli]

Neil Gaiman has the opposite problem
What is really sad and nightmarish (and I should add, completely unfair, in every way. And I mean it -- utterly, utterly, unfair!) is that two years later, or three years later, although you will remember very well, very clearly, that there was a point in this particular scene when you hit a horrible Writer's Block from Hell, and you will also remember there was point in this particular scene where you were writing and the words dripped like magic diamonds from your fingers -- as if the Gods were speaking through you and every sentence was a thing of beauty and magic and brilliance. You can remember just as clearly that there was a point in the story, in that same scene, when the characters had turned into pathetic cardboard cut-outs and nothing they said mattered at all. You remember this very, very clearly. The problem is you are now doing a reading and you cannot for the life of you remember which bits were the gifts of the Gods and dripped from your fingers like magical words and which bits

[sartorias]

Yes! This is very true.

[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

[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.

[quivo]

Mostly, nowadays, I count the fact that a book is part of a series against it. I've read too many first-second-and-third books and seen the quality decline, or the story zig in a way that annoys me, or just never seen any ending in sight at all. It's my opinion that there are more so-so series than good ones, and that every extra book I buy in an unsatisfying series that might get better is a satisfying, standalone book that I am not buying

[sartorias]

Oh yes. I've been thinking along those lines as well.