Are Serial Novels Becoming a Serious Problem?
Serial novels aren’t new. However it seems that just as Hollywood has fallen into a sequels rut, making very little original, creative, fresh new movies, so is the case with novels.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge of fan of The Dark Tower, Anita Blake, and Harry Potter—all of which are long, volumes of serial books.
I’m even guilty of writing serial books. It seems that every novel I write, both under my current pen name, and my romance pen name, I want to serialize.
I can’t speak for other writers, producers, etc., but for me, it’s not so much the characters, but the world that makes me want to write several volumes.
World building is hard, difficult, intensive work. I hate building a world, leaving it and never again going to play there. The characters themselves can come and go, their stories told, enjoyed, and done. Yet the world itself is difficult to just leave without wanting short vacations back there.
Yet I have heard that serial novels are laziness on the part of the author, producer, {insert here any other titles of creative personnel}. I’m not quite sure I buy into this statement.
Yes I did just discuss how hard, time intensive and front-heavy world building is, and that I hated leaving all that work to spoil. But who wouldn’t?
It’s the same as football player who continues to play well past the point of retirement. Why? Because they’ve spent years, chunks of their lives working on that skill, to reach that goal. It’s difficult to just walk away from that.
And that’s the point with writing serials.
I don’t write them because they’re easy. Creating characters to fit into those worlds are always hard. Not to mention, readers sometimes like to see the same characters in the same world, without too much overwhelming changes—while still bringing a fresh twist to the tale.
And I thought world building was hard.
Come to think of it, none of this shit is easy.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge of fan of The Dark Tower, Anita Blake, and Harry Potter—all of which are long, volumes of serial books.
I’m even guilty of writing serial books. It seems that every novel I write, both under my current pen name, and my romance pen name, I want to serialize.
I can’t speak for other writers, producers, etc., but for me, it’s not so much the characters, but the world that makes me want to write several volumes.
World building is hard, difficult, intensive work. I hate building a world, leaving it and never again going to play there. The characters themselves can come and go, their stories told, enjoyed, and done. Yet the world itself is difficult to just leave without wanting short vacations back there.
Yet I have heard that serial novels are laziness on the part of the author, producer, {insert here any other titles of creative personnel}. I’m not quite sure I buy into this statement.
Yes I did just discuss how hard, time intensive and front-heavy world building is, and that I hated leaving all that work to spoil. But who wouldn’t?
It’s the same as football player
And that’s the point with writing serials.
I don’t write them because they’re easy. Creating characters to fit into those worlds are always hard. Not to mention, readers sometimes like to see the same characters in the same world, without too much overwhelming changes—while still bringing a fresh twist to the tale.
And I thought world building was hard.
Come to think of it, none of this shit is easy.
I think it really depends on the serial and its author. Industry trends play a part in this, since many serials are done by young authors trying to establish themselves. My agent has told me point-blank that it's easier to sell a trilogy than it is to sell a bunch of individual novels. A series builds up an audience through its own momentum. Individual novels each have to find their own audience. I think that's why most of the new authors I've seen lately have come out with a trilogy first, then gone on to write the individual books they enjoy.
Whether a trilogy represents laziness, IMO, depends on whether the author really has more stories to tell in a given world, or is just trying to milk that world for all its possible commercial value. It's not always possible to tell the difference just by counting the number of sequels. For example, I think Anne McCaffrey really had several stories to tell in her world of Pern. She told them. But then she kept writing more Pern novels, and each one had a noticeable drop in quality from the originals. I think that's the point at which she stopped caring about this world, and just started milking it.
I can't really blame her for this; she had kids to feed and put through college, etc. But at the same time, as a fan of hers, I was very disappointed. And I stopped supporting her by buying her books. Books cost too much these days for me to just buy something out of author loyalty. The author still has to earn my money.
Posted by Nora | 10:50 AM, May 13, 2006
Nora,
I absolutely agree on two things you brought up, 1)author loyalty and 2)caring about the world.
I love Stephen King's The Dark Tower. The last three book though really disappointed me. I felt that he had stopped caring about Roland and simply wanted the tale to be over with. Yet fans kept demanding more, and so he wrote more about it--just not with the same level of intensity that he began Roland's tale with...
Your second point about author loyalty is also valid. Books are quite expensive and if an author is just milking the world, you can tell. I stopped reading James Patterson because I felt he'd done all he could do with Alex Cross--but Patterson continues to churn out books with Alex Cross.
A good example of a series of books that remain fresh are Sue Grafton's mysteries, Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea novels, Rowling's Potter series, and Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. Oh, add to that L.A. Bank's Vampire Huntress series. All of these are solid examples that you can play in the world and continue to do it well.
Posted by Nicole | 12:22 AM, May 14, 2006
I feel you, on the Dark Tower.
See, on the last three books, I didn't get the impression that he wrote them because of fan demand. I think he got scared witless by his close brush with death and the long recuperation afterward, and cranked the last three out in a hurry so he could complete his magnum opus before he kicked the bucket. But then -- oops! -- he didn't die. So now he's got to live with a magnum opus that was clearly a rush job.
He's already rewritten the first book or two of the series; I'm hoping he'll re-do the last few.
I also think, because it had meaning to him, the last few DT books don't have the feel of a "milked to death" idea to me. They simply feel incomplete. They lack internal consistency, a satisfying resolution, *something* -- I'm really not sure what, but I think he could've put it in if he hadn't been in such a hurry.
(I mean, after all that struggling, after all those scares, after producing creepy little Mordred, the Crimson King basically turned out to be Donkey Kong -- a crazy old guy running around on a balcony throwing out explosives?? WTF?? Come on now.)
Posted by Nora | 11:16 AM, May 17, 2006
I've loved some serial novels, but I happen to feel that Anita might be losing some of her steam.
Does that hurt me? Not exactly--I was working at B&N at the time Incubus Dreams came out and got to find out it stank before I spent the money. If I don't like a new book in a series, I return it. I find it really hard to judge series in general; they have all the potential in the world to be good.
In the L.J. Smith fandom, there's a Vampire Diaries quartet. There's also an old argument that the quartet was supposed to be a trilogy, and the fourth book was to make the ending a little happier. I liked it just fine--but then, I like happy endings.
I guess it should be a baad thing that it's easier to sell series'...but (taking the devil's advocate position here) if the writer can't write a series good enough for her readers, isn't it the writer's responsibility to write other things?
Posted by Rebecca | 11:37 AM, May 17, 2006
Nora,
Hmmm...interesting points about The Dark Tower. I was all psyched, you know for the Red King and yeah, he turned out totally lame. True enough, King might have cranked out the last three in a ditch effort to get them done before he died. I still think that he lost the ability to self-edit because the last three books contain so much unnecessary storylines. I thought he could've finished them with much slimmer text. :-)
You raised some good points, though. I'm wondering what Marvel will do with the comicbook series. What storylines they'll pursue, Roland's past? The alternate world that Eddie, Jake and Susannah end up in at the end of book 7?
Posted by Nicole | 1:02 PM, May 18, 2006
Rebecca,
I just finished Micah about two weeks ago, and I felt that Anita was moving beyond the her role as Vampire Hunter, and that she grown both in her viewpoint about dating the "monsters" and about herself in general. The last couple of books in her series has a serious surge in sexual content, and that turned off some readers. But I think there are stories that Anita has yet to tell.
Having said that, I do agree that it is the writer's responsibility to write other stories if the series is falling off, slowing down, or is just plain done.
Posted by Nicole | 1:58 PM, May 18, 2006
I agree with you all about the problem of milking a character/world/idea to death. It's a balancing act of giving people what they want without killing it. I think the trick really is to write a short series, especially if people are crying out for more stories, but to then quit while people are still crying out for it. If the public has stopped asking for more books in a series yet an author is still cranking them out, the whole thing loses some credibility. Leave 'em wanting more!
I'm currently working on the sequel to my novel RealmShift. This is partly because I had other things I wanted to explore with the main character, but also because people that have read RealmShift have asked for more. I started working on something else initially, but I've gone back to the RealmShift sequel as people want it. But it's very important to me not to overkill the idea and characters.
The beauty of world building in SF (in my case, Dark Fantasy) is that you can use the world from a completely different angle. Perhaps after the sequel I might consider writing in the same world but with entirely new characters. There are numerous possibilities!
Alan
Posted by Alan Baxter | 11:20 PM, May 25, 2006