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shadowkatI don't tend to enjoy serial novels. Serial tv shows yes, serial novels and films? Not so much. I think the reason for this is that with tv shows - there's no more than a gap of about a week between segments. At the most? Three-four months. If you get the whole thing on DVD? No gap at all. At least for most tv serials.
But with movies and novels? You have to wait at the very least a year, if you are lucky, if not, upwards to ten years for the next segment. And by the time you finally get that next chapter, it rarely lives up to the long-ass wait or expectations. Which can be aggravating.
Add to this the tendency to forget what came before. Oh sure, you could always re-watch the prior movie or re-read the prior books before you read the next installment, but that I find rather exhausting, particularly if it is a long book or movie. (ie. The Lord of the Rings triology or books, or worse, the George RR Martin novels.) I can see why publishers and film producers tend to love them - you can get a devoted fan base that will buy everything associated with the product. Serials get devoted fan bases, non-serials not so much...because you need the promise (at the very least) of new content to keep a fan-base interested and/or enthralled. The moment you stop promising more content, they lose interest. Note - I stated "promise" - this doesn't have to happen immediately, it can just be a proverbial carrot you hang out there for a bit.
Notable examples include Star Trek the Original Series - which got cancelled, but...it was not done, Roddenberry kept promising content...and every once and a while came through, first with the short-lived cartoon, then with novelizations, then the movies (about one every other year) and finally spin-offs that developed the series and universe even further - guaranteeing a devoted fan following for life. Although this is a sort of chicken and the egg question - would Star Trek have continued expanding without its fan base and would its fan base have existed without Star Trek continuing? Another notable example is Whedonverse...where Whedon cleverly keeps dangling the promise of continuing his stories way past their expiration dates via other medium. The man clearly studied at the foot of Gene Roddenberry. He knows a thing or two about developing a devoted fan base. First, write and produce a campy movie. Then turn it into a cult tv series. Spin-off another cult tv series from it. When both end, dangle the carrot that you might do one-shot movies on tv or a full-feature on the big screen. If neither happens, start writing comic books. As long as you add content in some way shape or form you can keep a portion of the fandom alive and keep yourself employed forever and a day.
Still in both of those examples - the serials started as tv shows, which totally worked for me. It's Lucas and George RR Martin's brand of serial that I find aggravating.
Along with Jim Butcher and Kim Harrison. I don't like to be made to wait a VERY long time for the next installment. Dorothy Dunnett and JRR Tolkien weren't a problem - their serials were completed by the time I got around to reading them.
In the 1980s and 1990s, serials weren't the rage. You rarely saw them, unless you were into cult and sci-fantasy genre, and even then...fairly rare. Now, they are all the rage.
65% of the books I saw on Good Reads are serials. Doesn't matter which genre. If they are genre, 5 times out of 10, it's a frigging serial, and they seem to go on forever. At least The Hunger Games was only three books. Some of these have 8 or 10 volumes. Ack.
I write this while in the midst of reading book 4 of GRR Martin's lengthy and seemingly endless Song of Ice and Fire Series. There's five books published. Another one promised sometime between now and 2020, if we are lucky. And I'm guessing at least two more after that. Considering it took him five-six years to produce the last one, that basically means..let's see..2015 for book 6, 2020 for book 7 (if we are lucky), and 2025 for book 8, assuming we all make that far, GRR Martin included. If he dies mid-stream, can we hire someone else to finish the books?
That's the problem with serials, they tend to be a work in progress while you are reading or watching them. So there's always the off-chance that the storytellers will either die, get ill, get bored, become distracted by another far more lucrative (or more interesting to them not necessarily to anyone else) project, or whomever is producing/publishing/distributing the item will just stop. Which leaves you and me with an unfinished story.
Damn it. And I don't know about you, but there's nothing that aggravates or frustrates me more than an unfinished story. Oh sure, I could always write or read fanfic to complete the dang thing - but here's the thing, and granted I'm probably a bit anal in this regard, I want to know how the original story teller's meant for it to end. I may hate their ending. But I want to know! To me - the only accurate and true ending to the work is the original creators.
Everything else is well what-if scenarios. And don't get me wrong, I love what-if scenarios and love fanfic in that regard. But it does not in any way shape or form, from my perspective, substitute for the true ending of the story.
It's all well and good for a writer to tell that they aren't my bitch, which is true to an extent. But I work for a living too and I have assignments with deadlines I have to complete. And if I don't bad shit happens. Granted far worse things than if George RR Martin didn't finish his serial or Whedon didn't finish his comic book arc or ABC or Fox didn't let us see the final chapter of whatever tv show we are currently obsessed with.
But...if you create something, shouldn't you see it through to the end? Don't you as a creator or artist who is "getting paid" for this item have an obligation to the people paying for that work to complete it? If your doctor is obligated to diagnose your illness, or your lawyer to complete your contract, or the contractor to finish work remodeling your bathroom...don't writers have the same obligation? If you don't complete this work, aren't you walking off the job? Or falling down on the job as it were? Granted it is different, I get that. Writing on demand is close to impossible - but isn't that what you signed up for as a professional writer? It's not supposed to be fun and games after all, it's supposed to be work. If it were easy, we'd all be able to do it.
Of course, we, the readers/audience, can't make a story-teller finish his/her tale. But we can stop watching and reading his/her new one's. We can let go of it. We can be fickle and move on to something else, something more reliable, something completed, like Dickens or Victor Hugo or Alex Dumas or Elizabeth Gatskill or JRR Tolkien...amongst others. Wait until the series is completed, done, to pick it up. That is one way of handling the aggravation.
But if you do that...then no one buys it, and it never gets completed, and there's no story.
Art is a catch-22, without patrons and readers and watchers...it doesn't really exist, does it? The creator of the work and the reader/watcher of it...seem to go hand in hand.
You can't have a Star Trek fandom without Star Trek and you won't have any more Star Trek episodes without the fandom.
In this busy world, where so much information is instantly exchanged, perhaps being forced to wait for the next chapter in a story that you've fallen in love with...is a good thing.
In some respects, you might even appreciate it more...when it finally lands in your hungry hands. You may not even care if it is good or bad, just that it is here, that next chapter, more content, more twists and turns in the lives of your favorite characters - more information on them. More to play with inside your own mind. More fodder for your own stories about them, whether they come in the form of fanfic or role-playing.
And I wonder sometimes if the only true or realistic tales are the serials...which appear to have no end...that are endless, continuing onwards even after principal players deaths.
An allegory in a way for life, when we or our loved ones die, life continues on without us, seemingly endless, circling in on itself...until people forget we ever existed in the first place, well that is until they re-read our portion of the story.
But with movies and novels? You have to wait at the very least a year, if you are lucky, if not, upwards to ten years for the next segment. And by the time you finally get that next chapter, it rarely lives up to the long-ass wait or expectations. Which can be aggravating.
Add to this the tendency to forget what came before. Oh sure, you could always re-watch the prior movie or re-read the prior books before you read the next installment, but that I find rather exhausting, particularly if it is a long book or movie. (ie. The Lord of the Rings triology or books, or worse, the George RR Martin novels.) I can see why publishers and film producers tend to love them - you can get a devoted fan base that will buy everything associated with the product. Serials get devoted fan bases, non-serials not so much...because you need the promise (at the very least) of new content to keep a fan-base interested and/or enthralled. The moment you stop promising more content, they lose interest. Note - I stated "promise" - this doesn't have to happen immediately, it can just be a proverbial carrot you hang out there for a bit.
Notable examples include Star Trek the Original Series - which got cancelled, but...it was not done, Roddenberry kept promising content...and every once and a while came through, first with the short-lived cartoon, then with novelizations, then the movies (about one every other year) and finally spin-offs that developed the series and universe even further - guaranteeing a devoted fan following for life. Although this is a sort of chicken and the egg question - would Star Trek have continued expanding without its fan base and would its fan base have existed without Star Trek continuing? Another notable example is Whedonverse...where Whedon cleverly keeps dangling the promise of continuing his stories way past their expiration dates via other medium. The man clearly studied at the foot of Gene Roddenberry. He knows a thing or two about developing a devoted fan base. First, write and produce a campy movie. Then turn it into a cult tv series. Spin-off another cult tv series from it. When both end, dangle the carrot that you might do one-shot movies on tv or a full-feature on the big screen. If neither happens, start writing comic books. As long as you add content in some way shape or form you can keep a portion of the fandom alive and keep yourself employed forever and a day.
Still in both of those examples - the serials started as tv shows, which totally worked for me. It's Lucas and George RR Martin's brand of serial that I find aggravating.
Along with Jim Butcher and Kim Harrison. I don't like to be made to wait a VERY long time for the next installment. Dorothy Dunnett and JRR Tolkien weren't a problem - their serials were completed by the time I got around to reading them.
In the 1980s and 1990s, serials weren't the rage. You rarely saw them, unless you were into cult and sci-fantasy genre, and even then...fairly rare. Now, they are all the rage.
65% of the books I saw on Good Reads are serials. Doesn't matter which genre. If they are genre, 5 times out of 10, it's a frigging serial, and they seem to go on forever. At least The Hunger Games was only three books. Some of these have 8 or 10 volumes. Ack.
I write this while in the midst of reading book 4 of GRR Martin's lengthy and seemingly endless Song of Ice and Fire Series. There's five books published. Another one promised sometime between now and 2020, if we are lucky. And I'm guessing at least two more after that. Considering it took him five-six years to produce the last one, that basically means..let's see..2015 for book 6, 2020 for book 7 (if we are lucky), and 2025 for book 8, assuming we all make that far, GRR Martin included. If he dies mid-stream, can we hire someone else to finish the books?
That's the problem with serials, they tend to be a work in progress while you are reading or watching them. So there's always the off-chance that the storytellers will either die, get ill, get bored, become distracted by another far more lucrative (or more interesting to them not necessarily to anyone else) project, or whomever is producing/publishing/distributing the item will just stop. Which leaves you and me with an unfinished story.
Damn it. And I don't know about you, but there's nothing that aggravates or frustrates me more than an unfinished story. Oh sure, I could always write or read fanfic to complete the dang thing - but here's the thing, and granted I'm probably a bit anal in this regard, I want to know how the original story teller's meant for it to end. I may hate their ending. But I want to know! To me - the only accurate and true ending to the work is the original creators.
Everything else is well what-if scenarios. And don't get me wrong, I love what-if scenarios and love fanfic in that regard. But it does not in any way shape or form, from my perspective, substitute for the true ending of the story.
It's all well and good for a writer to tell that they aren't my bitch, which is true to an extent. But I work for a living too and I have assignments with deadlines I have to complete. And if I don't bad shit happens. Granted far worse things than if George RR Martin didn't finish his serial or Whedon didn't finish his comic book arc or ABC or Fox didn't let us see the final chapter of whatever tv show we are currently obsessed with.
But...if you create something, shouldn't you see it through to the end? Don't you as a creator or artist who is "getting paid" for this item have an obligation to the people paying for that work to complete it? If your doctor is obligated to diagnose your illness, or your lawyer to complete your contract, or the contractor to finish work remodeling your bathroom...don't writers have the same obligation? If you don't complete this work, aren't you walking off the job? Or falling down on the job as it were? Granted it is different, I get that. Writing on demand is close to impossible - but isn't that what you signed up for as a professional writer? It's not supposed to be fun and games after all, it's supposed to be work. If it were easy, we'd all be able to do it.
Of course, we, the readers/audience, can't make a story-teller finish his/her tale. But we can stop watching and reading his/her new one's. We can let go of it. We can be fickle and move on to something else, something more reliable, something completed, like Dickens or Victor Hugo or Alex Dumas or Elizabeth Gatskill or JRR Tolkien...amongst others. Wait until the series is completed, done, to pick it up. That is one way of handling the aggravation.
But if you do that...then no one buys it, and it never gets completed, and there's no story.
Art is a catch-22, without patrons and readers and watchers...it doesn't really exist, does it? The creator of the work and the reader/watcher of it...seem to go hand in hand.
You can't have a Star Trek fandom without Star Trek and you won't have any more Star Trek episodes without the fandom.
In this busy world, where so much information is instantly exchanged, perhaps being forced to wait for the next chapter in a story that you've fallen in love with...is a good thing.
In some respects, you might even appreciate it more...when it finally lands in your hungry hands. You may not even care if it is good or bad, just that it is here, that next chapter, more content, more twists and turns in the lives of your favorite characters - more information on them. More to play with inside your own mind. More fodder for your own stories about them, whether they come in the form of fanfic or role-playing.
And I wonder sometimes if the only true or realistic tales are the serials...which appear to have no end...that are endless, continuing onwards even after principal players deaths.
An allegory in a way for life, when we or our loved ones die, life continues on without us, seemingly endless, circling in on itself...until people forget we ever existed in the first place, well that is until they re-read our portion of the story.