4 ms·

"Well then many fans wouldn't have bought the first books until the whole series is finished. It would likely become uneconomical to write long fantasy series.

"Well then many fans wouldn't have bought the first books until the whole series is finished. It would likely become uneconomical to write long fantasy series. Writers like Martin would suffer." This is me. I don't buy into a series until it's complete. Actually, I kind of HATE series works, because they are quite often seat-of-the-pants situations where the author really has no idea where it's all going, and has no real plan for sticking the landing. Also quite often they are far, far longer than is justified. I have no issues with long works, but we must be honest and admit that LOTS of series works in genre are just plain FAT and needed to be seriously edited down. But that doesn't happen, because it means they can sell more books.

falcolas 5y ago
> Actually, I kind of HATE series works, because they are quite often seat-of-the-pants situations where the author really has no idea where it's all going Often, authors even start a series as a number of stand-alone books with clearly bounded character-and-plot development (think Star Trek), and then later morph it into an overarching-story-plot style series. See: Dresden Files, Kate Daniels, etc.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  Dresden is an especially egregious example, since Butcher clearly reached a point a few books in where he just pull unjustified stuff out of his nether regions to push a story along. First couple are fun, though.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    > First couple are fun, though. Amusingly, the first couple are the episodic ones. :D
pavon 5y ago
Yeah, in fact these days I often avoid series altogether, even if they are finished, because I know once I start it I'll want to finish, and thus choosing to read a series means choosing not to read a half dozen standalone books. Those standalone books will give me more variety, are likely better quality in total (because even he best series have their ups and downs), and thus will be more enjoyable in whole. There are exceptions where series are greater than the sum of their parts, but I think they are rare.

falcolas 5y ago

> Actually, I kind of HATE series works, because they are quite often seat-of-the-pants situations where the author really has no idea where it's all going Often, authors even start a series as a number of stand-alone books with clearly bounded character-and-plot development (think Star Trek), and then later morph it into an overarching-story-plot style series. See: Dresden Files, Kate Daniels, etc.

ubermonkey 5y ago
Dresden is an especially egregious example, since Butcher clearly reached a point a few books in where he just pull unjustified stuff out of his nether regions to push a story along. First couple are fun, though.
- falcolas 5y ago
  > First couple are fun, though. Amusingly, the first couple are the episodic ones. :D

pavon 5y ago

Yeah, in fact these days I often avoid series altogether, even if they are finished, because I know once I start it I'll want to finish, and thus choosing to read a series means choosing not to read a half dozen standalone books. Those standalone books will give me more variety, are likely better quality in total (because even he best series have their ups and downs), and thus will be more enjoyable in whole. There are exceptions where series are greater than the sum of their parts, but I think they are rare.