I've been thinking a lot about series fiction lately, which isn't surprising, since I'm at work on the third book in a trilogy.
And I want to say thank you to readers: a huge thank you to readers who embark on the journey at book 1, knowing as they know that there will be ... unrest*. There will be waiting, and possibly the necessity of rereading before the next book comes out because they'll have read dozens of other books in the meantime and don't remember every little thing. It certainly seems like the sensible thing to do would be to just wait until the series is complete before involving oneself ...
But NO! It is not sensible at all! I will talk about why by and by, but really my main thing here is to say thank you for sharing in the adventure as it unfolds, even knowing that it will be interrupted.
You rule.
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(I hope he's not saying anything inappropriate.) |
So. Series.
It came as a big surprise to me, when Daughter of Smoke & Bone first came out, to see some early reader reviews, on Amazon and Goodreads, that said essentially, "I loved this book and would have given it 5 stars except it's a series so I'm taking away a star, pthwwttt!" (Maybe the pthwwttt wasn't there, but that was the gist.)
WHASSAT, YOUNGSTER?
This attitude was totally unexpected. I still don't quite understand the meaning of it. I suspect that these readers have YA supernatural romance series fatigue specifically, there really are just so many, it's true. Sometimes you just want to read a standalone! BUT. THERE ARE PLENTY OF STANDALONES IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT. What I was hearing these people say, essentially, was: keep it short, authors. Tell your story in one book so I can read it and then read something else! Me me me! Cater to me specifically me!
My response: No. And also: Shut up. (Okay, yeah, but it's a nice shut up.)
I can only speak for myself, but I want to tell you why I like to read series, and why I like to write them. The reason is the same, and it's very simple and exactly what you would expect: some stories are just too big to be a single book. When I started writing Daughter, I intended to write a standalone. Something simple, you know, just a fun little something. Ha! This just happens to me. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to write a short story only to discover it actually needs to be a novel, nay, an epic series -- at which point I tell it to fight for its life in the novel queue in my head, which is ... loOoOoOong, but where I like to imagine that all the ideas are nice to each other and share food from darling wicker baskets and play cards while they wait, and are not plotting to feed each other to Komodo dragons to improve their own chances of getting written.
But anyway, when I began Daughter, it was in a rush of wild writerly joy such as I had never experienced, it wasn't like I sat down and outlined a series arc across several books, with some idea of a multi-book contract and launching a franchise, rubbing my hands greedily and thinking, ha ha HA! This way I won't have to think of another idea for YEARS, suckers! No. I had these characters, and these questions, and my mind was all on fire and my fingers were all wiggly with wanting to write, and when I started to answer the questions ... and to sense a plot coalescing ... it got big. Really big. And I still tried to cram it into one book for a while. I had series-fear. It's a big undertaking! It's scary!
But it is what it is. The story assumes a life of its own, and many stories sprawl. As a reader, I am happy about this. I like sprawl. I like to enter a world, peer around, get to know it, explore it, discover its vastness, fall in love with its characters, and ... if I love it, I want it to continue. As a writer, I think particularly a fantasy writer, when you have created a world, you're not going to throw it away in one book. These worlds are not single-use, like disposable contact lenses! These are the work of our lives, many of us, and for big portions of our day are more real to us than the real world!
I know many of you feel the same way. For some readers, it isn't the issue of a series, per se, but a series that is not yet complete. You don't want the agony of the cliffhanger, so you decide to wait until the series is all wrapped up. I totally get this too. I have felt this pain.
But ... personally ... it's kind of a good pain. Exquisite agony? Sweet torment? On the one hand, I was so grateful that when I discovered The Golden Compass, or the Dreamquake Duet, they were already complete. There was a day of panicked phone calls to bookstores and driving around trying to trackdown Dreamquake! On tour this fall I read all three of Robin Hobb's Liveship Trader books like a glutton, one after another. I had the instant gratification of reading straight through.
But ... I gotta say, the reading experience that is more precious in my heart, and more entwined in my life -- not necessarily because I love the books more, though I do love them -- is Harry Potter, because I was there every step of the way. Part of the experience was the wait, the journey, and being in it as it happened, waiting and all. Knowing JK Rowling was locked away in a castle hotel in Scotland finishing a book! That Cheryl Klein flew to pick up the manuscript in person, and cloak-and-daggered it back with her on the airplane, like a secret agent! And the release nights, and people racing home at midnight to read them at once, and all the marvelousness. So that was a special case, of course, but I feel the same way about other series that are underway now. I love the expectation, I find it delicious. It's like falling in love.
So that's my personal feeling about reading series, but there is another piece, and that's the practical issue:
If everyone waited for a series to be complete before reading it, it would never be completed. Because the publisher would cancel it due to low sales. This happens, unfortunately.
And, unlike JRR Tolkien, authors do not generally have the luxury of completing an entire series before it begins to see the light of publication. We're trying to make a living. We need to get paid along the way so we can buy Cheerios and new socks. We live book to book, and this is how it goes. We write them as fast as we can, which is not always terribly fast but is hopefully what the book needs to be as good as it can be. Sometimes I read a book 2 that appears quickly on the heels of a successful book 1, and it feels rushed and thrown together, and that disappointment is a million times worse than waiting.
As Pat Rothfuss advised me, quoting Tim Powers as regards deadline pressure:
"It's late once, but it will suck forever."
And forever is what we want. I mean, now would be nice too, but really, this experience of being part of the journey as a series is first published, it's a fleeting thing that feels long in the process but really isn't (unless we're talking about George RR Martin, and I defy anyone to find fault with the time he takes to write those massive and complex tomes). All too soon, the series will be complete, and there will be nothing left to wait for, and that will be the source of lament.
So what I'm saying is: thank you to readers for being part of the process. It very much, absolutely literally, would not be possible without you. If you don't read the series, publishers won't publish it. It's that simple. So thank you for the faith, for the waiting, the patience, the rereading, and thank you for spreading the word. I think that the internet has served a great purpose of uniting authors and readers in a sense of community, all in service to the books. We are like an ecosystem, depending on each other for survival, and I love you. I went to the p.o. box yesterday to pick up my mail, and it was like a big pile of warm hugs.
So ... for you ... HUGS:




*Someone brought this to my attention the other day: it's
the "Daughter of Smoke & Bone 3" page on Goodreads, and if you scroll down, there is a hilarious slew of agony gifs. It's perversely gratifying, OF COURSE, that readers are so invested in the books and eager for the next one!
Oh, and another link, to
a Neil Gaiman post regarding GRRM and the wait between his books. I am not linking to this in any way to say "get out of my face about book 3." Honestly I am thrilled readers are eager for book 3 and I'm doing my best to write it -- both for me and for you. But I like what Gaiman says here, especially about how different writers work differently, etc etc. That part. Not so much the "not your bitch" part. But, you know, that particular guy did need to hear that :-)