I haven’t been writing much in the past few weeks because of recent developments, but I’ve written a paragraph here and there in my current story, enough to start to realize that that a problem I’ve been ducking for a while now has to be solved.
It is the question that always comes up when you write serial fiction. How much do you rely on your readers having read what has come before?
I remember there was some comment when the second Lord of the Rings movie came out, that it started cold — with no prologue, no quick summary of part one.
In that situation, of course, it was a pretty good bet that the audience had seen the first one, and quite possibly read the books as well.
On the other hand, I remember Joss Whedon saying that in television your first six episodes are each the pilot. You can’t rely on people starting at the beginning (and in fact you really want the audience to grow as you go along, meaning you have to do your best to help them come along with you).
In my case, I try not to count on readers being familiar with what’s come before. The Jan Sleet Mysteries book follows A Sane Woman and U-town, but it’s designed to stand alone. The same with Stevie One.
The two stories I’m writing now, though (tentatively called “One Night at the Quarter” and “It Was A Dark and Stormy Night“) are kind of working out to be two halves of one story. They’re about parents, of course — one about a father and one about a mother — and those two things do kind of go together (even though the father and mother don’t meet in the stories).
So, I’m saying they’re Part One and Part Two of the same story. The first part is done, and it’s around 35,000 words, so if the second part is about the same length, then it will be a novel, more or less.
This is not absolute — I think “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night” can be read alone — but readers would have to work a little harder in terms of who the characters are and how they relate to each other.
Heck, the first comic book I ever read was the second half of a two-part story, and I managed to find my way through.
Sometimes if I check out a book in the library, I accidentally pick up the second in the series and realize I have no idea what happened before, so when I read the first book afterward, it’s like the pieces of the puzzle fitting together. But when I do read the second and third books in a series, I’d rather not have to read a long recap of what happened in the previous books. I like when the author drops hints about what went on before and doesn’t go into great detail.
On a similar note, the first time I watched Star Wars (Episodes 4, 5, and 6), I saw them backwards. My younger brother and I had been so excited about finally seeing them for the first time that we didn’t care that the first and second ones weren’t available at the Blockbuster. I might not have understood why Yoda dying was so important at first, but there was a certain thrill to piecing everything together, even at nine years old. : )
Maggie: Agreed. A big recap is tedious for people who actually have read the earlier book, and I expect that for most new readers it would just seem confusing. It’s always a mistake to dump information on readers before you’ve given them a reason to care about it (“Dragon Tattoo syndrome” 🙂 ).
Bryna: Reading your comment, and thinking about my own experiences, I now wonder if coming into a story in the middle can be part of how you get hooked on it. It makes you work harder, obviously.
For example, when I started watching the TV show Dark Shadows I came in halfway through the series, in the middle of a storyline, and it was several weeks before I really figured out what the heck was going on, who the characters were, or who were the “good guys” and the “bad guys” (which was not a useful paradigm for that show anyway). That confusion glued my attention to the screen for a half hour every day (I used to take the TV into my room for DS, so I could concentrate), and I ended up well and truly hooked (and I still am, obviously).