Serial Cheaters?
Submitted by mwilliams on Thu, 2008-04-03 00:27.The serial novel is a form whose time has come again. But where traditionally the episodes were penned on the fly, in its latest incarnation in the New York Times the works are pre-written in their entirely before the first installment hits the page. The question is, is this break with tradition a form of cheating, “depriving both writer and reader of a unique experience?”
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I wouldn't view it as cheating based on one little "if" -- IF the author in question, already has his story completed and it is publishing it in nice chunky reading installments. It would be episodic shows without the tv.
Much like certain comic books. ElfQuest comes to mind, back in the day - the writers/artists made it known to their readers it would have a progression and an ending, even tho' it came out quarterly - over a length of time, they weren't going to alter anything to satisfy reader opinion.
Producing any form of serial on the fly however, I think flagrant cheating and just as bad as novelists who don't know where they are going with their "series" of books such as Wheel of Time or Song of Ice and Fire.
Just another way of sucking money out of the consumer.
I don't think you're right about either WoT or ASoIaF. Martin has it all figured out since long before, and so did Jordan. Most authors know the plotline, and have it jotted down in a notebook but writing a book takes a lot of extrapolating, and the actual writing is more taxing work than just thinking out a general plotline. Once you start writing you have to get it right, because once it's printed it's set in stone. In terms of what is added when writing begins, my impression is that it's seldom anything important that has any impact on the major direction of the story.
I can readily point out a lot of what their reader's complain about regarding Martin & Jordan's epics, yet frequently -if not with every publishing house out there from magazines to books, industry standard "warn" (unpublished)writer's against doing this. Too many subplots, characters, etc.
It is a "breach in writing etiquette"
But there you said it - "it's seldom anything important that has impact on the story".
Writer's write to get work out there to the reader, publishers publish - to make money. They frequently have funky notions, like Hollywood producers as to what is "marketable" to the "target audience".
Martin could have well had maybe 5 books for Ice&Fire writ in stone- in his own mind and maybe even tangibly, and then his publisher's could well have seen some "eye candy" character's in book 3 that they told him to "keep alive" - in which case, he'd have to go back to the drawing board - which alters plot, subtly and sometimes dramatically.
How many serials do you think publishing houses would buy from completely unknown writers and will just run with it and not have any idea what they are doing? They don't always work that way, that's a monetary risk.
At the very least in the context of this article , at least half of the whole storyline would already be "writ in stone" - and in the can, just episodic televisions shows do.
How do you edit yourself on Wordsy or can you? I wrote the last paragraph incorrectly according to what I meant. (which is to say - in regards to the OP's article, most things of this nature are already "in the can" and not "on the fly" at all - it's a financial risk to the company producing it if nothing else. It's not unlike television sitcoms in this regard)
By the way Jakob --I see a ton of code errors up on the top half of the page - warning array flip, etc contained inside a pink box.
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You can't edit yet, I think. It's on the TODO list. We need a good solution for it before we can allow anyone to edit their comments - it's easy to abuse.
I know about the errors, and I've alerted Hans. We're working to fix it.