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Post by lee on Jul 9, 2019 21:59:05 GMT
I (like many of us here at one time or another) am working on a novel. It is a steampunk/alternate history tale that began as a short story set in 1898. This past weekend, I managed to pass the 27,000 word mark and it is still going strong. The underlying plot has given birth to 4 more story ideas which could easily become novels as well.
My question is this: when reading a series, do you think an interesting setting and underlying plot is enough, or do you believe a series requires a main character who stars in each book? I would really like to find out what my peers think on the matter.
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Post by dans on Jul 9, 2019 23:34:50 GMT
I always thought you were without peer, Driv... and of course, I ALWAYS have an opinion.
Some of my favorite series didn't have a main character, although there were usually recurring characters (like Hari Seldon in Foundation). In one of my favorite series, I eventually got tired of the main character (The Warlock in Spite of Himself) (never got tired of his wife, though).
I remember one time I was reading a book, hadn't paid attention to the authors or the text on the back, and I ran into a character I recognized from another book (not the main character) and I was thrilled to realize I'd inadvertently bought a second book in a much longer series.
So boiling all this down - the shared universe and recurring characters, not necessarily the main character, are what attract me to a series.
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Post by Dave B on Jul 10, 2019 2:16:32 GMT
You could single protagonist. You could take one of your supporting characters in one story the lead character in another, switching them from tale to tale. The best writer of that type of works was Ed McBain. He created a series of 60 + murder mysteries with different detectives from the precinct solving the crime. He used a few more than others but you weren't sue who was going to be the lead character in any novel.
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Post by jonclark on Jul 10, 2019 7:08:10 GMT
It's usually the main character(s) that attract me to a series, but one of the series I was following (SM Sterling's Emberverse) has gone through three generations and had one collection of short stories set in that world and it was actually a spin-off from a trilogy with a totally different setting. So if the world is interesting enough or if you build enough bridges (shared characters, events from a different viewpoint) then odds are if I read the first and liked it I'm going to be hooked into the other stories.
But then again I am here because I like the shared continuity of a multiverse that vanished 35 years ago.... that might make me a better customer than the average Joe for series fiction.
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Post by johnreiter902 on Jul 11, 2019 2:09:11 GMT
You can do without a re-occurring main character. . . . but only (in my opinion) if the setting is very complex and highly developed, so that the setting itself is what the readers came to explore.
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Post by redsycorax on Jul 11, 2019 6:59:21 GMT
I'm a shameless alternate history junkie. I've never met a modified course of human events I didn't like, apart from the Nazi-dominated ones. It's interesting to design a setting and then work out how one's characters would be affected by the shift in changed events and contexts.
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Post by starskyhutch76 on Jul 11, 2019 20:55:19 GMT
Me too. I love the 1632 series about the small town of Grantsville that is thrown 300 years into the past smack in the middle of Germany during the 100 years war. It was meant to be a one and done book, bu it grew into a large series with multiple contributors.
This series started off with strong enough characters so that a world could be built around them. Then the torch was passed to secondary characters. The others are still recurring characters, though. I think I've actually enjoyed it as a series more than I did the original book.
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