Sequels and Prequels

[rowyn]

When I think about "seeing more" of my favorite characters or settings, I always want to know: What happens next?

Although I've read, and watched, plenty of prequels, part of me is always a little disappointed by them. I don't want to know what's gone before. I don't want to see the edges of the story filled in, to see what was happening to those characters when the camera was following this character. I want to move forward, to get the answer to And then?

In a similar vein, I dislike it when authors give spoilers for their own works. Diana Wynne Jones, dearly though I love her work, does that way too often. She'll have a first-person narrator who's supposedly writing this book after the fact, and keeps sprinkling in tidbits about how things turn out. Stop that! I don't want to know how it ends until it ends! Oddly, though, flashbacks within a text don't bother me, as long as it's not "three-fourths of the book is one long flashback".

Anyway, I'm curious now: how many other people feel the same way? When you've got a character you like, are you as happy to see a prequel as a sequel? Or do you prefer one over the other? What about the foreshadowing-by-sledgehammer that some authors like? How much do spoilers spoil it for you?

Comments

[palfrey.livejournal.com]

I've always quite liked prequels - at least we know where the character is going, so there's less chances of a major league alteration in how the character will behave. You have a reasonable guess as to their future path already, but you get to know more about the little stories that have been told about the dodgy leg or whatever.

In at least one case (the character "Jordan Brown" in Ken McLeod's otherwise wonderful sequence of books starting with "The Star Fraction") I've seen a character that I somewhat identified with decide to make a radical change in their life, and it's annoyed me that they didn't go the way I'd hoped. However, in general I like sequels. Getting to see more is generally a good thing.

On foreshadowing: only really allowed for things like Babylon 5 (they did what could be considered major league obvious foreshadowing, and yet they get away with it because it's in plain sight, and you don't believe the things that are said) or for things where its obvious anyways what's going to happen (e.g. foreshadowing that the fairy princess will get to marry the prince, etc), because then the author can have fun with it.

[rowyn]

Regarding characters not going the way you'd like -- I've never thought of that before, but I admit there've been books where I hated the later decisions the characters made.

Babylon 5's foreshadowing often annoyed me; probably the most egregious example was the 4th season episode where the story jumped forward various increments in time, ending with the heat-death of the universe or some such silliness. But the spoilers about what would happen to various characters were ANNOYING.

I like just enough foreshadowing that the reader can look back and think "oh, THAT'S what that was about", but not so much that I think "Well, gee, I know how this ends, guess I can stop reading now."

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I despise foreshadowing. Why, I'd even dare say that Revelations is one of my least favorite books of the Bible! (But a more serious discussion of the whys and wherefores would take far more space than an LJ comment would warrant.)

Part of the appeal of a book is the illusion, however fleeting, that the ending is not predetermined - that somehow the unknown is also the undetermined - that things could go one way or the other, even if, in reality, the ending is already there on the last page, ready to be revealed, if only I would skip to it and spoil the fun.

A little bit of "foreshadowing" isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but it really depends on what sort of "foreshadowing" you're talking about. Is it just a matter of cliche? Is it that some character says, "Why, there's NO WAY this could go wrong," and that therefore I know that the gods will be obliged to punish this mortal for his bold proclamation? I'm not terribly impressed by that.

I am not against prequels entirely. For instance, I was long eager to find out more about Chapters I through III of the Star Wars saga, since I figured there was story to be told there - and that by filling in some of the past, it might give me a little more insight into what might possibly be in the future of that story universe. (I am not necessarily pleased with everything that's been revealed ... but THAT TOO would take too long for an LJ comment, to properly explore my opinions. =) )

I've read articles that suggest "teasing tidbits" from Rowling on what will happen in the Harry Potter stories - and I'm not INTERESTED in such spoilers.

I can't get terribly excited about lots of serial TV shows, because I know there are certain rules that dictate how the story will end. There is some pretense of peril or danger or conflict, but I so often KNOW that certain things are ruled in or ruled out, because of real-world considerations - that the cast of characters can't change, except at the first or last show of the season, for instance ... that, if the character has a single driving goal that justifies the series, he'll never attain it, no matter how many teasing chances, or else the series will end, and this is the middle of the season. And so forth.

If the author tells me the ending, then he or she robs me of that illusion of an open ending, or even that the characters might have some sort of "free will". Narrative details like that remind me that "This is just a story," the ending is already written, and any emotional investment I have in the story is a waste, because, after all, it's just a story.

And that's hardly any fun at all.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I'll bet you were annoyed by Daniel for weeks. ];-)

Movie trailers are unfortunate to me; I'd rather be delighted and surprised by what happens. And Dan Brown's foreshadowing in his works such as The DaVinci Code and Deception Point seems rather amateurish.

It reminded me: I don't want to do that. ];-)

Suspended disbelief is fragile, and precious, and should NOT be disturbed. The reader will recover without having to be jarred out of it.

===|==============/ Level Head

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - MOVIE TRAILERS. I used to love movie trailers. There's still a certain appeal to them, since many times the movie trailer is a lot better than the movie ever is ... but in the case of a good movie, a trailer just goes and spoils it.

Terminator 2 would have been a whole lot of a different experience, if I hadn't seen the trailer first and seen who the good guys and bad guys were supposed to be. It could have been one awesome surprise.

Much more recently, after seeing an extended trailer for "Polar Express", gwendelkitty commented to me, "Well! We don't have to see the movie now. I think we just saw the whole thing."

I think I've had a lot more fun going into a good movie if I have no idea what to expect. For one thing, I had no earthly idea what to expect when I first went in, as a 7-year-old, to see "Star Wars", except that it had something to do with spaceships, and I liked spaceships, so that was good enough for me. What I got was a lot more than what I expected, and I'm grateful for that. =) A little more recently, I think that movies like "Secondhand Lions", "The Cat Returns" (Studio Ghibli) or "Millennium Actress Chiyoko" are best seen without any idea what to expect.

That's one reason why I really like the core premise of Rowyn's "Just Trust Me" campaign - that the players really have very little preparation to know what the "twist" is going to be in the game. Is it science fiction? Fantasy? Is it time travel or vampires or maybe they find out that magic is real? No idea! It starts in something resembling a familiar real world, but then the surprises happen, and it's a matter of discovery to find out what's going on. That's a whole lot different than, say, generating a Dungeons and Dragons character: running into goblins or dragons with your Paladin won't be a surprise; it's an expectation.

[rowyn]

If the author tells me the ending, then he or she robs me of that illusion of an open ending, or even that the characters might have some sort of "free will".

It's a spoiler! I don't understand why an author would want to spoil his own book!

That said, I think appropriate use of foreshadowing is important. Foreshadowing, at the most basic level, is showing the reader that the ending came from somewhere; it's setting up reader expectations so that when you get to the end, you don't think "What? What was that? What happened?" But that doesn't require clubbing through the fourth wall to scatter hints about the ending. It just means showing the details of your setting and characters that, perhaps, do not seem important at the time but prove to shape later events. It's showing the minion having an argument with the archvillain, so that the audience understands why the minion helps the hero later on. At the root, that's foreshadowing -- but it's a basic part of storytelling, too.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. I'm not sure that I'm using my terms properly here. If "foreshadowing" means, "setting things up so that things make sense later," then I'm cool with that. If "foreshadowing" means, "Spoil the ending," then I'm SO not cool with that. ;)

But Back to Mariel....

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

But back to my "birthday gift"....

I certainly don't mind that you sent me a bit of "background" into Mariel's past (from Prophecy). I already know the ending of the story, yes, but that's partly by the misfortune of reading the story in several pieces, as it was being written. It's not like the beginning of the story consists of telling the ending and then just teasing us into wanting to see how we get to there.

It's a piece of the story not told, and in and of itself, it serves as a little bit of story on its own. It's nice to have that piece filled in ... but I have already accepted the whole story on its own merits, with or without that missing piece. A story where the author deliberately spoils the ending, well, that's another matter entirely.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

There's one instance where I like--and even require of most authors--foreshadowing: when the book's a tragedy. I don't like reading a book that looks like it's going to have a happy ending until we reach the end and suddenly everything goes to Hades in a handbasket and instead of happily ever after, everyone dies and life is pointless.

This is one of the reasons I am planning to never read another Douglas Adams novel.

Otherwise, I like sequels and prequels just fine, as long as there's enough story to be told during them to justify them.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

That's something I've struggled with in the past. (Okay, maybe "struggled" is too strong a word.) Back when I was in high school, I was obsessed with reading every science fiction book in the school library. (There weren't all that many, really. It was a small school.) It seemed like I had a really lousy streak; not every book I read had a tragic ending, but the majority of them did. And some of them were really wallowing in the angst, with Shakespearean pile-up-the-bodies endings. More than one of them ended up in the depicted or implied destruction of Earth and/or the human race, despite the best efforts of the heroes. (And, there seemed to be a common theme of "no good deed goes unpunished".) I think it was either just a phenomenal fluke, or else whoever was in charge of stocking the library had a really twisted sense of humor.

I wasn't too happy with those books. I didn't think highly of the author. But, still, it had an unforeseen side effect: When I finally read another book that ended up having a happy ending, it wasn't something I was expecting to be a foregone conclusion. It had been established to me that, yes, it is possible for a novel to have an unhappy ending, even when there are all the cliches that seem to point to the final confrontation in which the hero will at last prevail.

I didn't like the books with these particular unhappy endings, for various reasons (beyond just the fact that they ended unhappily) ... but they served a perhaps unintended purpose of making me appreciate a book with a happy ending as a little more special for the contrast.

Hmm.

For some reason, my logic reminds me of the stupid joke about the man who keeps hitting himself in the head with a hammer. When asked why he's doing it, he says, "Because it feels so good when I stop!"

[rowyn]

That's an interesting notion; I hadn't thought of it in that context before. How 'heavy-handed' do you like the foreshadowing in a tragedy to be? Some examples:

The Lord of the Rings has a basically happy ending, but there's ample foreshadowing to suggest things could go badly. I think Tolkein could have pulled off a tragic ending (say, sans Gollum's actions at Mount Doom) without much alteration to the lead-up.

Conversely, "King Lear" is famous as a tragedy, but at various points in time it's been played with a happy ending. If you've read the play, it's easy to see how this is done, because there's a point just before the end where all the major issues have been resolved and it looks like it's going to be a happy ending. The final tragic ending practically comes out of nowhere. ("Ran", Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of "King Lear", does a much better job with the subject material, IMHO, including foreshadowing the ending.)

I agree that it's frustrating to have tragedy strike from nowhere, on the one hand. On the other, I do like the idea that a book can go either way, too. I like that element of suspense, and there's something appealing about the idea that those characters going "up against overwhelming odds" can get overwhelmed, every now and again. And while I want that to be suggested as a possibility, I don't want the kind of heavy-handed this-is-how-it's-going-to-be foreshadowing that some authors use. (Page 10: "Oh, how terrible his fate will be in the end, our poor hero, but he does not know this now, as he enters nursery school.")

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I want characters to have challenges and hardships. I want them to occasionally suffer. But if all their suffering, if all the terrible things they endure and that scar them are all in vain, I want to know it from the beginning.

For me there's a big difference between instances of overwhelming within the story, and the entire story itself being pointlessly depressing.

How heavy-handed the foreshadowing should be depends on just how tragic the book's going to be. If the entire end is a downer, I want to know almost immediately. If the ending's just a minor sour note, then it can be a lot lighter throughout the narrative.

I have experienced first hand what readers do to you when your book ends tragically without warning. It doesn't matter if they say they like tragedy, it's pretty clear when they fling curses and pages at you that they don't like to be caught out with a "everything was meaningless in the end" ending. :,

[sandratayler.livejournal.com]

It depends on how attached I am to a character. If I'm not attached, then I don't care much either way. If I'm thoroughly attached, then I prefer to know what happens next, but I'll take whatever I can get. However the Anne McCaffrey approach of retelling stories two and three times from different viewpoints annoys me because I already know what will happen and the individual character development is rarely interesting enough to offset that.

Foreshadowing-by-sledgehammer also annoys me. It absolutely kills tension.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Orson Scott Card has done this with Ender's Game as well -- and the more recently published Ender's Shadow has the sad effect of making the FIRST book appear less of an accomplishment. It was GOOD! But my enjoyment of a potential re-read has been interfered with by Bean's bizarre treatment in Shadow.

A pity. Such "re-treatments" are not necessarily bad, though, and the mere fact of knowing the environment and the characters creates a certain kind of comfort; you are part of an "in group" in a sense as you know these people and can make connections that a first exposure reader necessarily cannot.

I am currently reading Steve Perry's "Matador" series -- a gift from some VERY nice people in Utah! ]:-D -- and there is a lot of this cross-fertilization effect. It's a good thing. And I happened to first pick up a book from later in the series (Matadora) and subsequently started over, sort of.

So, overall, a re-telling or pre-telling of a tale can be good and has some built-in advantages. But as you pointed out, caring about the character is a significant force for a reader, and you really want to know what happens next.

An example relevant here -- I'd much prefer to see Silver Scales (a story-in-progress written by our hostess rowyn move forward before it goes backward.

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead were both interesting books to me. For the most part, I enjoyed them greatly. But there were a few key concepts in each that I could rant about at great length.

The friend who recommended them to me warned me off from reading Xenocide, so I've not read it or any of the other subsequent books. I have to admit, nothing I've heard about the next three has encouraged me to pick any of them up.

But I quite liked the entire "Matador" series. I think the "re-telling" effect in those is mitigated considerably by the way the overall plot continues to move forward. While the time periods covered have some overlap, you're still seeing new events unfold in each novel.

It also doesn't have the "revision" effect that too many prequels and overlapping novels suffer from. "Matador" feels like Perry planned the series in advance and didn't change his mind about details half-way through the second book. From what I've heard of Ender's Shadow, that novel suffers from badly inconsistencies and plot flaws. An author can spoil a work by inserting some "new cool thing" that he hadn't thought of the first time around, but which would (or should) preclude events that happened originally. "Wait, if this character was like that all along, why didn't we see any evidence of it in the first book?"

[level-head.livejournal.com]

You are right about Ender's Shadow. "If Bean was like this, and doing all this, why'd you even write a book about Ender?"

But the movie is going to be about Ender, I understand. I wonder if it will be influenced by Shadow.

===|==============/ Level Head

It all depends

[garyamort.livejournal.com]

Foreshadowing: It depends on how it is done.

I dislike it in a show or book where a Charector suddenly discusses a giant fear they have and why they have it, where you just know they will have to 'conquer their fear' in the end. I especially dislike this in television shows where charectors 2 seasons in suddenly develope a phobia for the story.

I dislike prophecies that always neatly complete the story.

I like third party after the fact stories. Glen Cook does a lot of that, with both the Black Company and his detective stories. Even though you know the major charector is going to survive, he makes the charector interesting enough to want to know how everything happens, even if you know some of what happens.

Prequells:
Prequells TEND to have the problem of messing up the storyline. Especially if the main charector grows during the story, because authots rarely tend to get the pregrowth charector right. Short stories this isn't much of a problem, but longer books are difficult. At the end of the prequell, I'm left wondering "why did the charector do X in the book". Prequells set far before the first story can be good - for example the current Star Wars trilogies are set far enough before the originals that they have little impact. Not that I neccesarily like them, but they have a wide enough gap for continuity sake.

Offshoot stories:
I love offshoot stories that 'fill in the gaps' of books. As long as the charectors remain true to the originals. Oftentimes though the author tends to get this thing where he makes the charectors more and more powerfull, even though we know from the original story that it doesn't make sense. Ender's Shadow is a perfect example of this, where Bean becomes gestalt of a 'Better Ender' and an 'Adult Voice'. Throughout the story, Bean is telling of the adults tormenting Ender just as *I* always wanted to scream at them during the book. It just doesn't work.

However, the Earthsea series I liked, where minor charectors from the first series of books became major charectors later in the series.

Some of my favorite Star Trek: TNG episodes where the ones which focused on the little charectors on board the ship.

I think the important thing with offshoots though is not to change the flavor of the universe. You can add flavor, but don't change the basic flavor. A good example here would be the Valdemere series of books. Valdemere was an idealized middle ages themed kingdom - sort of like how the SCA idealizes that period. That's fine, but then in some of the prequells set in the time period, they try to explore the 'seemier' side of Valdemere. The problem is, the idealized Valdemere and the seemier Valdemere just don't fit in the same universe, so the story seems a little flat. You can get away with that when you seperate two stories by centuries, but when it is by only a decade or so it just doesn't work.

Personally, I'd love to see a series of movies where you have the same major events happen, but you get to see it from a different set of perspectives. One from the major charectors, one from the sidekicks, one from people impacted, etc. Sort of a simulatenous filming, release the main movie, and release the secondary movies later to television or DVD.

So, in summary, Foreshadowing, Offshoots, and Prequells can be done in a good fashion. And they can suck. It all depends on the author.

[octantis.livejournal.com]

I think foreshadowing can be overused, but so can pretty much any literary tool.

As for prequels and sequels.. hmm. I find that if I really like a character, I'm eager to learn more about him or her in any way. Usually if I like the character that much I'm pretty sure the storyverse will treat them right.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

As far as prequels go, I enjoy them - they can show new things about the characters that made them the way they are, and if I liked the characters, it's just fun to watch them in action.

For foreshadowing... It's useful, you can set up expectations with them. You can also have fun by pretending things will go one way, and then when the actual foreshadowed scene comes up, they *appear* to be going that way, then lurch the other. It's a game with the reader's expectations.

[krud42.livejournal.com]

The problem I have with prequels is a rather straightforward one: "If this is worth telling me, why didn't you start with it?"

Either it's good enough to stand on its own, or it's not. If the prequels rely heavily on what came before (such as, for example, in the case of Star Wars), then to me they're no better than a weak sequel.

(Of course, in the case of Star Wars [which I realize is a different medium than you're talking about], it's even worse that the prequels are 'redefining' what came 'later'. [i.e., making huge changes in the original movies to better fit the prequels. *argh!*])

Okay, enough of that.

(Some things are called "prequels", when in my opinion they could just be considered "a story that just happens to have taken place before the first one you read." I can't think of an example off-hand, but I know I've read them.)

Foreshadowing

[brennabat.livejournal.com]

Generally I am not a big fan of prequals, but I don't mind foreshadowing, tragic endings, pleasant ones, or not knowing the future. Infact one of my favorite parts of reading is mentally munching the new material. With a prequal where I havn't read the current timeline part of the story I feel as if my "newness munch" reward for reading has been reduced slightly. For example I recent saw the entirety of Wolf's Rain, which has significant foreshadwoing as to its ending at the very start. However I actually started watching the series several episodes past the beginning so I completely missed the foreshadowing. Now I won't go in to how it ends, but I will say I enjoyed the story more because I didn't have the knowledge of what would happen hanging over my head through the whole thing. I wonder, too, if this is part of why I don't write stories when I certainly have ideas for them. I already know how they'd end. Putting them to paper doesn't change that, it just showcases them for others.

Sorry for the ramble. Boing "the dream slayer" Dragon woke me up early and I'm out of it. :D

Re: Foreshadowing

[rowyn]

Yes, "I already know how it ends" can have a significant detriment on a writer's incentive to get to the ending. It's part of why I haven't outlined Scales the way I did Prophecy. I still know how Scales ends, and have for the last two years, as well as knowing a lot of key scenes, some of which have unfolded and some of which are yet to come. But with less of it mapped out, I feel more of that sense of discovery when I move forward. I'm not sure if that's the key distinction or not; Scales has a lot going for it that Prophecy didn't. But it feels significant.