Sequels and Prequels
Dec. 14th, 2004 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynWhen 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?
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?
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It all depends
Date: 2004-12-15 05:42 am (UTC)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.