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?
no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 12:19 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 04:16 pm (UTC)