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

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.