Are there any series you really, really like? Like hardcore, have followed them for as long as they’ve been out?
I have, for a number of series. I discussed Firefly, and I’m a huge Warehouse 13 fan. I love both series, even if Warehouse 13 had some rough episodes last season.
But I’ve also been hardcore fan of some series I don’t think are as well executed. Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy them, but they may have had weak dialogue, or flat characters, or maybe they had some boring stuff.
Here’s the thing: I don’t pass those series on. Even as much as I love them, I love them for reasons that another person likely won’t.
So when you’re pumping up your favorite series, think about what a non-fan is going to see.
I’m going to use a random example from a forum discussion I saw. A user didn’t get Wheel of Time (I’ve never read it), said that the first few books were boring. A fan of the series told them to just read a few more novels, because the first four set up ‘context’ for the real story.
Here’s a hint, true fans: That’s not how you put together a story. I’m not going to spend four novels finding the good stuff, I’m going to go read the book that put the good stuff in the first one.
Here’s an example I have read: The opening of Lord of the Rings is boring. No, really, I had to reread it five times before I finished the trilogy. Tolkien was verbose, and bogged down in details. There’s a great story there, buried under world building details that most readers won’t care about.
While I hated the movies for removing many of these details when it came out (I was an overzealous fan once, too) it was the right choice to focus on the core story.
Do you have an experience with an overzealous fan, or maybe know a series that might have used a little more editing?
I felt the same way about the Lord of the Rings books. I’d started and stopped the first one multiple times before the movies came out. Once I saw the movies, I realized a worthwhile story was there if I stuck it out. My husband, as much as he loved the movies and bought the extended versions of all three, still can’t get past the part in the meadow/valley in the first book (and as you can tell, I mostly skipped that part as well).
I have to admit up front that while it took me a long time to get through it, I did cling to that version of it, and I’ll make my excuses for it, but honestly, it’s a hard read that a modern editor would not have allowed to stay like that, no matter how interesting the mythology is.
I know what you mean about the LotR books; yes, there’s a good story and Tolkein is very creative, but the many details bore me to tears at times and I had to skip parts to get to the main point. I don’t think I’ve ever come across an overzealous fan, but I certainly refuse to agonize over several books before getting to the main point.
I’ve recently encountered the ‘it gets good later’ with anime series fans. I’ve stopped considering myself an anime fan because so many have the bad habit of making it get interesting 10, or 20, or in one bad case 30 episodes in. I don’t have time to sit through that much if I’m not enjoying myself.
I actually loved Eye of the World and the rest of the Wheel of Time. The only book in that series I’ve had a hard time getting through was Crossroads of Twilight, which I still think could have been chucked in a bin cover and all and not left the series worse off for it.
There is a series a of scenes at the end of the second book that gave me goosebumps for a solid thirty minutes when I read it (even when I REread it!), so I definitely feel like the main plot begins much earlier than book five, ha. I have a pretty high tolerance for good world building though, so I don’t remember thinking that Jordan went overboard with detail in the first book, though I’ve heard that criticism from others.
I haven’t read any of the series, but I may try book one one of these days to get my own opinion. Above is just a discussion I caught on the net!
Okay, I’m still stuck on your comment about the guy who “didn’t get the Wheel of Time and thought the first few books were boring”.
???
If the first 50 pages are boring, I’m out. Maybe it’s a function of my age, but life’s too short and there are too many books left for me to spend time with one I don’t like. And I actually never noticed that TLOTR started slow. The poetry is boring (BORING!) but the pacing never bothered me. As long as the language grabs me, the writer can take his time, but if it’s not well-written and/or the plot is going nowhere and/or the characters don’t give me somone to root for, I go on to the next one.
Thanks for the entertaining post, Patrick!
If I have time, I’ll sit through boring things, I’ll admit, but most of the time, I just wander to the next book and forget the boring one existed. A lot of times I don’t even make the conscious decision to switch to a new one.
There’s millions of books I want to read and not enough time in one life, if the author can’t be grab me in the beginning, I’m out of there. Can’t lose my time with something that bores me.
Well, I ate up The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings like popcorn, but it was the prequel, The Silmarillion, that I had to start four times before I got into it. (But then I really got into it.)
Harry Potter, on the other hand, was the one I couldn’t stand. I don’t think I finished the first chapter of the first book before I put it down and never looked back. My wife and son were crazy about them, but I couldn’t have cared less.
The TV series that I followed religiously was Lost. And that is definitely a series that, if you weren’t following it, there was no point in talking to a fan. We had a group of “Losties” at work that had a regular get-together and email chain to discuss and hypothesize and argue and gush about the series.
My wife and I were almost that way about Star Trek: The Next Generation as well. I remember calling Paramount Studios one time to find out why they were airing re-runs when the season wasn’t over yet.
Great topic.