How Do Popular Book Series’ Get Worse Over Time?
I keep hearing the claim of a popular novel that is a first pair of large selection of books will cease after the third or fourth book in the series, all sense of quality or urgency, but still have a large number of pages where nothing happens. Sequelitis Is this laziness, why most sequels instead of short? And how do you create a page of several hundred long novel, where the critics are "nothing happens"? What is it nothing at all, and why it makes more space?
Normally this is because authors stretch out the stories.
For example, Anne Rice stretched out the Vampire Chronicles, and any book after #5 was just plain out boring. Stephanie Meyer, another vampire author, noticed and did not make the same mistake (yet). Another good example is Harry Potter, the series had 7 books.. the author could have stretched out the storyline but he chose to keep all the books interesting.
You ask a very simple question. The truth is, they are “filler episodes.” Just like when you watch your favorite TV show. For example, lets say you are a Smallville fan. Each season has a main plot, but each episode will lightly cover that plot while having its own side plot. Sometimes, episodes will never touch the “season plot” and just go about a stand-alone story for that single episode.. these are called filler episodes. There is a storyline within the episode, but in the bigger picture the episode does not mean anything to the major plot of the season.
This is why reviewers say, “nothing happened,” Because the main plot is left off exactly where you started after the story line of the book as finished. A good example of these would be the House of Night series. This series has two filler episodes in between the 1st and the 4th that could be skipped entirely and really not miss a beat for the main plot.
In the beginning, the authors write for themselves so they write where they/the characters lead them. Later on in the series, the authors have to satisfy the publisher, the editors, and the fans instead of just writing for themselves so the story loses some of it’s spark
Also as an author keep cranking out more novels, the fans expect different plots and elements and some growth from the author. If the author don’t grow then the fans will say that the story is boring and overdone because the authors just recycle plots from their earlier works.
As for the ‘nothing happens’, some authors start with a crime scene then end with the murderer. However, the middle 250pgs are filled with the investigator’s familial issues, sex, GF/BF problems, co-worker problems that might be interesting but they don’t pertain to the main issue of the book which is the murder.
The reason is hype. Few authors can write a book well enough for it to become hugely popular. When they do, they often face way more pressure than they did before to make the next books in the series better. This pressure affects their writing in a bad way. People are always expecting the sequal books to be so much better than the first one. That almost never happens because the sequal is never the same experience as the first one, therefore leaving people dissapointed and having them say it’s not as good as the first one. Also, because they are popular, authors again face pressure to satisfy the fans with more books in the series, which kind of pulls down the quality of the entire series. Coming up with new and interesting plots is difficult, especially when you don’t plan on doing so. Authors are people too. They need to make money and they try to stick with what works to get more. It’s sad, but what else can they do?
you can only play the same game so long, then you run out of things to do, just like a book, some people try to keep it going because it was a huge success, so they keep trying to make more on it, not all books are like this though harry potter for instance she always held enough mystery to make people wanna read more never gave you the full picture and tied every book into the others, Eragon is kinda like this, but when you totally finish one adventure all together and use the same people to do another one it gets boring after awhile, like power rangers bat man, and so on you grow out of them… better to stick to one adventure that last a couple of books
instead of alot of adventures spanning alot of books =/
i dont necessarly think it gets worse over time, i think people just get bored of it so the book doesnt sell as well. and usually with the really thick novels, its not until right at the end that you find out all the answers and the interesting stuff happens. so the rest is the “nothing happens” i guesss
The author may have wanted to end the series a couple books ago, but simply can’t end it, because he depends on the money he’s getting from a popular series. The author’s probably just getting tired of the story.
I think ‘nothing’ is defined here as ‘completely boring & pointless bits of information’.
Thats just my guess though.