Losing hope is something MOST authors do to their characters when they end up writing a series. They create some conflict for their characters to go through and grow through. Conflict that often seems rather hopeless… bottom of the barrel-now I can crawl up out of it, end of the world-so now I can suck it up and achieve something… THAT type of hopeless.
And I hate it.
I hate writing it and I hate reading it. After all, I LIKE my characters and the series that I’m in love with and enjoy reading…. I don’t WANT to see my beloved characters have so much drama or tragedy in their lives! I want to enjoy reading more about them but does it REALLY have to be all about horribleness!
This just happened to me while reading the Karavans series by Jennifer Roberson. The second one ended wonderfully and it took her YEARS to write the third and get it published. And I’m about one third of the way through it and its become just a struggle to read. The survival of the characters, in the peril they were already left in at the end of the second book apparently wasn’t enough. Instead she had the “Gods” get crazier and devise even more ridiculous plans for our characters. THEN she took away one of the surprise endings from the book by saying, “Oh that wasn’t THAT, it was the God wishing it into being.” HUGE load of crapola that I suspect she’s using to be able to say later, “Nope… it was true all along Haha!” Bitch. I hate her.
Chapter by agonizing chapter she’s taken away ALL the joy and hope at the end of the last book and left not only her characters adrift but the reader also. Reading it has become a chore. When she took away the last good thing I knew I was done.
This is EXACTLY one of the reason I dislike writing. People expect drama, bad guys and this amazing “growth” our characters go through to triumph. Sucks. And have you noticed how they also do this for television shows?! I watch Grey’s Anatomy and I was right there with one of the main characters when, after the plane they were on crashed in the woods, she walked around convinced they had to leave Seattle.. that the hospital was cursed cuz EVERY bad thing in the world seemed to happen there. I was agreeing with her completely! If I worked in a hospital with that many tragedies I think I’d get a new job!!
The irony is we WANT stories where our characters triumph because that makes us feel good and we want to think if we were in that situation we’d triumph also now cuz we know how. But to triumph they have to face the evil. And when its a series, well, they have to come up with more and more evil. So that one love finally gets together only to break up next season. They finally find the long looked for object only to realize its a CLUE to a bigger object. Insane.
Personally I prefer the parts where a new person meets the character and they have NO idea how amazing this character is, how powerful, and then they get introduced to it. THAT is my favorite part in any book.
Of course, its also my favorite part in my life. “You don’t know Heather? Oh…. let me give you a little taste of Full Heather. You will either love it or not understand it. Either way it’s an experience.”
Happy Holidays everyone.
Now where’d I put that mistletoe?