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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I'll resist until a few readers whose tastes and opinions I'm familiar with tell me it wasn't a mistake of monumental proportions. Until then... I'm going to be leery as hell about Wind Through the Keyhole. The past is rife with disastrous results when an author decides to "wake up" a series that was all wrapped up, put to bed and tucked in. Nobody would be happier than me if King bucked the odds on this one (and I know there's scads of gaps in the various time-frames of the series that can be filled with narrative), but I can't think of a single instance where I've been able to honestly say; "Yeah... I'm sooooo glad <insert author> decided to drag that one out of mothballs (after the better part of a decade)." I'm always willing to hear other's examples where they thought it worked out well, though. 
"Wanting more" is most often the best state to leave your readers in. The problem is that the readers themselves don't usually understand that they're better off not "getting more" once the final curtain has fallen. So they clamor for more and usually end up with a bad taste in their mouth when the author makes the mistake of actually giving it to them. |
There is much wisdom here.
From Stonetools:
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Why do trilogies become series? Sometimes, it's just audience demand, or the publisher's desire to keep a popular story going. But also, in a lot of these cases, the authors set out to create universes before they start writing the actual books, and they wind up with grand mythical realms. This is likely why these epics lend themselves so well to other mediums like TV, film and videogames – they are immersive, due to the sheer scope of their universes.
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George R.R. Martin, for example, reportedly wanted to create a Tolkienesque world before penning A Game of Thrones. He was no doubt busy creating ancient blood feuds, lineages, and mythologies for his great project, all of which had to be touched on in the actual story. Tolkien sat on a perpetually expanding legendarium — poems, fictional languages and beastiaries — for decades, before incorporating middle-earth into a longer narrative. Upon becoming successful, he was therefore able to draw from these many existing middle-earth elements to write LOTR. Frank Herbert's process was similar. He collected and researched Dune's elements for years before publishing the first book. When it took off, the world of Dune already existed; he simply had to direct it into a narrative form.
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My own take: originality is hard. Building a rich, complex original world is REALLY hard. Most writers don't successfully do it even once. Not surprisingly , most writers who do it tend to recycle (er , revisit) their creations rather than imagine new ones.
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Also here is much wisdom.
And from FJTorres:
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Writing is hard work; writers are often compelled to follow-up whenever a good story or compelling characters present themselves so sequels and series aren't always about milking a popular character or millieau for a few extra bucks; sometimes it's about a muse that just won't be denied.
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Again, wisdom. The keyword here is sometimes. For me, one of the best recent examples of this is Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. I never got the feeling of being milked while reading this, just entranced by the story and its characters/setting/plot. Its certainly not perfect but damn, watta good read.