Quote:
Originally Posted by bgalbrecht
George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.
I'm not convinced that the SF & fantasy genres are truly worse than any other genre as far as writing stories with cliffhangers. Personally, I don't like them, and I try not to read them until the series is finished, even if I pick them up because they are on sale (which could mean I'll hate the early ones and skip the rest, like I did with SM Stirling's and Terry Goodkind's series). I don't buy Amazon serials
A lot of 19th century authors, like Dickens and Dumas wrote episodic fiction published in magazines. I've read that ships arriving from England would have people anxiously asking about the next instalment of their favorite authors' stories.
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I agree--I don't think SF and fantasy is any worse than other genres. I've seen it done in many genres (sometimes in cozies it's done with the overarching romance interest rather than the mystery plot. The mystery plot is generally solved--but sometimes the villain escapes in a cliffhanger type ending with a mystery. The aforementioned Janet Evanovich uses the love interest in this manner--it has never been "solved" in 20 some books. ) In the fantasy ones where there's a cliffhanger, the mystery of the moment is usually solved, but some aspect results in a cliff hanger-not always or even usually the "main" storyline.