Quote:
Originally Posted by E.M.DuBois
As far as Game of Throne: I feel like Martin had one long story going, chopped it up just after pivotal moments, and then left it like that. To me, it feel like the he made no real effort to differentiate the themes and all of each one, he just made a general title for each. Like I said, I just feel that way, I'm making NO claims that's what he actually did. It just READS that way to me.
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Roger Zelazny did that with his first AMBER series.
(He wasn't the only one. The core of LENSMEN and LORD OF THE RINGS were also conceived as single stories. Lensmen was not only broken into three volumes--and extended with prequels and sequels--but also the first three were serialized for magazine publication. A necessity for the times.)
AMBER was really a single mega novel but in those days page count ruled. Again, different times.
One advantage of ebooks is a story can be as long or as short as it needs to be without contortions, padding, or trimming to make it fit a page count.
The driving force behind most serials is economic rather than creative. Stories that are inherently episodic (like The Grantville Saga) are few and far between.
Which isn't to say it's inherently bad to serialize but most of the really bad serials are too blatantly about milking the cow.