[gmw]

I sort of like the idea of "self-contained" vs "stand-alone", but it runs into practical difficulties...

Many of Stephen King's early books were clearly meant to be stand-alone despite sharing some of the same characters and settings. Certain obsessive people might tell you they must be read in publication order so that you fully understand the references to past events - but the truth is that there are references to many past events in these books that never appeared in any previous work, so there's nothing much to be missed in the few references that do.

Sometimes re-used fictional components are merely a cheat on the part of the author. Why invent a whole new town and population when Castle Rock is already there in your head? That it ends up building a bigger over all history is merely a side-effect. Most of King's early books could have taken place anywhere at all, but he happened to have a location already made up, so saved time and effort by re-using it.

The same goes for many Agatha Christie mysteries. These are also stand-alone stories. She cheated and re-used main characters, but almost any investigator would have done ... even better, she had a selection of sleuths so she could direct mysteries to the already-invented sleuth that best suited the story she wanted to tell.


And, whatever else, a book's status is prone to change. It may start out as stand-alone (rather than self-contained) but sits their trembling for all eternity waiting to see if someone else may write a book that shares a character or setting. What this means is: the distinction we might try to make between stand-alone and self-contained is not all that useful. This probably explains why no one bothers, why most of us read "stand-alone" and "self-contained" as meaning the same thing*.

ETA: * Because, on a purely practical level, they do.