Quote:
Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks
For example, the text-only version of say, X-Men 200...i.e., on ongoing, serialized story, released one "chapter" at a time, but each chapter ranging from 10-30,000 words (which I'd imagine a prose version would run), no set conclusion, just an ongoing story...or a text equivalent of a soap opera...some soap operas have run for more than 50 years. Most definitely serials by any definition of the word...and yet, not so handy as a single contained work.
|
No, I wouldn't want that. Any idiot can
start a story. It takes skill to finish one. I don't conciser a novel to be just a comic without pictures-- I conciser it to be a discrete thing.
With any form of fiction, if you haven't planned the end from the very beginning, it shows-- badly. Take for example BSG as you have mentioned-- after a while, the writers had no idea where they were going, wrote themselves into corners, and had to come up with stupid crap that was an insult to the writing in the first couple of seasons.
Comics and soap operas attempt to stay fresh by having new characters coming and going all the time (and both genre have many, many resurrections from death.) But a piece of prose that rambles on like that without end? That belongs on the bottom of a bird cage.