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Trilogies, Quadrilogies, Penta...and so on.

 
 
All Acting Regiment
00:23 / 24.06.06
ieces spread across many books. Would you? That is, would you set out to write a trilogy? Is it something that happens naturally?

Is it, perhaps, a rather shitty attempt at acheiving grandure status, as I put across in an article a while ago? The idea that a trilogy contains, by it's very nature, magic intellectual gravity- "I have these volume sets on my shelf, I am a reader doncha know"- an idea used to sell many- the trlogy is an intensely capitalist form? Collect them all? And should you write with this in mind? You need to earn a living, after all.

cf. things like LotR that take 3 books to say what an Icelandic fairy tale says in 3 minutes*, while the Aeneid manages to deserve it's multiple skins (Funeral Games being very different in tone to the books before and after it which are in turn different form those surrounding them).

*My opinion, sweet as honey, golden as what the gilded bird of paradise shits.
 
 
matthew.
06:21 / 24.06.06
[Tolkien wrote and designed LOTR to be one singular book, divided into... seven? six? parts. It's not a trilogy. But I see what you mean and I will return with more substantial comments]
 
 
Haloquin
21:38 / 10.07.06
Aren't some stories better paced when spread over a few books? Or like Storm Constantine's first Wreaththu Trilogy, it was written from 3 different perspectives, one for each book, and worked really well, I reckon it wouldn't have been right in one book, unless it was deliberately divided into 3 parts.
Would I? Urm, I've never gotten that far, but if I did and the story called for it, and sometimes I think it does, I definately would, capitalist issues be damned.

I guess theres something to that argument, for example with comics, sometimes it does look like the writer wrote a story and cut it into pieces because the market expects it. Although some do seem to serve the story best in that format. Hmmm.
 
 
Quantum
16:35 / 11.07.06
Some stories are better for the depth a long arc can give (I'm thinking of Phillip Pullman for example, Patrick O'Brian or as said above many comics) so there is a place for trilogies etc.
On the other hand I'm reading the chronicles of Thomas Covenant at the mo, which is a bit toss and at least six volumes long, an example of how prone Fantasy as a genre is to the sort of padding I hate.
In short, I would, but not if I was writing fantasy. Neither would I draw a map of my fantasy land and put it in the front.

Goddammit, I just remembered how great the Earthsea trilogy is which has all those things.
 
  
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