The friend of my friend. . .

[rolanni]

Off on another part of Teh Intertubes, a colleague is writing the last book of a series, and is experiencing separation grief.

During our interview at ConQuesT, I made the comment in reply to. . .something, that readers and writers have a different relationship with the writer’s characters; with readers experiencing something like a traditional, real-world “friendship” with those characters they’ve come to like.  The relationship between an author and her characters is more nearly collaborative, and while I do love my children, I don’t worry about them to the extent that some readers report.

Back at. . . Duckon, I think it was, a few years ago, I happened to overhear a young lady in the hallway between panels who was being congratulated by her colleagues for having made an author on a previous panel (on what I suppose was fan fic) break down and cry.  “She had to be made to understand,” the young lady was saying, very sternly, “that she doesn’t own those characters just because she made them up.  They belong to us, because we give them life!”  (Yes, I did check.  No, I didn’t start in with the young lady then and there.  This is entirely due to the fact that Steve grabbed my arm and pulled me down the hall to our next event.)

All of these things, though, speak to the “reality” of fictional characters, and the hold they have over the minds and hearts of readers (and writers, too, if we do only make them up).  My colleague who is wrapping up the series wonders what will happen to their beloved characters in the minds of readers, once their story is told; and if readers will also experience grief, knowing that this is the last book.

I have my own opinions on this (quelle surprise!), but I’d like to hear yours:  How do you handle the ending of a series?  What’s your relationship with — and your responsibilities toward — people who live in books?

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[sb-moof.livejournal.com]

I will sometimes invent situations for the characters in my mind. Usually, as I am lying awake in bed trying to get to sleep. Otherwise, I just re-read the series to visit with my friends. And, every once in a while, I get lucky and the author(s) decide that hey, there's another story for these characters after all, and then, I squee excitedly :-)

[readinggeek451]

I will sometimes invent situations for the characters in my mind. Usually, as I am lying awake in bed trying to get to sleep.

This.

I do it more with TV characters, though.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

1. While it may be good for that young woman that Steve pulled you away, I would desperately like to have been the fly on the wall for that dressing-down...

2. As somebody reaching the end of *writing* a series, I have these wild moments of terror, despair and jubilation. I also have moments of impatience where I've got this annoyed feeling that I've already done ALL THIS WORK and shouldn't the damned book be DONE already, which is typically how I feel about 5 chapters from the end of any given writing project. Sadly I'm only 3 chapters in to the final book...o.O

3. The Walker Papers readers have certainly expressed a lot of sorrow over the ending of the series, so I'd say your friend's readers are probably very likely to experience grief. But I dunno, I think that's kind of wonderful in its way.

4. As a reader I may find the end of a series bittersweet, but I almost always prefer them to have an end anyway. I can always go back and reread, after all, but a forever series, especially with the same characters, often means there's a lot of wash-rinse-repeat going on with plot.

5. OTOH, I keep reading Anne Perry's Charlotte & Thomas Pitt books precisely because the characters are old friends, despite having learned to recognize the plot structure a long time ago and almost always knowing Whodunit well ahead of time, so 4 doesn't *always* hold true. :)

[gryphonlsb.livejournal.com]

(Ive only read 4 of the Walker Papers but I like them alot and tell my customers how much fun they are (I own a used bookstore))

[groblek.livejournal.com]

I nearly always approach the end of a series I really like with a little trepidation that the author will leave an ending that is in some way unsatisfying for me. That fear is usually wrong, but I read enough where that happens as a youth to leave me with that reaction. I particularly dislike it when an author kills the main character at the end to force an ending. The classic example being Sherlock Holmes, though Arthur Conan Doyle was forced to contrive a way around that one later.

For me as a reader, a series has ended well when I can tell that the story being told is finished, and when I still like the characters enough that I would enjoy hearing more about them and their lives. I like all the major questions to have been answered, but I don't think every little thing needs an explanation. Basically, I want an end to the story, but the ability to imagine the characters happily going on with their lives offstage in the future. As I just finished reading it, I find Seanan McGuire's Blackout to be a good example of a series end that works well for me. There are many unexplained things left in the setting, but the story is done and the questions that are core to the events of the story are answered.

SIDE QUERY

[margotinez.livejournal.com]

Where can I find Seanan McGuire's Blackout? It is not on Amazon. Thanks.

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

I think the reference might be to Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis.

Re: SIDE QUERY

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

It's on Amazon; I bought it there. It was written under the pen name of Mira Grant, since the publishers didn't want to conflate the urban fantasy with the zombie apocalypse horror. The first two books in the trilogy are Feed and Deadline, and there's also a prequel novella titled Countdown.

Re: SIDE QUERY

[groblek.livejournal.com]

Oh right, I forgot the pseudonym when I mentioned the book - ever since meeting Seanan, I tend to forget that she writes under multiple names.

Re: SIDE QUERY

[groblek.livejournal.com]

I had my local independent bookstore order it for me, but If I were ordering online, I'd go here: http://www.biblio.com/books/510014843.html. That's the page for the book in Borderlands Books' online catalog, though if you call them, they may have an autographed copy, since Seanan had an event there Saturday.

[xinef.livejournal.com]

I usually won't bother reading more than one book in a series if the author doesn't get me to care about the characters in the first book I read. The more books I read about a given character, typically the more I care about that character. And this, the more I hate when a series about that character ends. If the character is killed off, then it is like having a friend die. If not killed off, then more like having them move away and never get in touch again.

[jessie-c.livejournal.com]

I experience a certain amount of withdrawl when a good series ends. This is especially vivid if the series ends from a case of author existence failure. A case in point being Patrick O'Brien midway through book #21. Even though Blue at the Mizzen gave Jack Aubrey his Flag, bringing him to the long-awaited pinnacle of his career and the Napoleanic wars finally ended, I still wanted to see how the story would have continued. By contrast, the Sharpe and Ramage books, each individually as exciting as any of Jack Aubrey's adventures just didn't wrap me so far into the story simply because they're too formulaic; they got predictable, stale and unappealing enough that I welcomed the end when it came. I've worn the words off the pages of my Aubrey books from re-re-re-reading while the others languish on the back of the bookshelves or have been banished to the used book store.

Certain other series become wallbangers (I'm looking at you, Piers Anthony) and I gleefully abandon them to the obscurity they should richly deserve but unacountably don't. Others Like Raymond Feist's Riftwar saga evolve, change and grow, leaving once-favourite characters behind to explore the expliots of new characters and even complete changes of scene. I can live with that. The Discworld books do the same (and the impending author existence failure looms ever larger in my dread. It will be a devastating day for Literature when Pterry pulls his plug. Long may that sad day be postponed).

This evolution is where I see you going with your Korval stories. You have a universe wherein you play and gleefully mine whole swaths of it intead of dogmatically sticking to a small group of characters. Your stories are ever fresh yet still familiar as an old well-loved coat that keeps the reader warm and happy.

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

That depends on how it ends! If everyone's dead, well, that's difficult ...
But if everyone(the good guys)are, mostly, still alive, it doesn't *feel* like the series is ended. It feels like it's just being a rather long time until the next book ...

[muirecan.livejournal.com]

I often reread books to visit with characters who are old friends. But I don't feel that I own them or their story. I will say that I've quite reading an author who I felt tortured her heroine for no reason that I could see. And I do mean tortured each and every book. The characters where compelling the writing excellent and because I could empathize with the characters the torture became very old. And we aren't talking the kind of things Bujold talks of putting characters out of their comfort zone to watch and see how they react. No I mean torture. :p

Anyway I as a reader do have an investment in the world and characters I encounter in books. But I don't own that world and characters they aren't mine. They came from the author who turned and brought them out of her imagination and dreams. There is a connection so that the end of a series is something sad. But as I mentioned at the beginning. Good books are something I'll go back to and read over and over and over. And when I do that I'm visiting with old friends in comfortable surroundings.

Maybe it is because I read Clifford D Simak novels when I was very young. But he often wrote a novel such that you wandered into an ongoing story/world then traveled with the lead character for a time and wandered out again. His stand alone novels always had a feel that you wandered into ongoing action and that the action continued after you left. There were threads and loops that drifted into the story and wandered out again without ever being resolved. Something that gives his stories a dynamic living feel.

Because books can now wander off into a long series of stories and books now readers feel that they have a right to demand that all those little story threads and bits get resolved to their satisfaction. But I don't agree it is those open threads left unresolved that let us the readers play in our minds and even fan fiction within a universe. All things don't have to be neatly wrapped up at the end of the story.

Hmm, I think that last bit is something I said in regard to Dragon Ship. People looking for everything to wrap up in one book and not just conclude one movement of the overall story going on in the universe.

Right...

[schizopenguin.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for Ann Aguirre's Siranta Jax last book. I want to know what will happen. Surely I'll experience some degree of sadness to see it end, but they'll live in my mind. It's a shared trip for me, and the books are always at hand if I want to reread them, right?

Fan fiction might help some people to deal with this sort of "grief". But fanficcers have to understand that it's the author who owns the characters. If they don't like the way the author handles the characters, tough. They can stop reading and that's the end of it. Fanficcers sometimes takes the wrong turn somewhere and end in lalaland, don't waste your time in getting angry at them. It's useless for one, and extremely upsetting for another. When some of them reach this level it’s because they live in a complete separate universe. (repeat with me: Ommmmmmmmmm Ommmmmmm Ommmm Mantras are good)

This is true too bout readers. They ALSO believe sometimes that the author owes them. That the author should write on-demand waht they want to read. They handle it slightly different to fanficcers, but just to some extent.

IMHO, and while I don't try to offend anyone, they are slightly delusional in making these demands. I do believe that they have the right of making their own "stories" privately, without attempting to steal the rights of the owners or trying to impose them their own vision of how the story should be written. I mean this in the old time bardic tradition of retelling tales/myths.

However, I also believe that those so involved with stories, should try their hand at it. With their own characters, plot, and everything. I bet they'll start respecting the authors a little bit more after such exercise. (I’m not a native speaker, so I apologize for the mistakes)

[samcallahan.livejournal.com]

I'm almost always happy to let them live in the books, in the authors world, simply happy with the portions of their life that the author is able to present.

However, the stranded characters in Rosemary Edghill's unfinished Twelve Treasures books have been calling to me for fifteen years. It seems as if they're all trapped in another dimension, and there's nothing I can do about it.

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Ooooo, I KNOW!!!! But I don't think that's *her* idea: the publisher stopped buying the books, I believe ....
I still have hope, that someday, somehow, we'll find out what happens! There are after all eleven treasures to find and a world to save ...

[samcallahan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know that the circumstances are out of her control. But they're still trapped in stasis, and Oh So Real.

[djonn]

It's hard to generalize about series endings in today's landscape, wherein series may end by authorial design, by publisher's fiat, and/or by various other external circumstances -- and where some series endings are more final than others. (Do we count Katherine Kurtz's "Deryni" cycle as ended yet, or just delayed for another several years between books? What does one do with posthumous continuations of series -- for instance, the two Michael Kurland novels about Lord Darcy published after Randall Garrett's death? And there's a Stephen Goldin series I was following a number of years back whose fourth volume simply never appeared...)

As to the reality-of-fictional-characters issues -- that gets complicated, as any reader of Jasper Fforde is likely to appreciate. Those of us who hung out on the right parts of GEnie back in the day may also recall the degree to which some writers' online personae took on existences as characters that both were and were not their real-life selves. There are also some interesting explorations of the idea in fanfiction. I particularly like this exchange, in a story wherein some of Diane Duane's characters have had an adventure with certain of the DC comics universe's superheroes:

Tom laughed and shook his head, offering Kit the rapidly emptying bowl of chips. The two young wizards had come here trying to understand how comic book characters could really have just spent an evening in New York. But the answers they were getting from their Seniors--the wizards supposed to guide and educate them--weren't really helping.

"Do you think they're going to remember?" Kit asked, "You know, that they were here...I mean, that they were here and found out that they aren't...aren't..." He trailed off, because it was difficult to think of Tim or Dinah or any of them as...fictional.

"Tell you what, why don't you test it? Travel to a universe where we're fictional, and then come back and see what you remember."

Kit and Nita laughed, and then Nita blinked and eyed Tom. "You're...you are just kidding, right?"

"You don't really think there's a place where we're fictional, do you?" Kit asked incredulously.

"Look, kids, you two are wizards. You regularly visit the moon, travel the galaxy and you turned into whales! Do I really need to quote Hamlet?"

Which is to say that to my mind, one's responsibility to a story-universe is much the same as one's responsibility to what we think of as the real one; treat it respectfully. (I have occasionally used a graphic of the Wizard's Oath from that Diane Duane series as my computer's desktop wallpaper; one could do a lot worse than to adopt that oath as a life-philosophy.) And I think that's applicable -- if sometimes in different ways -- to author/creators, to readers, and to writers of fanfic, as well as to the characters who happen to live in said story-universe.

So I'd disagree with the young lady at Duckon, both in principle and in practice. I don't think belief, per se, is a pre-requisite for the perceived reality of a story-universe, nor do I think it's either justifiable or wise to browbeat authors and make them cry.

[redpimpernel.livejournal.com]

I've had authors make me cry many, many times, but I don't believe it's right for readers to make authors cry. That just sounds like someone justifying being a bully. The author owns the characters, we readers merely make friends with them, and sometimes we love them.

When book series end by design, I don't really grieve. I may be sad that the story has been told as much as it ever will be; and if the author has done their job well, we are able to close the book with  a certain level of acceptance.

Having a literary series end as the author intends, is kind of like having a friend die in their sleep of old age, or after a long illness. You've had time to prepare, you know it's going to happen. But, having a story end, essentially in the middle, for whatever reason, is like having that friend killed unexpectedly in a car accident. There is no closure, no satisfaction, nothing but questions about what might have been. The reader reacts in accordance with the strength of their connection to the characters and the story. From disappointment and bewilderment for characters who are acquaintances,  to real grief for characters that deeply connect with us, and that we truly love.

Unless an author dies unexpectedly, you rarely get that grief-inducing reaction, because you never know when the author might go back and write another book in a series, so there is always hope. I have only ever truly grieved over fictional characters twice, and both times was for TV shows that *spoke* to me on a deep level, and that were then canceled mid-run (Remember WENN on AMC, and Firefly). I was depressed for months over their cancelations. I've never had that kind of reaction over a book/series.

As far as my responsibilities toward the people who live in books? Respect for all, and their creators. Whereever possible treat others with compassion and kindness.

[manywaters.livejournal.com]

It depends on the ending, if I'm satisfied, then I reread the series a time or two and linger over my favourite bits. If I'm left wondering (often on points regarding relationships, as a hopeless romantic), I'll often poke around to see if there's any good fanfic and tiptoe through the tulips of what-if, and muse upon other possibilities. It depends on the caliber of available fanfic, how much procrastination and faffing about on the internet I'm in the mood for, and the fandom in question.

Most of the time I'm more likely to go hunting for fanfic between installments, when I'm dying for another fix and am happy to contemplate the multitude of possibilities. The Avengers movie franchise is my current fandom of choice.

Authors will do as they choose, but I appreciate the ability to take flights of fancies out of the authorial canon. Having grown up reading the Marvel What-If comics, it doesn't seem that odd to take a side path for a lark before returning to the regular story in progress.

[elbales]

“She had to be made to understand,” the young lady was saying, very sternly, “that she doesn’t own those characters just because she made them up. They belong to us, because we give them life!”

I'm so sorry, but I will be unable to answer the question in your last graf because my head just exploded.

No, actually, I can say that when a series ends, if I feel that the author has crafted an ending that fits the series, I salute the achievement and move on to other books, with an option for multiple rereadings should the work as a whole reward such.

[gryphonlsb.livejournal.com]

Each ending feels different for me depending on the author, genre, story arc.

I do know I usually hate prequels, when they go back and try to mash all the info you like into something and call it the way it all began (except you guys oddly enough)

And as for not owning the characters, if that was true I wouldnt be annoyed with the simple idea of fan fic. It just doesnt appeal to me. I have a friend who reads all the Supernatural fan fic and I just dont get it. Oh well

I do like the visual of Steve dragging you away from a great...conversation. I guess if I thought I could do a better job I would try hehe

Sad when a series of novels ends? Missing the characters?

[catherine ives (from livejournal.com)]

I was sad when C.J. Cherryh finished her Chanur series years ago now. I just loved those characters.

Luckily for me the Liaden universe goes on.

Right now I am reading the "Game of Thrones" books by George R.R. Martin. No worries here about missing the characters when the series ends. First of all George loves to kill off his own favorite characters. So we get to miss them early. Also the word is that he's working on yet another book in the series called the Winds of Winter. He writes so slowly that there is a blog out there that has one theme and one only: complaining that George RR writes too slowly!! Hilarious. And I think he's planning yet another in the series too after the Winds of Winter. Heck.... people were afraid that he was going to pass away before writing the last one that was published. I think that maybe George and I will both have passed away before he finishes that Game of Thrones series. Now that's dedication!!

[otaku-tetsuko.livejournal.com]

Head hurts from trying not to explode at stupid con-bunny.....

Does she own D'Artagnan? Conan? Come back to reality, silly child. We have cookies...

But now the other side of my brain points to characters that are created by committee....there is some point to her argument if you think of characters like Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock - when created for a series and built by the work of many authors, the fans start to have an investment that must be taken into account, if you want to keep selling movie or TV scripts. But these characters definitely are NOT the work (or property!) of just one person. So perhaps this explains her confusion just a teeny bit. Best I can do for Devil's Advocate.

Me? I re-read and re-visit and wish that the people in the Blue Sword would come back some day, but am happy to think of them basking in the Darian sun and carrying on calmly....

Too bad you didn't deck her, a quick blow to the head might have brought her back into alignment with what Actually Is....

[lornastutz.livejournal.com]

I don't feel I own the story or the characters but I do feel withdrawal. Like the Liaden Universe stories the books I buy, read, re-read, re-read - the characters seem alive. As long as there are new books I'll buy and will miss them terribly when the series ends.

Who owns the people in your head?

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

It's really kind of a thorny issue, because in a philosophical sense, the characters writers create aren't necessarily the same ones as the characters readers experience—or the same ones that other readers experience. The words writers put down on the paper trigger thoughts and images in the reader's head, including thoughts that the author never intended to create (and would, in some cases, probably find disturbing). Who owns the reader's thoughts?

For almost all of pre-recorded and recorded history, until just a few hundred years ago, the relationship between storytellers and story listeners was a lot blurrier. Someone who heard a story about Zeus and Hera, or Paul Bunyan, or whoever, might turn around and make up his own story with those characters the next day. Even published works were getting unauthorized sequels hundreds of years ago. California was actually named for a place from an unauthorized sequel (http://boingboing.net/2006/04/25/california-got-its-n.html) (which was mentioned in Don Quixote—and the first part of Don Quixote itself got an unauthorized sequel, which is thought to have spurred Cervantes into finishing and publishing his own part two).

It's a natural human impulse to feel some sort of "ownership" over the people who live in our heads, and to want to relate what they do there—including the people who immigrated there from someone else's head. But these days most folks recognize that the original creators of those people take precedence, at least so far as making those stories public goes.

Endings

[spudsmom.livejournal.com]

I am pleased with a healthy ending not that I don't miss beloved characters and their world, not that I won't perpetually wish for just one more, sue me, but I much rather have a good ending then an unhealthy continuation, for me, that's much more upsetting, when you know in your heart that this is where it should end, when continuing will force the characters to change beyond recognition and become something you can't love. This is a phenomenon that has left me with these little kernels of regret, often I can't even read the early books because I now I know where it goes. I'm not talking about characters doing things I don't like, there have been a few I wanted to slap but as long as the character has been created in such a way that the despised action is understandable than I'm fine with it, can't wait to see what the scoundrel does next. This is why they pay those authors the big books, right? They have to make it all clear to us, the readers. When I see a central character grow and change and become more than they ever imagined they'd be, I'm OK with seeing them off in to the world where I can imagine them continuing on their journey but when a character regresses without hope of recovery or seemingly gets permanently stuck in situation where the person you think you know wouldn't be, then the series has gone on too long. Its a sad thing when someone you've known for a long time becomes someone you don't recognize and don't want to know, but it happens. Clever, Clever writers, to give us a whole universe of infinite possibilities to explore. Toni

[saruby.livejournal.com]

I won't say I don't care when a series ends. After three or twelve books, those characters are my friends. But I don't own them and just as friends sometimes don't see each other for awhile, characters may leave and carry one with their lives without me. Or not. I have been known to drag through the last book in a series or the end of a single book, just because I don't want to let go, but no, I don't think you have an obligation to the reader. However, we do want you to keep writing.

[baobrien.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of the other opinions here - some characters in some books are my friends, others are mere acquaintances. When I really care about a series, I dream about it as a real world - someplace the authors have access to, and can provide to us through their books.

Endings are OK for me when they leave me the ability to imagine the characters or the world going on with their lives and their next adventures (like the end of the original Witches of Karres). There are a few series where I really want more books - notably Katherine Kurtz' Deryni books or Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January books - and I just hope that they'll be written eventually.

How can anyone justify making an author cry? They're artists who give us unique and wonderful gifts, who should be encouraged, not bullied. I'm almost sorry you couldn't give her your opinion...

It all depends

[sctechsorceress.livejournal.com]

I can be very frustrated if a series just stops, with the characters in peril. If the series is a story-arc, and that arc is completed, I'm very comfortable with that, just as I would be with a single standalone novel.

In either case, though, there is a good chance that the characters will have some 'clones' that go on living in my head long after I have read the book. I'm not a writer, not even of fan fic, and I strongly believe that the written characters belong to the author, and to no one else. In the process of reading, though, those 'clones' take up residence inside my skull. If a character clone moves in permanently, well, then, that clone is my character, and I reserve the right to do anything I want to them, as long as it stays inside my own head.

For every reader, though, there is a different clone, who may move out as soon as the last page is read.