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

[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.