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

[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.