Pages

▼

2 September 2011

Standalone=plot. Series=character Do you agree?

After some poll participants suggested they avoided reading books if they were in a series I ran another poll:

Commenters were a bit ambivalent: the following comment was fairly representative of thinking.

Any book, for it to be enjoyable, has to have both good plot and interesting characters. A series does allow character development, but at the same time each instalment needs to be able to be read as a standalone for the story to be fulfilling. Personally I don't care whether a book is a standalone or part of a series as long as it's an entertaining, interesting read.
at

2 comments:

  1. Marce2 September 2011 at 11:28

    I prefer stand alones so it can have both, my preference would be plot over character if I had to choose.

    BTW I sent you an email.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maxine Clarke2 September 2011 at 21:47

    Agree with your conclusion. I found this poll (as asked) impossible to answer because there are so many examples of all possible answers (series with good and bad characterisation, standalones ditto). Some series just rehash the same formula each time and there is no genuine character development (eg Eve Dallas in the J D Robb books), in others, characters change and develop (eg Wallander in Henning Mankell's novels).

    ReplyDelete

If you want to leave a direct link to your blog posting, click name, you will see the URL field opening up. Type your name and leave your blog posting's URL and readers will be able to jump straight to your blog.
======================
Thank you also for your interest in my blog.
From time to time you will find these comments have been put into moderation - I'll try to approve them as quickly as I can.