So I propose this. How could we end _Invasion_? Looks like we'll never have to worry about the show itself being resolved (since it was canceled in '06 by ABC). What should happen next? Imagine one full-length book to wrap it all up.
For those unfamiliar, here's a summary.
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum30/HTML/000162.html
A book to wrap it up? I thought it was dragged out as it was. I didn't find either the speculative element or the personal dramas that compelling. At best, it might deserve a short story.
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited March 20, 2007).]
I wanted to see an ongoing problem. While, I do want some resolution, it better be offset with a cliffhanger that creates another thread.
On TV, the show might build up an intense "Who Shot JR?" ("Dallas") campaign...but, more than likely, the viewer won't much like the resolution that finally comes up (say, the infamous "Wedding Shootout" of "Dynasty") and the show's audience will start dropping away.
Not just cliffhangers, either, but postponed resolution...any of you older types remember "Twin Peaks"? It kept teasing the audience with setups, but never offered resolution...and, eventually, the audience wandered away when they didn't get it and the show eventually departed---without proper resolution. ("Lost," which I don't watch, seems similar to this from the descriptions I get---if it ever does comes to an end, do you think it will satisfy the fans?)
Maybe it's not for you. Personally, I like reading long series of books and I want to be on the edge of my seat clammering for the next one.
I was very satisfied with the first two seasons of Lost. This season the writing seems to have waned sometimes, but each season brought a mix of satisfying resolutions and opened other doors of mystery as well. This is exactly the kind of fiction I enjoy.
The main characters in episodic TV couldn't change or grow because people needed to be able to enjoy the reruns without needing any additional back story. That's why each week they had a guest with a problem the main characters helped solve, or a new place to explore with a problem for the main characters to solve, or someone for one of the main characters to fall in love with who would not survive the night (no changes).
I think DALLAS was one of the first shows to have "story arcs" (at least, it was one of the first ones I remember hearing about), but any show about children growing up (like LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE) almost had to have story arcs of a sort if the show lasted for very many seasons.
Now everything seems to have story arcs, and the episodic approach has fallen out of use. Sometimes I wish for it, though. I'm more interested in the Mystery of the Week than I am in some of the soap-opera-ish relationships they put the characters through in some of the shows. But that's me.
(Acronym alert!)
YMMV = your mileage may vary
It strikes me as a sign of the writer / TV producer / whatever not really caring what the reader / TV watcher / whatever think about it. In TV in particular, these "cliffhangers" strike me as the producers saying to the network powers-that-be, "Renew us for next season and we'll resolve it. But not unless we are." Then, when they're not picked up and not resolved, the series fan---the most loyal supporters, the ones who've stuck with the series through thick and thin---are, to put it mildly, screwed over.
It has real problems with TV, since you might miss an episode, but in print, it should still work fine. If not in a mag, as chapters of a novel.
Get Dave and the cancer-sufferer teacher together. Have her not take his fears about the hybrids seriously; then she gets into some kind of danger. Since she's sick, they won't take her, so we might get her thrown in the water. Or: she does take him seriously, and wants to be assimilated to be cured, but they wont' touch her.
Jess and Rose get bundled off to Grandma's (there must be a grandma somewhere outside the danger zone), with Jess furious, because he wants to be with his dad and fight the danger.
Go national, possibly through state first. That is, we try to break the story nationwide, but there's a hybrid blocking you, who took a trip to the Keys and has never been the same since.
Find that pregnancy kills the new people. This will make the women hybrids, and some of the men (others will be too disconnected to care), want Sherriff Tom's solution of coexistence rather than further change.
Get Muriel pregnant, to further distress Tom.
Russell now hates Tom for hybridizing Russell's wife...but he has to work with him to prevent the hybrids from spreading. Dynamite fishing might help. Tom's new biology would make him want to stop that with all his being.
But, especially, go national.
However, in novels, there's appetite for both standalones and series. Personally, once I get to the end of a series, I get the reading blues. I've get so attached to the viewpoint characters, that it's hard to pick up another novel, with another millieu and viewpoint. Currently, I'm switching between several different series every week or so(Knife of Dreams, Olypmpus, Sons of the Oak, Hunters of Dune), so that when one comes to an end, it won't be much of a problem.
That's why I didn't understand the hubbub about Elantris being standalone. It's such an interesting and mysterious millieu, it left me wanting for more.
Then again, I like to catch a series once it's almost written. That way, I don't have to wait. There was such a gap in the Ringworld series, that I couldn't get into the last one. It had been too long. I'd forgotten too many of the characters and thier history. So, Larry Niven did loose me there.
At least with "24"---which I also don't watch---everything comes to an end at a specific point.
(Me? I did my bit, it's done, I might do some more (I've got a few things I'd like to finish), but if I do, you won't hear about it here.)
And how do you do it, ordinarily? My plots tend to be too linear. You may know the marrying a giraffe problem. A killer opening line: "Mary looked through her bridal veil at her husband-to-be, the giraffe, and wondered how she got into this mess." Trouble is, no writer can figure how to get her into that mess, either, or out of it.
I don't have the marrying-giraffe problem. I have the problem-is-obvious-and-so-is-solution problem, and it bothers me. I could write the ending to far too many Star Trek episode (just adjust the Heisenberg compensators on the photon torpedoes or something), but I can't for the life of me explain the island on Lost. Or tell you what the Nines's big secret might be. I want to write twisted plots like those, but be able to bring them to resolution.