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When I think about some of the newer TV shows and realize: I don't know how they're going to resolve this! -- I see I have a challenge. I'm a writer. Why *can't* I imagine a satisfying solution to the plot? If I could, I'd be better at making my own.
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.
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Hmmm. At first, I watched this because it came on after Lost, and it was SF, then I watched it to see what was going to happen because I didn't want all those previous viewing hours going to waste[I followed it up to the point where they found the island], then I missed an episode and found I didn't care. I thought the teen actors were some of the worst I've seen, especially the sheriff's daughter.
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).]
posted
Ah, the curse of cancellation---leaving plot threads unresolved. There are several shows I've never forgiven for ending things in the middle of something. In my Internet Fan Fiction days---and what would this kind of discussion be about, besides Internet Fan Fiction---I wrote one series of stories, and made a point of keeping each one self-contained. That's the way I like it in regular fiction, too...
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posted
I've never seen Invasion, but one show for which I've always lamented the cancellation was "Earth2." I liked the characters and the direction the show was going in. Too bad they didn't invest just one more season in it. We won't even get into the discussion about "Firefly." The cancellation of that show was pure stupidity.
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Self-containment is one of the things that drove me crazy with Star Trek. There could be 4 or 5 problems, the crew was doomed, a planet was doomed, there was some sort of relationship issue, a personal issue, the sink had a leak, but you knew that in the last 5 minutes that someone would pull a reverse tachyon pulse, and all the problems would be wrapped up nice and neat.
I wanted to see an ongoing problem. While, I do want some resolution, it better be offset with a cliffhanger that creates another thread.
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Cliffhangers are bad for business. If somebody spends whatever it is that paperbacks cost right now, and reads it to the end, only to find that in order to resolve it, they have to lay down more money for another book...and then again later for yet another one...well, if you do that, you're working a con.
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?)
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Bad cliffhangers are bad for 'business'. You pointed out a limited set of bad examples, where they didn't work.
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.
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TV used to follow what you might call an "episodic" approach to each week's installment.
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.
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I know of no examples where they do work. I don't like and don't watch "soap operas." I rarely watch anything in primetime. I never liked it when SF magazines ran multipart novel serials. I hate it when comic strips slop their stories over more than a day. And unless it's something like "The Lord of the Rings," which is a novel (usually) published in three volumes, I can't stand interminable and lengthy novel series. (It took me two weeks each to scrape up the money and get back to the bookstore for the three paperback volumes of "The Lord of the Rings"---and the wait nearly killed me.)
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.
posted
So here are some things I think should happen in a continuation of Invasion.
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.
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I can understand the concern in magazines, where there's a Part III and I don't have Part I or II. And this is why I haven't watched 24, not because it is or isn't good, it's just I want to watch it from the beginning.
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.
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I seem to remember Mureal's stomach glowing. Just like the evil teen hybrid who get shot by Mandosa(was that his name).
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See what I mean? It's all gibberish to the uninitiated. If, say, I write a book where the reader can't figure out what's going on without buying three to ten more books, I'm not doing my job. If I watch a TV show, where I have to have seen every episode right back to the beginning to understand what's going on right in front of my eyes, as I see it, they're not doing their job.
At least with "24"---which I also don't watch---everything comes to an end at a specific point.
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And we're not trying to encourage people to write things that are based on other people's copyrighted material anyway.
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posted
Also, along the lines of Kathleen's theme, but not close to...I have no doubt there are several (if not hundreds) of stories working out the end of things in "Invasion." I'd post a few addresses where you might find such things, but, like Kathleen says, we're not here to encourage this sort of thing.
(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.)
posted
I'm not proposing that anybody *write* fanfic (although my topic title does suggest it!). I just meant: how would you develop plot complications, and resolve them?
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.
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