Does starting a series create an implied agreement that the series will be completed?

[polishgenius]

And also Abercrombie is specifically taking longer to release the first book in the new trilogy so that the rest of the series is closer to complete when he does.

[Larry of the Lawn]

I think all authors should start a series, split the last book into two books, say that when the final one comes out it will end the story as originally intended, promise a revelation through the use  of a pretty skeezy stripper metaphor, and then when it finally does get printed, its difficult for readers to see how this could possibly be the promised ending and revelation, and when there's a whole bunch of 'wtf, that's not an ending at all...' sort of responses, the author should declare that he or she is just playing with how we experience meaning.  *Nods*

 

[jurble]

There's a solid non-zero chance Rothfuss does do that.

[Hello World]

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

I think all authors should start a series, split the last book into two books, say that when the final one comes out it will end the story as originally intended, promise a revelation through the use  of a pretty skeezy stripper metaphor, and then when it finally does get printed, its difficult for readers to see how this could possibly be the promised ending and revelation, and when there's a whole bunch of 'wtf, that's not an ending at all...' sort of responses, the author should declare that he or she is just playing with how we experience meaning.  *Nods*

 

To be fair, we did get a book of some sort. It's not the author's fault that our brains are hardwired the wrong way. 

[C.T. Phipps]

Speaking as an author, I'm going to state there's a "yes with a but" and a "no but yes" here in my opinion.

In my opinion, if you set out to make a series and state, "ENJOY THE TRILOGY OF XENDOR" then only finish two books before ending on a cliffhanger then your audience has a right to be upset because they have invested their time and money into the story. Most authors are never so lucky to be like Stephen King or George R.R. Martin and have an audience who wants you to finish your stories so badly it hurts.

BE THAT AS IT MAY, I think there's also the fact while they're right to be upset and you should finish the series if at all possible--there is also the fact sometimes that's just not possible. The muse may have left you, health concerns, religious conversion, or personal tragedy may mean you'll never do it. In which case, all you should really do is inform the readers it's not going to happen.

Fan entitlement also has some ugliness in history as while I love "The Empty House", the fact was Sherlock Holmes being dead should have stood if ACD wanted him to.

[Misatek]

There is also an aspect of how the story is written, not merely how it was marketed. 

An experience of a story (a fictional one or even the story of one's own life the one tells oneself/remembers) is not limited to the time spent reading/watching/listening to said story, remembering it and the experience is equally important and many would probably say much more so, since that will consist of a much greater amount of time. Reading a book takes a few hours at best of active reading while you can carry the experience and meaning of that story with you for weeks, or even the rest of your life. A bad ending, or perhaps worse an unfulfilled cliffhanger, can truly spoil the the memory of a story/experience which is the majority of the experience. People at good restaurants know this for example, and providing a satisfactory ending to a night out is much more important for how people remember it than the contents. 

For all his faults Brandon Sanderson provides good and satisfactory endings to his stories, so people forgive him for his lackluster characterisation and dialogue. Mediocre books become gems in the rough in hindsight. 

On the other hand people forgive authors for bad plotting when it is a multi-part work because they expect the story to explain itself later down the line. When this doesn't happen people feel fooled (rightly so) and get upset. This isnt limited to books either. Take Mass effect 3, Bioware got away with mediocre stories (but good characters) because they alluded to there being an ending down the line. When the ending came and people discovered that it was a non-ending, just random shit that started happening, the got upset because they had invested a lot of time and effort into those games and now realised that they had been fooled. 

People deeply desire conclusions to stories they get invested in and cliffhangers are a cheap trick to keep interest in a story and make the audience forgive shortcomings in your work. If you use said trick(splitting a story is a weak version of this) I'd say that people most certainly are entitled to a conclusion (of some sort). You are taking their money for something implied which greatly affects how they value, experience and remember the things you produce. You artificially increase the value and meaning of your work and then get surprised when people get upset for feeling duped? 

Of course things can happen but then there needs to be an explaination or even a shorthand conclusion to the story. You have lead people on, freely letting them spend money on an expectation which you and the publisher has purposefully cultivated in order to sell more books. Of course people are upset, it's the same reason the cliffhanger/split story sold you more books/games/tickets and/or gave you more favourable reviews in the first place! You can't have one without the other. If you want to be independent of this then dont write multipart stories or declare on the cover that the story doesn't have an ending and that very well never may have. 

So people make mistakes, they overreach and they fail. What do you do then? You try to explain and/or apologize. 

Do people have a right to harass an author over this? No, people dont have the right to harass others period. 

[baxus]

13 hours ago, Ran said:

Given that none of us are sitting over the shoulder of an author, we've no way of knowing whether they are or are not trying. I've no reason to believe that Rothfuss is not trying, for example.

He shouldn't be trying right now. He should've had the whole trilogy completed and published years ago.

12 hours ago, Ran said:

A writer has an obligation to _try_. That is it. You can't say they have an obligation to continue writing and then turn around and say that it's fine Erikson has quit writing his third book! The whole point is that "these things happen" means that setting out to write a trilogy is not a _promise_ to conclude a trilogy. 

Except, you know, he stated it was already finished when it wasn't and is now complaining he's being called upon it.

11 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

No.  People can and do complain.  I just, sometimes, see the complaing as whiney.

I see your point.

For example, I see Rothfuss' behavior as whiney.

10 hours ago, Ran said:

Now a writer isn't obliged to finish a work, they are simply obliged to provide an explanation for why they didn't finish?

Writer is not obliged to provide explanation why they didn't finish either. What author is obliged to do is be straightforward with their fans and not lie to them that the series is already complete when it clearly isn't.

Fans in general don't mind that authors take longer to finish the series. They do mind when they're being lied to.

Sure, there will always be some morons who will cross the line but huge majority of fans don't. I mean, we were all very impatient to get our hands on ADWD but only few people were being assholes about it. We are all equally impatient when it comes to TWoW but assholes are even fewer now (or at least that's my impression, it might be wrong).

[Ran]

I generally don't keep up on Rothfuss because I didn't particularly enjoy the first book and haven't read beyond it, but yes, his early statements revealed a distinct hubris and myopia. Do you believe he was lying to readers when he made the boast that the books were done? I don't. I think he sincerely believed the claim at the time. 

But I do think he has been at least somewhat forthcoming when it came to the second novel, no? Pretty sure he explained back then that the second novel was in a pretty crap form and he ended up struggling in rewriting it. It only follows that the third book was in the same state, though I'm not sure if he ever explicitly said so. 

In any case, I'm more interested in the larger topic. There are so many incomplete series out there, and I've never come across an example where I didn't go, "Ah, well, that makes sense."

In the comics realm -- I was thinking about this yesterday -- there are a couple comics I'm a fan of from writer-artist creators that are in limbo. Artesia by Mark Smylie has gone... I think 9 years since the last issue was published? And there were very long gaps in information concerning it. I think the latest has been that it's pretty much on indefinite hiatus because it takes too much time, hence his shifting to prose (and now his 2nd novel, which was once due to be published last year, has vanished with no clear explanation). But I, at least, have never felt like I'm his patron and deserve answers. He produces, I consume. I made the assumption that things were just getting in the way, and not that he was somehow choosing to not complete his great project. Occasionally I'd wonder, I'd poke around to see if there was any news, and then I shrugged: no news presumably means it's still the plan to do it. 

Similar is Eric Shanower's award-winning Age of Bronze. I think it's been 5 years since the last issue. Given it was creator-owned and essentially self-published, it was never a surprise that a niche indie comic would be irregular. Shanower has produced some lovely adaptations of Baum's Oz stories and been doing this and that since, but I've no idea when/if the next issue of Age of Bronze is coming out.  I check on occasion to see if there's news, I find none, and then I shrug -- I presume he still plans to continue when he we can.

I suppose I can go far enough to say that a writer is obliged to say when his or her efforts are actually done -- that they cannot and will not complete a projected book or series. I suspect the vast majority of creators are unwilling to give up on a project when adversity strikes, and will simply imagine that some day, somehow, they will complete what they aimed to complete. And, you know, it happens. Jean Auel took 12 years to get her 5th novel out, and 9 to wrap up the series with the 6th book. Don't think she made any big announcements or progress updates, not even sure that with the 5th book people had much of a means of discovering if she was even still writing it, but somehow things worked out. Maybe there are some aggrieved fans of her work out there.

[Sword of Funny]

It depends. If the books are marketed as part of a trilogy, then there is an implied promise on the part of the author and publisher that a trilogy will be forthcoming. Truth in advertising. How many books are marketed as unfinished stories? Very few, and for good reason. No one is interested in buying them.

[baxus]

46 minutes ago, Ran said:

I generally don't keep up on Rothfuss because I didn't particularly enjoy the first book and haven't read beyond it, but yes, his early statements revealed a distinct hubris and myopia. Do you believe he was lying to readers when he made the boast that the books were done? I don't. I think he sincerely believed the claim at the time. 

But I do think he has been at least somewhat forthcoming when it came to the second novel, no? Pretty sure he explained back then that the second novel was in a pretty crap form and he ended up struggling in rewriting it. It only follows that the third book was in the same state, though I'm not sure if he ever explicitly said so. 

If that was the case, that is understandable. What is not understandable is his behavior towards his fans.

I mean, you make a promise (and yes Scott, that WAS a promise) and you realize you can't keep it. We've all been there, it's not the end of the world and can be understood. What makes all the difference is how you handle that situation. If you try your best to correct your mistake, it's all good. On the other hand, if you start trolling people you made your promise to, get insulted when called out on it and end up telling them to fuck off and die already, then there's no excuse.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

30 minutes ago, Sword of Funny said:

It depends. If the books are marketed as part of a trilogy, then there is an implied promise on the part of the author and publisher that a trilogy will be forthcoming. Truth in advertising. How many books are marketed as unfinished stories? Very few, and for good reason. No one is interested in buying them.

https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Numenor-Middle-earth-J-R-R-Tolkien-ebook/dp/B00796E7CA

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

24 minutes ago, baxus said:

If that was the case, that is understandable. What is not understandable is his behavior towards his fans.

I mean, you make a promise (and yes Scott, that WAS a promise) and you realize you can't keep it. We've all been there, it's not the end of the world and can be understood. What makes all the difference is how you handle that situation. If you try your best to correct your mistake, it's all good. On the other hand, if you start trolling people you made your promise to, get insulted when called out on it and end up telling them to fuck off and die already, then there's no excuse.

I don't disagree on Rothfuss.  He is the odd man out in that he really did promise, with specificity, that the work was complete and that it would be published on a yearly basis.  Most Authors aren't that specific and qualify their predictions about when something will be published. 

[TheRevanchist]

Not more than a buyer has the obligation to buy the next books in a saga.

However, I think that an author should try to finish the series he started, especially if the entire premise was that the books were part of a bigger saga. No obligations at all, but it is nice to finish them.

[Darth Richard II]

Mark Smylie's second book is still being written last time I checked, though it was about ayear ago I think. There was an update on goodreads somewhere. Apparently its over twice the size of the first already.

[C.T. Phipps]

Let me take this view...

I am annoyed by PEACE TALKS not being finished but Jim Butcher has had a real pear of a couple of years. I'm not going to begrudge him the delays. Scott Lynch has had that happen to him as well. It would be entitled and awful of me to criticize them.

Rothfuss is the point where, "Fine, it's not happening. I'll move on."

[Larry of the Lawn]

35 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Mark Smylie's second book is still being written last time I checked, though it was about ayear ago I think. There was an update on goodreads somewhere. Apparently its over twice the size of the first already.

I'm waiting for some author to write a shorter series than they planned.  "Sorry I couldn't write the doorstopper I intended, here's the unbloated, lean and efficient conclusion to the series my fans, critics, and ego always secretly wanted.

[Darth Richard II]

9 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I'm waiting for some author to write a shorter series than they planned.  "Sorry I couldn't write the doorstopper I intended, here's the unbloated, lean and efficient conclusion to the series my fans, critics, and ego always secretly wanted.

You know, I swear that's happened at least once but my mind won't bring up the name.

Anyway I can;t seem to find the ebook piracy thread and this relates to a novel in a series almost not getting published so I'll leave it here.

http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/166952028861/ive-decided-to-tell-you-guys-a-story-about

[Ran]

You do come to some absurd scenarios that way.

HUGE EPIC 

FIRST IN A TRILOGY

1000 PAGES OF GOODNESS

Sells really well. Reviews from critics are that it's pretty mediocre in terms of prose and characters, but the ending was satisfying and the world-building and magic systems are amazing.

 

3 years later

ELEGANTLY WROUGHT CONCLUSION

2nd BOOK CONCLUDING THE HUGE EPIC TRILOGY

300 LEAN, BEAUTIFULLY WROUGHT PAGES OF AWESOME

"A Note to my readers: Jesus, I was an awful writer when I wrote that first book. I'm much better now. So much so that I realized that I didn't really need all this flim-flam I thought I needed, and so the trilogy is done in just one more book. I hope you like it"

Critical reviews are through the roof -- all the flaws gone, one of the finest conclusions. But somewhere... somewhere... someone will say, "This sucks. I was told I was buying into a trilogy with exceptional words-per-dollar value! Now I'm expected to pay for the conclusion that's 1700 pages early, and act like that's a good thing?! CHEATED!"

 

[Hello World]

Or you can do the opposite of the above and add 4 chapters of cannibal rape after splitting the final book into two and get flamed by readers.

[jurble]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

You know, I swear that's happened at least once but my mind won't bring up the name.

Paul Kearney did that for Monarchies of God.  I believe he rewrote and extended the final book for his omnibus edition.