Pay by installments, luv ;-)
I've just finished reading "The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins - a rather fine and surprisingly easy to read Victorian detective novel - having been encouraged to branch out from my SF and fantasy staples marginally by my delightful flist - you know who you are ♥
Anyway, the introduction explained how the story was originally published in a regular magazine, and where the breaks should be if the reader cared to allow for this - I wasn't that patient, but it did provoke me to think "Yes, I really do like stories in installments - it gives me time to savour them properly and consider what might happen next."
I think I have been conditioned, mostly by television, and perhaps once by being read to or narrated to as a child, and by 2000AD, to like stories in parts, with the pleasure of the next part to look forward to on a planned schedule and the current one to contemplate and fit into place. That is why on average I like TV series more than films, and why I don't do marathon all-night watching sessions, and why I am still only part of the way through Supernatural Series 2. And I think it's part of the appeal of series like Harry Potter and Discworld for me too - the chance to see the world unfolding around the story interconnecting, and that's one of the best parts of role playing gaming as well.
It doesn't work quite so well for TV shows like "Star Trek" and "The Professionals", where the plot more or less resets every episode, but for a long time in our house Thursday night was "Buffy and Angel Night" and I still look for something to fill that slot - "Battlestar Galactica" and "Heroes" were the mostly recent broadcast candidates - "Bonekickers" only made it in their by sheer chutzpah! If there's nothing live, we get to work through our DVD backlog, but that doesn't have quite the same externally applied rhythm, so that can accelerate or stall due to external factors, which is slightly less good.
Some of you delightful people are fanfic writers, and I appreciate pretty much all of what you do, but the joy of seeing an update to a favourite saga, or Part 1 of a new one, is a special extra pleasure that I am pleased to have recognised. ♥
Anyway, the introduction explained how the story was originally published in a regular magazine, and where the breaks should be if the reader cared to allow for this - I wasn't that patient, but it did provoke me to think "Yes, I really do like stories in installments - it gives me time to savour them properly and consider what might happen next."
I think I have been conditioned, mostly by television, and perhaps once by being read to or narrated to as a child, and by 2000AD, to like stories in parts, with the pleasure of the next part to look forward to on a planned schedule and the current one to contemplate and fit into place. That is why on average I like TV series more than films, and why I don't do marathon all-night watching sessions, and why I am still only part of the way through Supernatural Series 2. And I think it's part of the appeal of series like Harry Potter and Discworld for me too - the chance to see the world unfolding around the story interconnecting, and that's one of the best parts of role playing gaming as well.
It doesn't work quite so well for TV shows like "Star Trek" and "The Professionals", where the plot more or less resets every episode, but for a long time in our house Thursday night was "Buffy and Angel Night" and I still look for something to fill that slot - "Battlestar Galactica" and "Heroes" were the mostly recent broadcast candidates - "Bonekickers" only made it in their by sheer chutzpah! If there's nothing live, we get to work through our DVD backlog, but that doesn't have quite the same externally applied rhythm, so that can accelerate or stall due to external factors, which is slightly less good.
Some of you delightful people are fanfic writers, and I appreciate pretty much all of what you do, but the joy of seeing an update to a favourite saga, or Part 1 of a new one, is a special extra pleasure that I am pleased to have recognised. ♥