On the kinds of stories.

[Aminar]

This thought process came to me today while listening to the audio book of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.
There are two kinds of stories.  I don't have names for them, but Anansi Boys and everything else I've read by Neil Gaiman bar Neverwhere is the first type.  It's the kind of book I'll burn through in one sitting just to get to the ending and then I'll never read it again because the whole story is about the ending, the twist, or what will go wrong. 
The second kind is like The Dresden Files or War of The Flowers or The Wheel of Time.  It's the kind of story where you don't care about the ending, you want the story to go and go and go and go, where you could live that story for the rest of your life and love it every step of the way.

Which do you prefer to write.  How do you get that second feeling? How do you get the first?  I think it has to do with worldbuilding, but telling Anansi Boys and American Gods from The Dresden Files worldwise is difficult, the differences are minor.  Character is involved too, but I hesitate to say Neil Gaiman's characters are weak, because they aren't. 

[The Deposed King]

I think you have to be a better writer than me to decide on the front end what kind of story you're going to write.

I mean I know who my characters are and what they are going to do.  But how they live through the moment and ultimately get there?

I also think some people are better at getting 'close in' on the characters.  More adventure feel to it, even if they are doing grand sweeping whatever they're up to.  While others are more about the clash of cultures, the social pressure, and they're following the little man or the big man but they aren't so much living in the moment with them when they're writing.

Anyway I'm sure someone else can both answer your question more clearly than myself and write better than I can.  toodles!



remember to always follow the dream,

The Deposed King

[LizW65]

I guess this goes to show that different people get very different things out of the same works. I've never felt that Gaiman's novels were all about a twist ending; rather, that the journey was just as important as the destination.
Maybe it has something to do with living each scene a little as you write it, taking time with the characters and their motivations, your setting, and so on, and enjoying being there in the moment, rather than viewing each scene solely as a means of getting to the next one.

[Aminar]

don't get me wrong, the journey is great, but I don't feel like there is more I want to know beyond his story...  I don't want to learn more about that world or those characters, I only want to know how the situation happens and finishes.  I want to be done.  With other books I mentioned I don't want to finish.  Ever.  I want to know everything.

[Lany79]

Every story needs an ending, regardless of what it is. Even the Dresden Files and the Wheel of Time, of which I've read both, need to end at some point. There needs to be a payoff. Don't get me wrong, I love big, giant books that are part of big, giant series. But at some point they do need to end.

[mithrandirthewhite]

Malazan Book of the Fallen, anyone?

(click to show/hide)

OVER TEN THOUSAND PAGES!!!_*twitch*

[Aminar]

Now if only those 10000 pages were good...

In all honesty I love Malazan but I can't read more than half a book at a stretch.  Too much happens, too many characters.(And I'm halfway through book 4.)  Beautifully intricate in the same way a pit full of carved diamond spikes is beautiful.  It hurts.

And I disagree.  The stories need to end, the characters need to move on.  The worlds need to live.  Breathe.  Adapt and change.  I think maybe that's it though.  Sometimes a world is so wonderfully unique that I just want to know more about it and explore past what the writer gives me.  I suppose that's why I write.  And the appeal of fanfiction...  Now if only there was a reliable way to find quality fanfic...