Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

What "features" allows some stories to use story development in place of character development and not be thought of as incomplete.

Whut? This looks like the continuation of a discussion, but it's isolated in its own thread, twice.

It did auto duplicate the original pot. I deleted one of them. Where is original topic? Usual discussion is necessity of it.

For stories with massive amounts of brilliant world-building, are the characters reacting to the world more than each other?

Usually takes the form of internalized thoughts/exposition/narration.

Rob,
The Silmarillion is a great example but I think that goes under one off, partially supported at the same time by Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. My only hope of duplicating it would be rewriting the old testament and calling it The Gospel According To Me.

To my way of thinking tragedy and character development fulfill the same requirement for today's version of a complete story.

I am going in the opposite direction, trying to wrap up the whole story in 3 days or less, preferably less. A disaster story would fit inside that time limit. So far it is a low grade infection, nothing that will start the world on fire.

Charles,
Usually takes the form of
internalizedthoughts/exposition/narration.

Does this work for multiple characters or just one person?

I'm not really sure what people mean exactly when they say character development. Do you mean the depth to which the character is explored (their history, thoughts, feelings, regrets, loves, desires)?

Or do you mean the character arc (how the character's experiences change them throughout the story)?

In either case, Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy is weak and relies more on the plot and world building, and gets away with it. The way Asimov did that was by spreading the story over many centuries, and writing about various parts of that history in small bits. So you don't have time to explore characters a lot.

The Foundation stories are almost always held up as some of the best SF ever.

I...don't particularly agree with that actually. I found them mildly entertaining but still pretty immature. Their reputation is, I think, largely founded on their historic importance rather than the actual writing. In particular, their weakly sketched characters make them seem underweight. I can't imagine anything like them being written today and receiving much attention or acclaim...but then there is SW...(better shut up about that or face the wrath of fandom!)

As for character arc, I think it's amply shown that you don't really have to have characters transformed by the stories they're in. I like to point to Kurt Vonnegut who made a whole career off of characters who are like corks spread across the river of plot. They are not characters (for the most part) who affect or change the world around them. Neither are they characters who are transformed by the events of their stories. They simply are, and continue to be, carried along here and there, reacting to what life throws at them rather.

There's a kind of steady-state quality to Vonnegut's characters. It's like he's saying, look the world is an insane and random place and you’ve got no control over it. About all you can do is roll with the punches and try to have as much fun as you can along the way. Hey ho.

Robert wrote: "Charles,
Usually takes the form of
internalizedthoughts/exposition/narration.

Does this work for multiple characters or just one person?"

Both I suppose.

I can't imagine anything like them being written today and receiving much attention or acclaim.

Books like that (and tv shows) had a huge impact on the people at the time they were released. That is something that is very hard for people to imagine when they compare old things to things that they see now. It goes under the heading of you had to be there to understand the impact it had.

Is there still a market for Asimov somewhere?

I think Vonnegut's style of writing trumps any set of rules for what makes a good read. You could imitate it if you had that style to start with.

In terms of "writing stuff" I would have a hard time separating "how the character's experiences change them" from "their history, thoughts, feelings, regrets, loves, desires". To my way of thinking it seems to be a different way of saying the same thing. Or more of the same thing.

To avoid character baggage it seems like one could spike the genre, comedy, horror, satire, sex, romance, to the point where people don't care how fleshed out the characters are. Do you any examples of science fiction that can do the same thing?

Robert wrote: "To avoid character baggage it seems like one could spike the genre, comedy, horror, satire, sex, romance, to the point where people don't care how fleshed out the characters are. Do you any examples of science fiction that can do the same thing?"

I may not be tracking 100% here, but that all depends on what the reader is reading for. Some want a personal connection with the characters; others like the world building and the plot itself, and don't much care about the characters. Those are different markets.

But yes, you can take short cuts (depending on the genre and medium). A very successful maker of horror movies was once asked why there were always so many topless women in his films. He replied that this was horror -- he didn't have time for character development. So in his films, naked breasts stood in for character developement. That was a guy who knew his market. : )

Owen
You are 100 percent tracking with closeups

others like the world building and the plot itself, and don't much care about the characters. Those are different markets.

For me it would make sense to advertise in that market. Is there a way to selectively advertise in that market or do you have to use a shotgun approach and just hope that the readers in that market see your work.

Robert wrote: "For me it would make sense to advertise in that market. Is there a way to selectively advertise in that market or do you have to use a shotgun approach and just hope that the readers in that market see your work."

I don't know much about advertising in general. On Amazon, you can run an ad campaign using selected genres, specific keywords (I think), or specific books.

It is bid/click and we have been running an ad campaign on specific books for the past month or so, and the problem has been getting enough impressions. At our bids (which are nominal), we get only a few a day and no clicks so far, so I have to judge it a failure at this point.

The only person I know who tried the GR ads had no success there either, and the GR ads I see are (in IMO) of low caliber.

We have not been successful finding other sites (blogs, social media, review sites, etc) to drive traffic to our books and no longer try that route.