You Kids Are Testing My Limits

I was reading a critique of a series, a successful series, of novels. I think it's an urban fantasy/horror thing where the main character has a specific paranormal ability, limited, but useful in her detective work. She had a love interest, who was maybe on and off, but somewhat consistently in her life.

Anyway, as some fans tell it, the series in its later volumes went off the rails quite a bit. The main character became more superhuman, gaining new abilities. She also became the object of lust/love for an expanding mob of paranormal characters. Everybody wanted a piece, and her dating life became the stuff of fantasy, in several ways.

Now I haven't read this series, and some of these specifics might be wrong - I'm not looking to criticize anyone. But the point is, limitations are VERY useful in writing, especially longer form and series writing. If there are SOME kind of boundaries to what can happen, it's a more believable world, and the audience can invest themselves in the characters and the stories.

Problems like power creep, the Mary Sue, self-insert fanfic become issues for some readers. Granted, some readers LIKE this kind of fantasy. But angering whatever fandom a writer has is a risky game, and shows disregard for those goodly readers.

Some limitations that come to mind -

The show 24 sets each 24-episode season in one day. Each episode is one hour of real time. This means no flashbacks, no ignoring travel time (although it can stretch reality to a degree), and also means certain things as far as exposition and cause/effect have to be done to make everything work, and the plot of each season has to be somewhat complicated and convoluted to be able to fill 24 episodes and make each one eventful and interesting/absorbing.

A romance story has several rules, like the couple getting together, having issues, and then being together in the end. If they're not together in the end, it's not a romance. Romantic subplots are more flexible with their endings.

Generally, science fiction does not have magic, and fantasy does not have technology that's too elaborate or futuristic. There are exceptions, but proceed with caution!

Any of us who write will understand it can be difficult to keep things fresh and exciting and unpredictable. I've squashed and stretched my own comics to some degree. Comedic things have more leeway I think. But if we take away too many limitations on our fictional worlds, things can go very, very bad.

If anything can happen, nothing matters!

Have you added limitations to your comics purposely? Has a series ever lost you because it had none?

See you next time!

-Banes



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