'Proposal'

I have a keen interest in reading, but rather than the physical aspect of books such as libraries and bookshops, I want to begin looking at the stories within them.

Narratives are shown through all forms of creativity: speech, writing, songs, film, TV, games, photography, theatre and visual arts. These can be linked, for example, many books and graphic novels are released as films and then translated into games, such as Spiderman. They can become mass franchises with huge fan bases across the world.

I began thinking about people’s connections to the stories. Is it the character, the plot or the world it is set in, most likely a combination of all three, and why is it that most films and books watched and read, people will enjoy then move on, but for that small percentage, the story becomes an obsession, creating Fandoms (‘The state or condition of being a fan of someone or something’)

Lists of top grossing film franchises of all time vary due to inflation and number of films in each franchise, but the common names are James Bond, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Tolkien Saga. Recent trilogies that are hitting the mainstream cinema are The Hunger Games and Divergent. Apart from Star Wars, all of these high grossing films originated in a series of books.

I want to find out what it is about a series of books that captures the audience’s attention. Is a set of books going to grab the reader more than a single novel? Is it the scale of the book in physical size? A large story split into three is more manageable? Is it the multiple plots and stories with the same characters that you see grow? Also, the fantasy world that they are set in, the creative writing that depicts this world the reader learns about and escapes to? Or is it purely a commercial point of view in that there is more money to be made out of several installments?

A series of books will create a larger fan base than a single volume.

(I have been told the proposal can change...)