Raylon is a bit unconventional, to say the least. He offered a drug dealer 24 hours to get out of town, then shot him in a crowded restaurant. He has a trademark Stetson hat he wears, though he is a modern day figure. He has stepped outside the strict interpretation of the law. In fact, he has, on occasion, just ignored the law, to bring order and justice to a rough area. Since he is from Harlan County, he knows many of the undesirables. His father is one of the worst criminals of the locale and is currently in prison for murder.
This is the fourth season of Justified and one cannot help but speculate on when they might end the show. I feel that it is hard for people to know when to drop a series. Certainly, when the number of viewers drop or readers drift away in the case of a book, would be a good indicator. When you have a good 'cash cow' rolling, you hesitate to stop it.
I think back to the hugely popular series called Lost, which we enjoyed for several years. It eventually was kept on so long that I just quit watching it. To this day, I don't know or care how it ended. I even bought DVD sets for its early years. They seemed to start reaching for the stories and it seemed to go downhill. Maybe the cast got burned out on the work, I don't know.
The question is, when do you, as a writer, say that it is enough? I think it is just a feeling you have. The story just flows a natural way, you see the resolution, a finality, a fitting end, and you slam the door. Move on. You either get sick of the characters or the stories start to have a sameness. The freshness and zeal that you experience deteriorates. When the characters are real to you, you lay in bed at night and the plots flow. "He should do this", or "she should go here or there". Then, of course, there are the mistakes.
When I wrote KGB Retirement Program, the characters Ben and Karina, were so real to me. In the first book, I killed off the sexy Russian spy, Karina, and I always regretted that. I loved her as a character and she is probably my favorite. Ben, her love interest and husband, is my next favorite and I wrote two more books in the series. I ended it irrevocably and found myself wishing that I could write more books about Ben. He was so darn funny and had his own screwed up personality that I go back and read his books and say, where did I come up with this guy? True, he is a little like me, when I was young, single and goofy, but he is not really like anyone I have ever met. Never since have I created a character that became like the imaginary friend people talk about.
Sometimes I don't think that we create characters so much as bump into them on the street. Sometimes I will be sitting in a mall and see someone walk by that intrigues me. I will meditate on them and say to myself, "They probably are a technician at such and such a plant". They dress in such a manner that they are a meticulous person etc. etc. Before I know it, a book may be rolling. When the flow stops, I stop. I don't like to force myself to write because you can always tell when you force it. As a reader I can tell when a publisher has pressed their most lucrative writers to meet a deadline or a word count. It is all about the money and it is ruinous to a story on occasion. I recently read a bestselling writer's work that was manifestly influenced in just such a manner.
Right now, I have the fourth and final novel in one series about half finished. I wrote the last book several years ago and in this fourth installment I plan on killing off the hero. Why? I just feel that way. All the great killers of men, the ruthless protagonists, tend to reap what they sow. Yet I hate to force myself to finish it. Someday, perhaps, it will just flow out of me.
Back to Justified. I watch this show faithfully and have recently bought all three of the previous seasons on DVD. This year I am beginning to feel that the show is nearing a natural stopping point. I think it may be time to end it and move on. It is not my book or my show and I am giving the opinion of a viewer, not a writer. Let me say that when I review books I give my opinion as a regular guy who loves to read. I am not projecting myself as a better, or a worse, writer than the one I am talking about. I do hope that Justified stops while we are still saying "What a great series that was!" I wonder, will Raylon be laid out in the prepared grave site often shown at the family house, at his dad's farm?
The great series of adult westerns called The Gunsmith Series by J.R. Roberts has several hundred books. I marvel at them. They do not presume to be high-brow literature, but rather just seek to be entertaining. I have read dozens of them and they fulfill their goal. He always seemed to come up with fresh plots, very difficult for a western series. Especially the early books in the series are good. Say, the first sixty of them? Wow! Is that incredible? Mr. Roberts had to see this character in his mind's eye, all the time. He probably said goodnight to 'Clint Adams' when he went to bed at night. Obviously, if he had stopped writing them at number 4 it would have been a grievous error, financially and otherwise. Numerous examples of similar series could be cited. The bottom line is, it's your characters, your book, your series, do as you ****-well please with it.
From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.
P.S. Justified is on at 10 PM, eastern, on the FX Channel.
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