With a mini series you can give the story a proper sense of pacing, a proper sense of closure.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If you're writing a thriller, mystery, Western or adventure-driven book, you'd better keep things moving rapidly for the reader. Quick pacing is vital in certain genres. It hooks readers, creates tension, deepens the drama, and speeds things along.
Pacing has become more important than ever, largely because of other media. I've always tried to start my stories out with a bang, something that will hook their attention.
I very much use Bill Willingham's approach on 'Fables,' which is that rather than having an end point to a series, I have an end point for the various story lines.
The thing with being on a series that runs that long is that the writers run out of things to do.
Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.
In a series, you really need to stay open-minded. It's not like a play or a film, where you can create and fully commit to your character's back-story.
Considerations of plot do a great deal of heavy lifting when it comes to long-form narrative - readers will overlook the most ham-fisted prose if only a writer can make them long to know what happens next.
I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.
The nice thing about a series is you can end on cliffhangers all the time. You can be like, 'You know what? Here we go, this person just died, end of book.' And with the end of the series, you're very conscious of all the plotlines that were left hanging. There's a balance there to wrap those up but still leave it exciting.
One of the things I admire about longer stories is the way writers can work with dead time and slower, more idle moments - not only can they feel expansive, they feel lived-in; the unhurried pacing often makes the endings even more resonant and surprising for me.