Madison Kwicinski – Editor-in-Chief

Mvk5945@psu.edu

From books to movies, the stylistic choice to wrap up a full story’s conclusion into three segments regardless of the depth of the content is something I truly believe we should work towards moving away from once again. That is not to say that fantastic trilogies do not exist, but rather than I wish creators would opt to try and diversify the format they use to tell stories. 

For example, ‘The Hunger Games’ was an excellent trilogy written by Suzanne Collins that likely was best told in this three book series. However, it is worth considering how this series could have been framed if it was further broken up. For example, the second book, ‘Catching Fire’ has too major parts; The physical Quarter Quell games and then the portion that takes place once they are rescued from the games and in District 13. 

Before the popularization of trilogies as a whole, this likely would have been broken into two books. This would have allowed the author to spend so much more time exploring the Capitol and the actual Quarter Quell, and given us an entire other book about District 13 and the destruction the capitol caused before the final book, ‘Mocking Jay.’ 

An example of why I think this would work better is contained in the ‘Harry Potter’ series, where 7 books and 8 movies were able to spawn from. Although I love the ‘Hunger Games’ I think a more drawn out version could have led to these films easily having an even more prominent place in film and literature history. 

After ‘The Hunger Games’ gained popularity another major trilogy came out ‘The Maze Runner.’ This is another example of how trilogies are multiplying in popularity, as ‘The Hunger Games’ was followed by many YA books series being converted into trilogies. ‘The Maze Runner’ was originally a trilogy story, but following its production, the author, James Dashner, then produced an entire other trilogy series as a prequel to the books. 

Although this is not entirely wrong per-say, it would have made much more sense to me to tell one, longer and more established sequential story. Once again, this would have allowed for the books to be converted into movies much easier and likely made the series a more iconic piece of media to begin with. 

I think this reduction to mainly telling stories in a trilogy format has a little to do with the consistently decreasing attention span of the general public. In an era where social media consists of 30 second video clips, how are Authors expected to keep a reader’s attention for several entire books? 

However, I think that is also the point behind being a good author. From ‘Harry Potter’ to ‘A Song of Fire and Ice’ to ‘Mortal Instruments’ it is clear that longer, more iconic series are entirely possible to make. but it seems to appear people have given up. 

Trilogies can make for great media, but I would love to have another piece of literature, or a movie series come out that can actually be turned into a full weekend-long event. I think the general attention span of the public is longer than people give it credit for, and that author’s should not limit their creativity to account for this.