How about science fiction novels? Are most of them focus more on science than characters? Although sometime the characters drive the plot, some books I read seems more focus on morals, invention, problems, and the overall theme than the characters. One of them is War of the Worlds, Jurassic Park, and Journey to the Center of the Earth. They have less characterization, but more back story and action.
You seriously believe War of the Worlds and Journey to the Center of the Earth have little characterization? Let alone Jurassic park (anything after the original movie at least) which was essentially a failed project after movie 1, you honestly believe Jules Verne wrote Journey to the center of the Earth with little characterization? Or did you miss the parts with the protagonist's wife, brother and background in War of the Worlds? And a book that focuses completely on science with no regard for the characters is not a sci-fi novel, it is either a thesis or a scientific article. Lastly, i don't know a single soul that would read a book with shallow characters and no character development and would then read another book just to understand the first. A book that needs another book to be comprehensible is an incomplete project and the one who releases it as such is either an amateur or a con-man.
A story can be action driven, or decision driven. Which comes first is up to you. Action drives decision, or decision drives action -- but, this is at character level. If plot is to drive character, then at some point, it would be wise for the character to take action. I think your issue here is with info-dumping, and for sure, it can make a reader's eyes glaze over. Some readers will like that sort of thing, some shan't. Write what you want, and if you want all action, in the now, then that's great. Write it.
I'm going to take a shot in the dark here, and say you've only seen those MOVIES, and never actually read the books? In fact, it seems most of your assumptions about how a book "should" be written are based off of the layouts of graphic novels/comics and movies, which are what you seem to reference most often.
I read a lot of graphic novels more than narrative novels. And I assume Journey to the Center of the Earth just follows the characters on their adventure. I only read a graphic novel of it, but it kind of shows the characters' daily life a little before their quest. However, I read H.G Wells's novels, War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Time Machine, The First Men in the Moon, and Food for the Gods. Do you learn about the main characters, then it seems to get more focus on their actions and the conflict. Of course you get to know his characters first before the story gets to the main point. I still read novels; only the ones that sound interesting to me, and the narrative is easy to understand. Other novels I read are light novels, which are young adult books translated from Japan. Most of them are adapted from anime and manga, and some of them started anime series. Like anime, they are character driven, but they are easy to read and more fast paced. None of them have a lot of back story information, except the big books. They are highly more focus on characters and their actions. Sometimes information dumping does allow the writer to be very creative and have a lot freedom of writing, but it can give a reader a headache. I barely read any of Stephen King's work, but I do admire of his work. He's more into the character's psychology to create the horror mood in his stories. Too bad not all of his adapted movies are good.
I suspected as much. If I were you, Miles, I would lean more toward writing manga and graphic novels, whose formats you seem to appreciate much more than those of traditional novels.
The purpose of light novels was for them to be easy to read by middle schoolers during a bus/train ride. And the order is usually reversed; light novels get adapted, not the other way round. When you say Journey to the center of the earth i assumed you were talking about Jules Verne's classic novel, not some graphic novel adapted from a b-movie. And so far from the 46 light novels to be adapted into some other media form, 39 were children's series (under 15) and 4 were YA, so you can understand how drawing conclusions from those kinds of stories may not be entirely accurate. Plus if you really think that light novels or graphic novels are as action-driven as you think, then you are truly mistaken. I could give you a list of the 20 or so series of those genres that i am still following so that you can see for yourself, but to this day i have never seen any kind of published story that is devoid of character info or background. The general feeling i get from your answers is that the phrasing of your original post was different from what you really wanted to ask. If so, maybe it would be better to ask the question again using the right wording so that you get the answers you need.
I didn't say not all light novels doesn't give a damn about characters. Most of them are character driven. And there are some Japanese adult novels adapted into anime and movies. I don't want to be a graphic novel writer because comic books and OEL manga are not the big thing in North America. Mostly everybody is reading novels on trains, buses, and at home. If I wrote a graphic novel and get it published, it might only be sold at comic book stores. It wouldn't be as popular as the bestselling novels in the book stores. If there are books that devoid character info, they are probably joke books and text books. What about books that devoid background information, but it has higher level characterization?
I don't think there's in any way to eliminate background information and yet simultaneously have "higher level characterization." In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it is an oximoron. I just can't grasp why character background is such an issue for you... No one's saying you have to take a chapter out of your book to describe it, nor do you have to include unnecessary information. I think that I can speak for the general population and say that that would be discouraged. But you can't explain away all of your character's actions with current happenings. Too much of what your character does is determined from what they learned, how they were treated or what they saw in their past. Think of all your little quirks. All your personality traits. If someone asked you why you do what you do, would you be able to explain those things to them without telling them something about your history? Character background does not equate to info dumping, nor does it equate to flashbacks. Character background can be as simple as a character responding to some questioning with, "My dad used to do it when I was a kid," or "I haven't liked it since I was a kid and my baby-sitter forced me to eat it." The trick is knowing how much is necessary to be included in your novel and how much is surplus information that you really don't need to be adding. The best advice that I can give is to go back and find the novels that you read that you enjoyed and find the bits where they included character background. Figure out how they did it, and try to do the same.
So what you want to do is write a children's novel that will underestimate adults' intelligence, yet it will become a best seller and earn you recognition. And you want it to be devoid of character development yet full of character development. Do you see the flaw in this plan or do we have to point it out? Even twilight which is a literary failure from every single aspect, still includes character info. And one last thing. For something to develop, it needs to have a starting point. How am I supposed to know something has changed if i don't know how it was before? Are you planning to only market your novel to prophets and mediums?
If you think I want to insult adult readers' intelligence so they can throw my books out the window, it won't make me famous. And saying a book that devoid characterization but has full of character development doesn't make any sense. Might as well have no character development at all. Well what would a story sound like without character development and characterization. Is there an example I can read based on this topic? If there is a story that doesn't have background information, the only thing you will only read about are the characters. The setting wouldn't matter, even if it takes place on a strange alien planet. No history or knowledge of the setting will be explained. Only the characters' thoughts, interaction, and history will be said. I also have nothing against characterization and background information. I think most of it should remain on the plot without going off course. And I want to know what a story without these two elements will be like and why. One book I am reading is a light novel; Full Metal Alchemist: The Land of Sand. It dumps some background information like about the characters and the setting's history, but it is all short and simple. I get my questions answered quickly and the pacing is good. Another book, World of Warcraft: Tides of Darkness, has too much background information of the characters and their history. All I care about is what's going to happen next and how the story will end.
^^^ I wouldn't really take those two books as examples of nicely proportioned characterization. It doesn't take all that much space to give background info, and the attitude and motives of the character during the plot is really what makes the story interesting. I would suggest finding some exciting novels that don't bore you and learn from their characters.
From what it sounds like, your idea of "centered around the plot" is centered around the main plot. The big action/adventure plotline. What you don't seem to realize is that most novels have sub-plots, many of which center less around the action and more around character interaction. Romance. Family. Inter-team/-group problems. These are the plots that will mostly involve more character backgrounds. These are where you have to explain why your MC is hesitant about getting romantically involved with a girl. Why they seem more interested in sex than romance. Why they don't speak with their father. Why their mother is always checking up on them. Why your MC and Minor Character A don't trust one another while your MC and Minor Character B are always changing significant looks when someone mentions that thing that happened in Tibet. You may not think about these minor interactions as plotlines. Your main focus may be that big picture plot with the villain and the war and the action. But that's not the only plot. Anywhere that you have character interaction you have a background. You have explanation. You need your readers to know why they interact the way that they do. You can't do without that. You can't have your MC interact with someone that they obviously know and not explain how they know them. So, you want a story that never gives background? Start from birth and work your way forward.
A novel with subplots make sense. Because an average page for a novel is three hundred or five hundred, there is a lot to fill in. Unless if the main plot is very long, a writer can choose to add a lot of subplots or not. I think most subplots are unnecessary. If there are multiple main characters living in separate worlds, then there can be subplots. But to me, I like to focus on a plot, which I care mostly about. Short stories need to stick to one line because they are so short. How can I add multiple subplots in a twenty page story? If the readers want to learn more about the characters, they can follow the bread crumbs, or read a separate book. How about instead of subplots, why can't characters just explain during the main plot? Like soldiers talking about their past lives before they battle the super villain? Indeed this is characterization, but it helps strengthen the main plot without going off the main plot. Most books I read deals with real problems and human issue, even if they are science fiction or fantasy. Why can't a book about characters fighting aliens be about characters fighting aliens? I think I learned enough about characters, but I will still read books that interest me. However, I would be more into the main plot than the characters' pathetic teenage problems. And I hate drama. Plus what if I can do without characterization and background information?
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/sciencefiction/TheWaroftheWorlds/chap1.html ............................................................. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran. Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended. Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The blackmoustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at streetlevel another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered. Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste -- this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible. The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH http://www.george-orwell.org/1984 ................................................................... Free Education.
This sounds like all it does is tell with a lot of info dumping. It is also the type of writing, which I couldn't stand reading.
Because this is the least creative and one of the most boring ways of incorporating an info dump? ....
I agree - I think for most people, it's good advice to write the kind of thing that you would like to read.
What you don't seem to grasp is that what you are talking about is all suplots. If the soldiers about to fight the alien overlord stop right before the fight and spill their guts over their past, that right there is a subplot. I believe a story without any plots except the main plot would be five pages long (at most) and utterly boring. On your example of a five page story, two paragraphs would be more than enough to include the main plot. And the FMA series, be it manga or light novels, are one of the most character- and setting-driven series you can find in that genre. An example of a story including only the main plot of the story you are thinking about is the following: Or something similar.
Because no one's going to give a rat's *ss about your characters. That's why. Because they're going to get to the end of the book - if they even care enough to do that - and your character is going to be laying there with the alien hovering over them, ready to run a sword through his chest. And you know what your readers are going to realize? They're going to realize that, live or die, they don't care what happens to your MC. They don't care if he defeats the alien, because you've given him no reason to hate the aliens except a brief explanation that "he killed my family." You're not giving them a reason to want to save his comrades beyond "we've been together for so long." Brief little explanations are not enough to make a reader give a flying about the fates of your characters. And for that reason, they're going to put your book down, because they're not going to be invested in the ending. Stop basing how you want to develop a novel off of what you watch in movies or read in mangas. They are different formats. They give different amounts of character background, and they do so in different ways. If what you're looking for is a movie-like format, write a screenplay for a movie, not a novel. If what you're looking for is a graphic novel-like format, design a graphic novel, not a novel. Stop trying to make excuses to be lazy and not give character background in your novel and go to a format where you don't have to.
Submitting a screenplay is a gamble. Because a lot of people are writing scripts and many studios are rejecting them because they have plenty. If a script is accepted, the director might require the writer to revise the script several times, which can be a headache. The entire story, which the writer worked on so hard, it wouldn't be his original idea anymore. Hollywood is the devil. The same with writing a graphic novel script. Comic book publishers have a lot of writers and artists of their own. If they accept the script, they ask for some revise too. Also if the script never gets accepted, the alternate is self publishing, which is expensive. The writer will have to pay everything, including his or her own art team, unless the writer can do the artwork on his or her own. I am a crappy artist, and I don't have enough money to pay an artist to do my work. I think writing novels are easy. But you have to put a lot of details in it and revise it sometimes. And good stories are very hard to make, unless you are as good as Stephen King. I like to write novels or shorts because they are more popular and they are more creative. So you think a story without characterization and background information will only make a short story line, which mostly sounds like a synopsis? That is not a story. It just tells the main plot. What if it shows what is going on without telling the character's thoughts, feelings, and background information? It shows how the character fights the aliens and defeats the alien overlord with a lot of descriptions. Plus it has dialogue and some of the human senses like smell, taste, and touch. Have it bring the reader into a breathing living world without going into the characters' heads. Telling everything isn't enough and it won't make the story last. Of course a story focusing on the main plot will make it a short story. Maybe it should stretch it out longer to make it into a novel. Why won't readers care? How much details and info does readers have to freaking like the characters even if the characters explain everything during the main plot? If it's enough, make it enough. Everything can be explained on the main plot. Like not only the soldiers explain their past lives, maybe the main character informs them why he hates the aliens. Not because they kill his family, he might feel he's not going to let the aliens hurt more people. It can be redemption for leaving his family without protection, or he realize he can change other people's fate from death. His reason is explained, there you go. If the readers want to see how much he loved his family, he can just tell them with his own voice. No flash back or any thoughts of the past. Just have him explain his reasons during the now. I also think you are saying that a story without characterization and background information will have no explanation, and it will only be a basic synopsis. Last year in my Creative Writing Class, I wrote an alien invasion poem about an alien invasion. The students like it, but my teacher said there is nothing character about it, although I have one main character in it trying to save his family. He suggest the alien invasion should be a metaphor describing how a character feels and give the clues of what issue he is facing. And he suggest it should be about me. I ended up replacing it with a different Sci Fi tale about the fear of losing my little sister to abduction, which seems people can relate to.
EXACTLY! What people can relate to. What a reader can relate to. You think the average Joe has faced an alien invasion and knows how to deal with that? You can't do a story without giving something of what character's are going through mentally in their heads, or at least what one of them is going through in his/her head. Why? Because this is what you get... ((Excuse the poor writing style; it's 5:00 AM and I'm ill.)) ^This is what writing looks like with no thought. You don't know why the soldiers were confused, or why their consulting the map didn't help. Now, yes, some of this can be filled in with dialogue, of course. But what about [Solider A]'s sudden realization of which way to go? What if it's not as simple as "I figure we should just guess and hope for the best?" What if it's a whole, drawn-out explanation of what he remembers from a family trip on how to get to Chicago, and he remembers his family facing a similar dilemma? Are you going to have him explain the entire trip in a monologue? Because, of course, that's what you're facing here. Monologues. Huge, page-long pieces of dialogue while characters try and explain their pasts. You know what they sound like? Flashbacks. First-person flashbacks. And you want to know what that's a problem? Well, besides the fact that you don't like flashbacks... Your characters aren't always going to remember everything in crystal detail. It won't sound natural if everything is an in-depth, well-detailed description of what happened to them in their pasts that's sending them on this hunt for their families. Your reader may wonder why all of your characters seem to have eidetic memories. And then you face the issues of those things that you can explain in dialogue... Let me play out a scenario for you. You're within a group of intimate people - a group of soldiers that have been together for who knows how long. Maybe even before the alien invasion, yeah? They know a lot about how things work. They all understand the battle between Character A and Character B and why they never get along. So why would anyone talk about it? Who's going to listen to them explain the whole story if everyone in the group already knows? That would be unnatural, of course, wouldn't you agree? So you're going to be left with a scenario in which your readers don't understand why these two men hate each other. What your story is also going to lack is a protagonist of any kind. You can argue that all of your soldiers are your main characters. But then, of course, you'll have to give one of those in-depth, flashback-esque monologues for all of your soldiers so that we understand why each one of them is on the hunt for aliens. And if this is a larger group of soldiers, that can be a hell of a mission to accomplish. Relaying character thought and emotion without actually relaying character thought and emotion means your writing has to be peek. You have to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop to make sure that you have realistic, well-developed characters that youre readers can sympathize with. Because, yes, if you don't, they won't care. They can't care. What readers sympathize with are not the character's problems, but the emotional turmoil described throughout the story as they deal with their problem. They sympathize with the reader that talks about how hard he struggles not to cry in front of his comrades because he doesn't want them to think he's weak. They sympathize with the the twist in his chest when he sees a little girl that reminds him of his dead little sister. They sympathize with the tear that rolled down his cheek that no one else saw because he hid it. They sympathize with his rage, which he feels all the time. They worry with him when a comrade goes missing. They cry with him when they find a descolate town, wiped clean of life. They travel on the emotional roller coaster from sadness and depression up to that blood-thirsty rage as he uses his pain to ready himself for the slaughter and carnage he's about to envoke. Characters are our connection between the story we want to tell, and the hearts and minds of our readers. Without a reflection in the novel of what they want and feel and why they do what they do, you have nothing to get a reader invested in the words you write on a paper. If you can't portray to the reader why your characters give a sh*t, then they'll wonder why they should. And that's exactly why your 200-page novel (because you aren't going to get much out of it without character thought) is going to be rejected by a publisher or, if it gets picked up, it's going to be a flop, with a handful of readers that all ask the same questions: Who was I supposed to be rooting for? Why don't the characters seem to feel everything? Why is Toby always fighting with Greg? Why does it seem like the character have inside jokes that I'm not allowed in on?
So let me get this straight. You originally said you want a novel without any character development or background whatsoever. Now you say you want a novel with a lot of character development and background, with the only limitation being that the information is given in the form of dialog and not narrative. This is all subplots. The main plot is only the soldier fighting aliens and their leader. Anything else you put with it is not part of the main plot. The main plot is only an outline. Even soldiers talking to each other outside the "roger that" and "go go go" is a subplot. When you realize that and look back on your posts, you may want to reconsider what you have stated so far.
I understand what you are explaining. I agree some stories need a connection to readers who want to find a character who they can relate to. Without those emotional explaination and why the readers should care about the characters, the story will die. It will be forgotten, vanish, and never become as popular as Harry Potter or Star Wars. People love people, even if those people are fictional. This is also kind of like how people make friends or start a relationship with them. How do people make friends? How do people make lovers? It's the same with readers picking up the book and getting to know the characters without talking to them. If a person doesn't get to know me enough, will he or she just walk away and forget about me? If I sit next to a girl and try to attract her, will she just walk away when all I do is perform an action to try to make her sleep with me? If characters do that to readers without explaination, the readers will judge them wrong and walk away. I never took a psychology class, but I read many fiction books that have similar psychology lessons like The Walking Dead, and one of Stephen King's books. As for the alien invasion example, indeed it might feel odd if the characters talk a lot before the big action. But it doesn't have to be realstic. It could it be like a stupid 80's cartoon show with no logic. The Star Ship Troopers movie probably suck, but the battle scenes were good and entertaining. Plus it is funny how stupid the soldiers battle the bugs without reason. I also show a movie called Rubber, which is a satire on movies that have no reason. A hero can have no reason to fight evil, save the girl, or feel ashame for losing his son. If the action and twists are entertaining, then it will be observed. I just want to write something that is fun without having too much explaination. I agree that stories need characterization. Without it, it will be a telling story without letting the readers look in and feel about the characters. I try writing a dialogue story that only shows what the characters are doing without background information. But the narrative sounds like a script. Somehow I couldn't write it down quickly. Instead, I got bored with it. I guess I am too use to reading books with a lot of explaination, or I ended up limiting my creativity. So I will probably stick to writing the traditional way for my fiction. As for writing a story without characterization and no background, I haven't try to yet, but I amuse it will bore me too while writing it. I wanted to try to write a story without characterization and background information because I am tire of seeing and reading character drama. I am sick of books that force me to care about characters going through issues and their crappy life, and I am sick of them going through tragic. Even my favorite manga, Naruto, Bleach, and Fairy Tail have a lot of drama. But they are crazy, although one of them are mature. Japan must of really love character drama with high intense emotion. So much crying, yelling, and suffering. At least American artists don't do that a lot with their books. However, OEL artists are doing the same thing. I hate character drama. But if it's the only thing that make readers care about your characters, it will make me sick. I kind of blamed characterization for drama. And background information is fine as long as it is short. I just want to write a story with a typical action adventure without characters having personal issues and becoming cry babies. And I thought subplots are like extra episodes to the story, like in a TV series. If you can not have something else fit in the main plot, then you can not have explaination?
A subplot to the main plot <Soldier A fights evil aliens> is <Soldier A is friends with soldiers B,C and D>. Another subplot is <Soldier A likes girl A>. A third subplot is <Soldier A talks with someone before the big battle>. You can't have a novel solely comprised of dialog. How are you going to make the characters move? "I move towards the door. I open the door. I see Leslie. Hi Leslie. I close the door" Is it only me or does it sound stupid? Both Japanese manga and American comic books and graphic novels bet on characterization because that is the sole reason readers will buy a second issue of a series. That is how you get fans. You should check discussion boards regarding the genres you yourself are reading. What do you see people talking about most? Do you see many topics going "Check this out, this action sequence was the bestest!" and having people reply? No you don't. What hooks people to a story is not the action but what comes before and after it. Lastly, extra episodes are extras as the name states. Subplots are minor plots running along with or intertwined with the main plot. If a novel was a painting, the main plot would be the theme. Everything else would be subplots and development.
