stand-alones, duologies, trilogies, or sagas?

what do you prefer when reading or writing??

i guess it really depends, but i lean towards trilogies most of the time. my trilogy didn't start out as a trilogy (which is why the first book can act as a stand-alone) but i wasn't ready to give up the world so i made it a trilogy. but i also like sagas that are divided into trilogies (if that makes sense). like cassie clare's the mortal instruments, the dark artifices, the infernal devices. they're all trilogies, but set in the same world. i also feel like a lot of duologies have so much potential to be more. however, i love sagas of 5 or more books because they feel more like epic tales (especially epic fantasies, like a court of thorns and roses or throne of glass)

so what do y'all like?

I'm not all that interested in writing a saga. I feel like in some cases, authors try to write sagas but they just end up tacking on more unnecessary conflicts to make it longer when they should've ended it already. Also, some people lose interest in sagas if they have to wait for the books to come out.
I think I'll start out with a standalone novel.

i like writing standalones, but i don't mind reading series as long as theyre not too long.

Well I've got a trilogy in the works and an idea for another trilogy, (though when that's going to get written I have no idea), but apart from that I mostly write shorter stand-alones. I used to be really into the trilogy thing, but now I gravitate more towards stand-alones. The one trilogy I've got going is an older one I dropped for a while and am starting over. The idea for the other trilogy is also old. (On second thought I really don't think that one's going to get written at all). I don't think I've ever had plans for anything longer than a trilogy, though I've certainly read longer things.

In my opinion, if a standalone, a trilogy, a saga, or whatever are all written well, I don't really have a preference in reading.

But I do think that each one has a tendency for certain pitfalls. Good standalones tend to make readers furious that there aren't any more books. Bad standalones are fine, you read em once they're gone forever. But I personally am super impressed with amazing adventures in ONE book. A+ it's amazing. I want to get to that level. That's what I think Trilogies and Sagas suffer from, not being able to tell the story in just one book, but not having enough to have a solid series, so the author decides to milk off of readers and put tons of filler in. sigh

My favorite series's are ones where each book could be a standalone and maybe kind of connect to the other; or that each book in the series tells a whole story WORTHY of its own book without having to lean on the books that came before, even though the stories are very connected. cough Harry Potter does this awesomely cough

Nothing to do with the topic/question but I read trilogies as triangles and for a second I was really confused

My "main series" is a trilogy, one that I have lovingly named my Darkness Trilogy, but another that I work on from time to time is a cycle

Well whatever the Stormlight Archives is… I will wait 30 years for those books.
I love all