Writing Serial Fiction
Serials have been part of fiction for decades. Newspapers and magazines regularly ran stories in instalments, keeping readers hanging until the next issue continued the plot and spun out the story. Few people realise the story of Sweeney Todd was one of these “penny dreadfuls”, loosely based on an urban legend of the time. Serials were also often written by more than one author, with different instalments penned by different writers.
Contemporary authors such as Stephen King have attempted to follow in the footsteps of Charles Dickens by writing serials, and it seems logical for the serial to gain a foothold in cyberspace. The blog format lends itself well to the serial, with each new post forming a new instalment in the story. I decided to write one way back in February and I will freely admit that when I decided to start writing one, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I’d written a flash which I posted on my blog, and people asked to know what happened next. So I did what any self-respecting ‘pantser’ would do, and I started to make it up as I went along.
Here are my pointers for getting the most out of the serial experience:
Know your End Game
Unless your serial is going to become a soap, you need to have an end game in mind. People want to read your story knowing there will be some sort of resolution. If someone asks me to read their serial and they’re on part 137, I’ll think twice. I might read the first couple of parts and if they’re good, I’ll work my way through until I get up to date, but if it doesn’t grab me straight away, then I won’t. It took me until part 15 of my serial to know how it was going to end, and I decided I wanted to keep it to 30 instalments. You might only need ten episodes, you might need fifty. Either way, make sure you have a beginning and an end. Knowing the length in advance also allows you to keep to a structure, avoiding those random plot diversions that might otherwise take your serial off the rails.
Tie up Loose Ends
Unless you write a chunk in one go and then break it up into instalments, make sure you go back and re-read your last few instalments before writing the next one. If you don’t, you risk introducing elements that you never use again. Readers who follow your serial week by week might not notice, but if you don’t tie up your loose ends at the conclusion, anyone who reads it in one go when it’s finished will spot them and wonder why they never got resolved. Introducing red herrings is one thing; failing to keep track of your subplots, secondary characters or random plots is another thing entirely.
Content
Hitchcock said fiction was life with the dull parts taken out, and serials are no exception. Just because they aren’t novels or short stories doesn’t mean you can include lengthy scenes in which very little happens. Serials, like anything else, need to have things going on in them. When I came to a point where I felt stuck and wasn’t sure where to go, I did what Raymond Chandler suggested, and I brought in a loaded gun. I don’t want you to tell me that things get exciting in part 24, I want them to be exciting from part 1. Each instalment needs to be vital to the plot – if it’s not important, cut it.
Cliff-hangers
This might not be relevant in your serial, but if you’re going for action etc., you might want to consider the cliff-hanger. Why? Well you want to get your reader to come back to find out what happens, don’t you? New episodes can raise new questions, but it’s a good idea if they also answer questions raised in earlier episodes. This way the reader is rewarded with gratification for earlier mysteries, but is presented with new ones that keeps them wondering “What will happen now?”
Story arc
It’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with the way the serial works on TV. Almost all TV series will have individual episodes in which the plot is self-contained, while containing elements that belong to the overall ’story arc’. In ‘The X Files’, so-called ‘monster of the week’ episodes pitted Mulder and Scully against a monster or villain who needed to be vanquished within the 45 minutes of the show, while other episodes moved along the ‘alien conspiracy’ story arc. Casual readers are rewarded by the ‘monster of the week’ instalments, while regular readers get the gratification of following the story arc. Will your serial be a ’series’ and have self-contained episodes featuring the same cast having individual adventures every week, or will it be a true serial and tell an ongoing story?
Writing a serial allows you to stretch out the experience of writing a novel, and you have more time to get to know your characters than you do with a short story. Get to know them, toss them into some sticky situations, enjoy what you’re doing – and have fun!
Images courtesy of leiris202, quinn.anya and alpiniste.
Icy is a die-hard Northerner in old London town. She can still remember the days when she wrote her first stories in crayon. These days she favours a laptop, and cranks out weekly flash fictions, web-based serials and even the odd novel, usually about telepathic parrots, superheroes, Cavalier ghosts, and her own peculiar brand of steampunk.
A good insight into serial writing that has helped clarify some things for me in my own web serial.
Adam B @revhappiness
I’m glad it could help!
I’ve loved the idea of the serial fiction short, but I have one question.
What would be better, trying to get it published on a formal publication, in print or online, or the have it on a blog and try to promote it whenever possible?
I thought this would work for my novel, but I’ve never found a decent way of getting out there effectively as a serial.
Seth – There are a few publications (both in print and online) that run serials, although from what I gather, these like to have the serial finished before submission. You can probably find some on Duotrope’s Digest! So if you have a finished serial you’d like to have published, then there’s no harm in trying that option first. As you say you have a finished novel, then if you’ve tried traditional publishing routes for that, then you could try contacting the publications that run serials to see if they’d be interested.
Serialising your novel on a blog and working on promotion could actually lead to a traditional publishing contract anyway – an author I know secured a publishing deal after releasing chapters of her novel as podcasts.
I think writing serial fiction is a great way to gain an audience. There are a few serial fictions that I read and I do have to say that every week I look forward to the next installment. If these stories had been presented as novels, I’m not sure I would have made the time commitment to read them. It’s easy though to tune in each week for the next episode.
Exactly! I wrote mine in installments of between 400-500 words so that a reader could read each episode in a coffee break on a weekly basis. I know other writers who use the flash fiction format to serialise a piece and it works very well. I love that feeling of excitement when a new episode is due!
Interesting notes! For years, I’ve written flash fiction that I used for Christmas cards. Coming up w/ a new idea every year though led to a decision to create a series of stories set in the same world and characters (due largely to the challenge of coming up w/ cute, holiday themed stories w/ brand new people and new rules for the story’s world).
I am currently on part 5 and will finish the story next year. Given that I often have new readers through my day job, I try to keep each story focused on a theme with a clear beginning, middle, and psuedo resolution. That has helped the new readers some, but I still get questioned on what happened before. (I wonder if I didn’t let them know it was part 5 if they’d notice???)
Anyway, it’s been an exercise in frustration, but I believe I have learned much about writing and keeping reader’s interested. I’m not certain I’d do it again, but since I’m over 10 years into writing these cards, I plan to start reusing some of the old stories – at least at work.
Your points about serial fiction are excellent though – primarily giving the reader some sense of resolution at the end of the installment.
This is an excellent piece on writing serials! This information gives great insight on a different type of writing style. Thanks!
So glad I came across this piece. I’ve been suffering from writer’s block for a month but now feel I can get back into my serial. I started this in September but then lost it around Christmas.
By the way I am also a Northerner who once lived in London but now lives in Finland.
Once again, nice article.
Thanks
Thanks, Icy! I’ve been wanting to do a serial but have been stuck even in the planning stages (writer’s block, the day job, other less-believable excuses…). For my own “issue”, I struggle with how long to make each installment. Since I tend to be a wordy writer, even my short pieces tend to be fairly long. I worry that if it’s too long, people won’t bother investing the time, but if it’s too short it won’t be worth the time of anyone who does bother.
Maybe I need to stop worrying and start writing, eh?
Definitely! Get writing!
I’m interested in beginning to write a serial piece, but don’t know what to do with it once it’s written. Do you have any suggestions for good websites to post on?
I highly recommend getting a blog and posting it there! If you post each installment on a Tuesday, you can get involved with the Tuesday Serial phenomenon. If you use Twitter, you can tweet links to each installment and tag them with #TuesdaySerial, and there is also a collector over on TuesdaySerial.com where you can post your link. Check out the other serials that are going – there’s a really good community of writers doing serials.
Thanks for clearing up my questions about serial writing. What about copyright? I am planning on getting a creative commons license through myfreecopyright.com Would that work? Also, to bring in new readers, could a person revise a part of it every three months or so and then repost?
Hey Michelle, thanks for commenting. There really isn’t a need to apply to anywhere like that site. We covered copyright quite recently, check out the article here for more details.
Michelle, I’m not clear on what you mean by ‘revise’ but if you were to make any but minor changes to earlier episodes, these would probably effect what happens in later installments. For those who have read the unrevised episodes, this would lead to confusion.
Walter