This is not a new article, but it's interesting: Experimenting With Serials for Fun and Profit
It's not that I am drawn to the serial form over the novel. It's that the audience these days is surely as deficit in their attention span as I am, and I can't help but think a serialized novel would attract more eyeballs. That is, if it's really, really good. It needs great characters and unexpected turns. It has to be a page-turner. Yet that alone doesn't justify the form. What does justify the form? I dunno. Getting something out there before I'm ready?
The successful writer mentioned in the article writes about 25,000 words a month. No, that's her requirement. She undoubtedly writes much more than that. But as a benchmark, assuming every first draft is nearly perfect, that's approaching a thousand words a day. More or less half a NaNoWriMo every month forever. Can we do that? On one story?
I have a story, see. I have several, actually. None of them are plotted out in detail. I think a certain amount of organic writing must precede that so you know your characters and environment. But the one I'm thinking of now is a fresh new hybrid of some other things I've been infecting my brain with and an intuition says that, properly done, it could be a smash. And why not? Anything, any setting, properly done, can be a smash. The great smash hits were not set somewhere people expected. They're always something, somewhere, new. So the fact that my setting really appeals to me does not mean that the likelihood it does not automatically appeal to anyone else raises the likelihood that it can not or will not. It just has to be written properly. Competently. Dickens times King times Maupin competently. And who among us can't do that?
I live in a fantasy world. It's a requirement.
As is our wont when the stresses pile on, we stayed up late last night to watch a movie. I had not seen Shakespeare in Love before. It was great. Several layers of great. But at this instant I'm struck by the character of the writer. Once stricken by the muse, young Will sits at his small table, carves a fresh quill, and writes and writes, letting the genius flow onto the page. This is something I want to do. This is something I occasionally do do, despite the continuous corrections to my typing. This is something a strange voice inside says I can do, at length, producing just what is required. This strange voice probably expects me to take the right drugs. It is probably right, but I don't know what they are.
What does this mean, my friends, that I am accelerating my effort towards actual writing, right in the phase of my life when I should be re-educating myself to stay competitive in my career? My expenses are higher than they have ever been, and my debt load is too, and from any perspective I should be focused on addressing those facts and not the indulgences of my imagination. Yet here I am, every day, writing in one way or another about writing, or about background information, or about how I should proceed. Once in a great while I am even writing the writing, without qualification. This is so ... impractical.
Well, there are no doubt countless quotes to be found in the memernet about the fundamentally impractical nature of dreams and the drive to success. My impulse to draw dreams and reality into closer proximity to one another probably explains my sudden interest in serials. They look sort of like a workable compromise. Is this true? Or am I, again, dreaming?
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4 comments:
So, does one have to change the way they write if writing for serialization? Or, just write as always and then simply publish it in chunks?
I dunno but I should think it would be different so a) people will want the next installment and b) people who start the next installment will want to finish it.
In trying to fit with my short attention span and ridiculously busy life I'm thinking to just put all these ideas into short stories and glom them together later. Or maybe a series of connected short stories. I dunno. Whatever works to get me writing rather than shying away from the intimidation and doing something else.
I think with serialization, the idea of vaguely connected short stories would work well. I even remember something that guy did -- what was his name? Father John? He said as part of a writing class assignment, he was writing the same story over and over, each time in a slightly different way, and every week or so, he would post another one. It was kind of fun and I kind of got into it.
Anyway, agree, I thought I could maybe get the Busy Bee off the ground by serializing short vignettes or episodes. Besides, we can do whatever we want, since we're not being paid by Cosmopolitan to write stories, but doing it for nothing.
As far as selling goes, serials do better in some genres than others. They're very big in romance and there are plenty of people making a tidy profit.
My personal opinion, chopping up a novel into 20k chunks is not writing a serial, although plenty of people try to make that work. A serial should be more like a TV show: each episode is part of the larger story, but also has its own arc.
Serials are cool, but they're hard to pull off. Kind of a lost art form, since Dickens's age, and I'm happy to see it coming back. I think it's neat. I actually started one and really enjoyed the outlining, but ended up scrapping it and turning it into two novels instead. One day maybe I'll try it again, but it's a tough sell, and I do have to consider things like filthy lucre in budgeting my time.
Roy, I think the Busy Bee is SUPER fertile ground for a serial!! I bet both you guys would be super good at it. You should give it a roll and see what happens.
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