she's no dickens

[lunabee34]

the_emu has a fascinating post about writing HERE. the_emu is currently serially posting a story; the story is complete, but ze's using the interim between chapters to tweak and edit the unposted portions of the story in response to audience feedback.

This post got me to thinking about serial writing and posting of fic.

The very first fanfic I wrote was a Big Bang length Spike/Xander that I wrote out longhand on legal pads, typed up, edited, and then thought—How do I go about getting this onto the internet with all the other fanfic? LOL I posted the whole thing to a Yahoo listserv, met a handful of people who introduced me to livejournal, and set up shop over here.

The first thing I noticed on lj circa 2005 was that everyone seemed to be posting long fic serially—a part each week or each day or sometimes according to no discernable schedule at all. And so when I started my next long fic, I wrote and posted it serially as well.

After I’d posted a few chapters, I definitely could see the draw of posting a story this way. Posting serially generates a lot of energy and excitement for both reader and writer.

As a reader, the delayed gratification can be just as satisfying as waiting every week for a favorite television show to air. The mini-cliffhangers ratchet up emotional tension and drama, and they force a reader to wonder what will happen next in the interim between postings. Often times, this means that readers talk about the story while they’re waiting for a new part to emerge: speculating and squeeing and nail biting—all those activities that make consumption of a source text as a community so enjoyable. At the very least, posting serially makes reading the story a process that lasts longer, prolonging the fun.

For writers, posting serially can be very encouraging. It’s interesting to see what people think will happen next in the story and very satisfying when readers comment to say they can’t wait for the next installment to appear.

Some people tweak elements of their stories based on feedback. Everybody loves this side plot? In future chapters, I’ll foreground it. Some people think I didn’t get this character’s voice right? Okay, I’ll pay closer attention to that going forward. Getting constructive criticism along the way can be really useful. I think I’ve even seen instances where authors polled readers about upcoming elements of their stories, and reader response dictated what the authors wrote (and, naturally, I can’t find a link).

Ultimately, however, posting serially just doesn’t work for me—or rather, I should say, writing serially just doesn’t work for me. There’s a huge difference between choosing to post a completed story in increments and actually composing the installments of the story during the timeline in which they’re being posted. While I enjoyed all the cheerleading comments and the speculative comments and the comments from people who were excited for the next parts to appear, I feel like the story as a whole suffered from being written in that way.

I need to have the entire document spread out before me so that I can make sure that everything is cohesive and consistent and does all the work that I want it to do. I lose focus when I write serially. I feel like some of the chapters of that fic from 2005 don’t quite match tonally because either a) so much time passed between the writing of installments or b) I was in different moods when I wrote them. It was easy to let the story languish when the writing got difficult or real life intervened, and I know some readers must have worried that I might not actually complete the fic. I finished “Shadowlands” many months after I’d started it, and I’ve never written that way again.

Because I have such trouble with writing this way, I have a lot of respect for writers who can turn out perfectly entertaining and well written fics in a serial format. And a lot of writers who write and post serially are crafting phenomenal stories. I have noticed, however, some common pitfalls of serially posted fic: the every chapter has to have a sex scene syndrome, the forgotten plot thread, the story element of initial prominence that is inexplicably downplayed as the story goes on, and the rushed or abrupt ending.


So now I want to know what you think. How do you feel about serial writing and posting of fic as a writer, as a reader, or as both? What are the pros and cons? Have you done it yourself, and if so, how did that experience compare to posting a fully edited story? Talk to me about writing!

Comments

The Little Trollope Says Hi

[executrix.livejournal.com]

It's amazing what desperation can do, but there are FAR too many popular and much-loved fics that never got finished, either because the writer painted zeself into a corner or didn't have time to work on it or ran out of ideas or steam.

I've never written anything long enough that it *had* to be posted in parts, but sometimes I wrote stories that were longer than the B7 mailing list could handle in one post. I always made sure to finish them and then divide them at an appropriate place to post.

[garnigal.livejournal.com]

I totally understand the comment that 'writing serially doesn't work for you'. It doesn't work for me either. If it isn't finished before I start writing, comments may get me to do a few more chapters, but in the end, I'll never finish.

I seem to recall a Firefly fic I've got languishing in my journal... I'll finish it, I swear!

[ariadne83]

I don't think it makes all that much difference to my writing whether it's serial or fully edited (because either way I usually know how the story's going to end already), but I *hate* my attitude when I'm posting things serially. I get *addicted* to the comment count and I start slipping towards becoming one of Those Writers who won't continue until they get feedback. Ugh.

[drsquidlove.livejournal.com]

Oh, and another big reason for waiting until I'm done: I feel very differently about stories once they've been posted.

When I'm polishing things up, I can see all the flaws and I accept things not quite hitting all the notes I want. Posting always feels like a compromise. But once I've received and replied to feedback, and it's been up a little while, I forget the stuff I'd been failing to get in and I feel good about what is actually there.

So if I've got the early parts of a story up, then I've set myself an impossible ideal for how I should feel about the later parts before I can post them. It's a set-up for performance anxiety, and I can polish and tidy in that frame of mind, but I can't create story.

If I didn't have the end of New York written, there's no way I'd be able to write it now, with expectations looming.

S.

[possibly-thrice.livejournal.com]

I used to write pretty much exclusively serial longfic, which, uh... led to a lot of WIPs hanging around. But. My latest long story, that Good Omens thing? I posted that serially for like three readers, and it was great because their comments motivated me but because it would be going to a much wider audience afterwards, I didn't feel strange about going through at the end and doing a rehaul for continuity and such.

Although I think it also helped that I was posting a lot in a short period of time- updates every other day, kind of thing. It allowed me to keep it all together in my head.

[lyr]

I like the idea of serials, and the Cube project I'm doing this summer will be my first real attempt at doing one. The interactive element intrigues me, especially in a community setting like fandom. I don't really think my existing series count as serials. All my installments have been far apart, and rarely did I even announce that there were forthcoming parts, so as not to raise expectations too high; I know quite well I don't usually work that fast, and I don't want to be a tease.

I think that for me the negatives would be a sense of guilt if I were running behind schedule getting new parts up, and a weighty feeling of obligation that might make the writing process less fun for me. On the other hand, I have that sense of obligation when I'm, say, writing for yuletide, and it actually seems to bring out my productivity, so I can't say for sure that counts as a negative.

As for the positives, there's the interactivity that I mentioned before, and also the ongoing encouragement that you bring up. It may also be that for some writers it makes them feel more committed to finishing the story.

Better late than...nevermind. Just late

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

I think there's a different feel and purpose to a cohesive whole versus a continually written piece. Obviously, part of that is the feedback--you can edit and change and reset when creating serially. But part of that is the intention. Television does different things than movies, with different possibilities and strengths and drives. Same with serial posting and completed stories.

One thing I've been doing lately--and I don't even feel dirty about it!--is reading Glee fic on ff.net. ff.net is designed for serial posting; the entire interface is much more akin to watching a television serial (hey! that's what they used to be called! how weird!) than to reading a novel. Much of the fic posted to AO3, on the other hand, is of the novel tendency. This analogy carries over to the general cultural impressions of all four media as well (tv:movies::ff.net:AO3), even if tv is currently judged by the movie folk better than ff.net seems to be by the AO3 folk. Of course, the issue of comparative value is possibly a different question or possibly not so different.

But because of those differences in interaction, in creation, in vision, they kind of aren't really comparable at all. And maybe shouldn't be compared.