Writing Question Reader Input Requested

[Eido]

What do you feel is a good time between installments of a serial story?

Or,

Would you rather have the whole thing posted at once and not have to wait for the author to get his act together?

Eido

[jakbird]

Best to start by distinguishing between a serial story and a series of sequels.  I see a serial as a story published a chapter at a time, the classic example being the old Saturday matinee movies serials (remember Leonard Nimoy in Radarmen from the Moon?).  A sequel is a set of independent stories sharing a common backdrop and perhaps some of the characters.  Best example (maybe the oldest?) is Homer's Iliad, about the Trojan War, and the sequel The Odyssey, returning home from the Greek point of view, plus I'd include Virgil's Aeneid, the story of a group of Trojan refugees who wind up on the shores of Italy, in much the same vein as Homer's epics.

So, terms defined, what about the serial story?  Full disclosure, I have a strong personal distaste for the format.  It cheats the reader, leaving a story hanging with no idea if it will ever be finished.  Too often it spoils the story, where the author is painted into the proverbial corner due to the inability to update previous chapters.  Once published it's cast into stone, what comes next has to maintain some continuity.  Sure, it's tempting to post that first chapter, to get some exposure and win the admiring accolades of hordes of readers, but what happens next?  90% of a good story come with figuring out the ending in the last 10%.  Will the last chapter meet the expectations set by the first?

On the other hand, a series of independent stories sharing a common setting and characters can be quite entertaining.  If I come up with an interesting character then sure, I want to explore more about that character.  The difference is every story in the series has a start, middle and end; it stands alone.

How long between chapters, if you do stick with a serial?  We can look back on some successful examples.  The Batman (1966) TV series was one day, start on Wednesday, end on Thursday, same bat-time, same bat-channel.  Most movies and TV the weekly format works best (with the exception of soap operas); enough time to come up with the next episode, short enough viewers don't lose interest.

[Observer]

I don't think there is a "magical" answer to this.  Clearly the readers would prefer not too far apart, but writing well takes time, so I think ultimately it's more about how you prefer to work.  The most important is that  you produce good stories that mean something to you.

[jackierabbit1]

Speaking, or I guess writing for myself, I almost always have an ending in mind for the longer format stories, it's the getting the characters from here to there, the journey if you will, that seems the most fun. I truthfully also get a great deal of feedback on the forum that helps me write, maybe lets me see these characters from a different point of view, and if I can incorporate that into the story so much the better. I also just don't have the raw talent and focus to write a very long story all at one time, unless it's a true story, because then I'm just reiterating what had happened while changing character names or altering locations for obvious reasons.

Sometimes as well (truthfully many times) a story just doesn't flow for me and I then jump to another project, a fresh look at other material that I'm also working on, because if I force a story to come out, (hurry up and finish it) I don't think that product would be all that good. It makes working to a deadline, for me, something that I don't like doing either. In every process there needs to be a variable, be it quality, or time. I can swim the length of the pool, so can an Olympic athlete, except she will do it much faster, and her strokes will be perfection, where mine not so much.

All that being said, as a reader I hate to get all invested in characters that I can't see through to the end, and here again feedback and interest on the forum helps to remind me that there are others that feel the same way.

I don't know that this answers the original question, but I felt compelled to share this point of view, Jackie.

[jakbird]

I prefer longer to shorter, even though the time involved grows exponentially.  Since I can write just for the fun of it these days (as opposed to grinding out incredibly dull technical reference manuals on a deadline, to be read by an audience of, at best, one or two), a story can take as long as needed, often stretching into years, and in a few cases decades.  Waiting ten years for a serial story to conclude is cruelty in its purest form, one more reason I never use the format.

Do I carefully plot out a story in advance, crafting each character and situation with infinite care?  Not in this lifetime.  If one were charitable my style would be "haphazard", in that I get an idea, bang away at the keyboard to capture it, and at some point in the future wrap a story around it.  That might be the far future; when I open my pinned document list in Word I get a long list of half-baked ideas waiting for more attention.

Do storylines become repetitious?  Sure, just watch any TV sitcom these days.  There hasn't been an original sitcom plot since I Love Lucy back in 1954.  It's all about how the story is told, how to embellish the characters, the plot twists, the art direction, all the little details that make it interesting even if predictable.  That's why I prefer novelettes and novels to short stories.  There's more space, time, to be creative.

And yeah, it's not the ending that's difficult, it's how to get there from the beginning.  I look at my slushpile and cringe when I think of the large percentage with a great ending but I haven't figured out how to get there.

That part above, about decades?  It's not a joke.  My grand project, a trilogy of novels, has been in the works for the last 15 years.  The first is now in the queue, second ready except for that one last edit pass, and the third coming along nicely with a fresh (as in two days ago) idea.  Are they great literature?  No, more like proof it doesn't require talent to churn out turgid prose in vast quantity.  That's why I charge fees commensurate with the quality of the product (i.e. everything in public domain, maybe if I give it away, like free beer...).
  Jack Peacock