A solid overview of serial storytelling (in western media)! I love the Star Wars model in particular because it feels very well-thought-out with tons of character development.
Filler episodes & long monologues are inserted into anime due to timing weirdness. Basically, they happen when the anime has all but caught up to the manga in terms of story & has to 'wait' for new content from the manga (which is being serialized simultaneously). This is why I'm wary of super-long anime like Naruto because they almost always contain a lot of filler. Shorter works that are produced after the manga is finished don't have that problem & tend to feel a lot tighter with a more satisfying ending.
Oh, wow! I had *no idea* that was part of the reason for those extended monologues. Fascinating. I love that a practical production quirk of timing has led to a specific style of dialogue and exposition. Weird and cool.
As you note, this post is very much from a western POV. That's something that I've only recently acknowledged - my understanding of storytelling is very specific to the US and UK. Definitely want to put more effort into reading outside of that zone.
There is much to discover! Something that struck me too as I was reading your piece is that Asian TV seems much more comfortable with long drama series (20-50 episodes). I'm not sure why that is but they're still quite dense in plot & character. Some of the longer fantasy series really feel like sprawling epics.
Of course, we also have all sorts of Chinese web novels that seem to go on forever which might or might not be an influence.
One other interesting thing about anime adaptations of Manga "padding" - and DragonBall Z has an entire season of it waiting for the Manga to have a year's worth of stories to adapt - is it can often become fan favorite material.
Sticking with DBZ, there was a re-release of the show which basically was only the episodes adapting the Manga with everything else removed. Which reduces the series from over 300 episodes to under 150... This was obviously quite controversial. Some viewers preferred the more focused version of the show, others preferred the additional character or comedy episodes.
And yes, DBZ is a franchise that can take weeks to finish one fight. I remember an episode that is literally Goku and Freiza shouting variations of 'I'm SO about to kick your ass!' for 22 minutes.
Of course another reason Anime does so many long panning shots with VO monologs is to save money. Animate a character standing still with their hair being blown in the breeze on a two second loop, then do a tight crop, filling the screen with part of a face with a horizontal pan as that character pontificates on why they hate violence for 45 seconds and you've removed a background painting, and 42 seconds of animation from the budget to use when that character inevitably springs into action for the part of the episode that actually looks good. 😉 I tease with affection, but it's still true a lot of the stylistic choices came from reducing animation cost and leaning into the fact many anime do adapt Manga, which are... Still panels.
Yeah, it's very evident that Naruto saves a ton of its budget for the big fight scenes and goes absolutely minimal elsewhere. Even if it's for practical reasons, though, the end result is highly effective. Love the way practicality can give birth to an entire style that other creators can then choose to use, even when no longer restricted by the same concerns.
Yes and they seem to be miniseries too right? It might be 20-50 episodes but there will be an ending. I find that so refreshing compared to series that last eight seasons and then no one knows how to end it because they’ve been so focused on keeping it dramatic and cliffhangery without ever knowing where the story is going.
One thing that struck me about reading Legend of the Condor Heroes last year was how it felt like every anime I'd ever seen. Of course, it was written decades before anyone ever uttered the word anime. But you can see the DNA of everything from Dragonball Z to Pokemon in its structure and approach to storytelling.
One thing that especially struck me is how consistently hilarious it is and how willing it was to digress down strange subplot for so long that they sort of just became the actual plot. Even the idea of filler anime episodes feel like they fit right inside here, with the main difference being that Jin Yong's filler is delicious gourmet filler.
I've really noticed this watching Naruto with my son. It'll go off on a tangent for 10-20 episodes quite happily. There's no worry about losing viewers/readers. Going by western traditions, about 70% of the episodes could be removed and the main plot would remain intact. It wouldn't be the same, though, of course.
I suspect this is why Hollywood is doomed to never adapt any of them into live action, no matter how much they keep saying they're going to.
Oh, and my son is 10. Naruto has all kinds of problematic sexual inappropriateness (primarily relating to Jiraiya), but otherwise is fine. And the icky Jiraiya stuff is an opportunity to talk about depiction of women in fiction, and how that's changed over the years etc.
Agreed. I think it's also quite a western thing to apply a hierarchy of importance to different mediums. Live action is clearly regarded as a 'higher' form of visual art than animation by a lot of people/Hollywood execs, with the assumption being that live action is somehow an improvement or privilege (see: all the pointless Disney remakes). That doesn't seem to be the case in Japan, with animation more respected generally.
Jun 26, 2023·edited Jun 26, 2023Liked by Simon K Jones
Some games reporter (I forgot who) once remarked that in JRPGs, even the subplots & minor missions feel significant. They put as much care into side characters as they do into main characters & their development even when the former get less screen time.
I think this has something to do with Eastern philosophy. There is much less of an emphasis on cause & effect. Plot can digress as long as it provides something new & surprising. You see this trend in narrative structure too, & that has been around for a long time.
*Raises hand* Video games too have been experimenting with serialized story telling as well. Warning, this comment is long.
There's the very literal case with the brief boom of Telltale games, where the games were released episodically. They boasted that choices made in each episode would carry over to the rest of the 'season.' Never played any of them as they released however. A common critique is that they don't feel gamey enough to some, often citing how player choices change little about the plot.
I've only played Tales from the Borderlands, but my stance on the choices there is that while they don't really change the plot, they do change the relationships between characters and what they mean. For example one of the final choices is simply setting if you think one of its player characters has romantic feelings for another, and how the other player character feels about it. I found myself actively engaging and roleplaying a little with choices.
The other main source of serialization in gaming (discounting sequels) is MMOs and free to play games. World of Warcraft is still an ongoing story, though one that's hit a lot of fatigue. There's also 'gacha games,' free to play games where you get characters by spending resources on what's effectively a digital version of those 'insert the coin and get a random capsule' machine.
Part of how they keep people in is with a serialized story, not just updates to the 'main story' but limited time events with their own narrative. I played one game where the main story veered away from everything interesting about it, but the stories you got for acquiring each character and in the limited time events were solid. And now the game has been shut down so the narrative only survives via youtube and wiki transcripts.
What I hear is that gacha games didn't bother much with narrative as part of the appeal, then Fate Grand Order brought in the writer of the visual novel the game was based on for a story chapter, and the results prompted a shift to focus more on story as an appeal for the genre. So now we get things like the Pokemon gacha game continuing the narratives of the mainline games and having some of the franchise's best written rivals.
Every game with regular updates tends to have some form of narrative with it even if it's not highlighted and few look for it. Brawlhalla will often have new characters with profiles that link them to characters already on the roster. For example Roland's profile is about his romance with a valkyrie and his attempts to see her again, then a character was added later who is the daughter of that same valkyrie and whose father is only described as a human. They don't outright say Roland is her father, but Roland is clearly her father, the dots are right there.
Oh and talking about the big reset button, there actually is a case of it getting pressed in a MOBA. League of Legends at one point completely cleared away its lore and started over with a fresh slate, but as a game as service kept running. It wasn't a League of Legends 2 or remake, it was the same game, with completely rewritten narrative.
Only after the big reset did they start to actively use narrative to draw people to League of Legends with series like Arcane and various single player spin-off games. But people who enjoyed following the story from the start with character profiles and the like naturally felt betrayed by the complete replacement of what they had been following.
Then you also get downloadable content (DLC) as a form of serialization for console games, where one of the common terms is a season pass for a group of DLC. Unlike MMOs and free to play games these aren't trying to be infinite, and usually focus on building up on the base game. And I'd include expansion packs here as well.
For Soulcalibur VI something I liked was that its second 'season' of new characters actually did feel a bit like a season of a show. The story you got with each new playable character was standalone, but also built up on each other to tell a wider narrative setting up a new group of villains I fully expect to see in the next Soulcalibur in some form.
Also for manga/anime and serialization you might be interested in looking into Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. It's a long running manga divided into distinct parts with their own complete narrative, so while you'd miss some call backs you could start with any part. Many for example start with the third part, which I'm told basically codified the 'enemy of the week' type serial for manga.
Another bit of good serial-ish video game storytelling is Apex Legends. Similar games don't seem to put time into developing a story (probably too much fun to just shoot other players in a battle royale) but Apex went full throttle and introduced their characters with interweaving backstories to explain who gets along, why, who they hate, and how they're going to get revenge. Every time a new character gets released, Apex reveals a video about their lore and how they fit in with the rest of the world. It's certainly gotten more complicated over the past couple years, but it works wonders for keeping people interested in the game.
My wife plays Guild Wars 1 and 2 and she's always excited when they release another "season" of story.
Table-top RPGs can be looked at as a form of interactive, improvised serial storytelling... Unless you just use modules I guess. I have a longer comment, but it must wait. Time to head to the store for shopping.
Simon's already seen me discuss this many times over the years. I've done contract work for a TTRPG micropublisher for decades ("Micropublishers" only sell a hundred copies of a design if they're lucky, because the designer sucks at marketing and won't take advice), but the best innovation the designers ever had was a series of tarot card tables (with inversions) to generate both mission ideas AND basically run the structure of the entire game. Everything is still narrative based - cards aren't "fight 10 skeletons" but would indicate a "level 2 Campaign Event (something changing the structure of the game world outside the current mission)" with examples. A "level 2 Campaign Event" will have examples (i.e. Local ruler/ruler's wife is pregnant) but still has to be interpreted by the players. By allowing the deck to generate action one can play solo without knowing everything that's going to happen, or the Ref/GM/DM can run a PC, because, again, the Ref doesn't know everything that's going to happen. Heck, a card might change what happened in the LAST scene!
The tables aren't simple linear "card=event." It's more complex than that. For mission generation yeah, it's "card=suggestion for one of the eight categories flipped to generate the mission," but there's 1) 154 possible meanings per flip depending on the table (Wheel of Fortune is always "reshuffle"). 2) often multiple suggestions per card, 3) cross referenced to avoid "stupid" combinations, and 4) players are encouraged to use the tables as a guide not "law."
Quick, and true example from a game. It's "Phase A" (think "Act I" of a play, or a part of the game dedicated to research and preparation rather than travel and exploration or fighting and looting) and we're outfitting a ship to sail across the ocean. Tony is attempting to procure sailcloth. A "critical error" is flipped and the Ref says, "Well... Card says you failed. Tony, how did you screw this up?"
Tony thinks and says, "I come back with a slave."
All are confused and the Ref asks for Tony to clarify. Tony puts on a terrible accent and says, "You-a tell me to come back wit' 'sals.' Dis is-a Sal."
All laugh. Sal is freed and becomes a member of the crew and a valued NPC. We have a good time.
Always a good time to interpret the deck to tell a good game story. Also avoids GMs showing favoritism (or accusations of such), because we all knew that's a "you fail" card. Tony made it funny and memorable, because I'm still telling that tale a decade later.
Really interesting examples! I love games and I'm also surprised I didn't mention any in the article. I think it might be because I've not seen many new *forms* of serialisation in terms of the storytelling. The Telltale stuff (which I loved) was more about a release strategy rather than a new form of storytelling, as it was essentially replicating television structure.
MMOs is a curious example that I hadn't thought of, though. I wonder if they almost start straying into soap opera territory, with the general world carrying on, a regular cast of characters and occasional new arrivals. Swap Azeroth for Coronation Street and Ironforge for the Rover's Return, perhaps? :D
DLC, though, is an interesting one. Specifically when it folds into the existing game. I recently played Citizen Sleeper (highly recommended) and its DLC merges seamlessly into the main game, such that you almost wouldn't notice that it wasn't there in the first place. That's an interesting form of serialisation, where you're modifying the original text in a way.
In fact, open world games are something I probably should have covered. Main quests and sub quests are a form of serial storytelling, perhaps, with the open world being the means by which a player encounters those stories. That's perhaps where games have contributed an entirely new form of serial: episodic, but with pacing and order influenced by player decisions.
This was a terrific wrap-up. It's interesting to see also these different varieties summarized in one place. Being a writer and reader of fantasy, I'm definitely used to multi-book series. I wonder if most readers of this genre prefer three books or if they prefer four or more?
I tend to think there's enough types of reader to suit most models, as long as you can find them. Same goes for those of us trying serialisation here in Substack - we just need to find the right readers!
“Infinite soap 🧼” could be the long awaited sequel mashup to Fight Club and Infinite Jest! Or just a great band name. Haha love this heading.
I think literary fiction doesn’t do series often because each one takes so long to write and are likely more from the mind of someone struck by inspiration vs calculated plotting, which I think serials demand calculated plotting.
Though, I remember reading Shonda Rhime’s book The Year of Yes where she discusses writing Greys Anatomy and Scandal at the same time in real time weekly all by herself. 😳 And she said she just thought of it as laying track for a train and didn’t she didn’t do advance plotting or outlining, but rather just let her characters do whatever.
That's probably it - plot really isn't important to a lot of literary fiction, and plot is the main reason to continue a series or serial. Whereas exploring a specific character can be done in a single novel.
As someone once said, historical fiction is about things that have happened, science fiction is about things that might happen, fantasy is about things that couldn't happen, and literary fiction is about nothing happening. :P
Hahaha ok that’s brilliant. Nothing happening. Haha low key true in many cases. That’s why sometimes I prefer classics or older books because they are literary and poetic but still have plots.
I read Rhimes’ book as well and still find it fascinating but use a drop of it if I’m planning a serial because sometimes a story is served with a bit less planning and a bit more moving through where it should go next.
Good discussion, although I'm a bit surprised you didn't get to comic books earlier in the article - which I was waiting for because of historical placement... Obviously the rise of serialized comic book occurs between the rise of the novel and the dawn of motion picture serials and the TV soap opera.
Motion picture serials can, I'll argue, be treated as the forerunner of the "8 hour movie TV season." Serials were 10-12 minute shorts which might extend to 10-12 parts... Eventually forming a two hour story with strange pacing.
You did neglect to mention the old time radio serial. Was that something which slipped under your radar, or was that something that just didn't happen in the UK?
There's an Android App called "Old Time Radio Player (new UI)" which archives tens of thousands of old radio programs from stand alone light entertainment through serialized drama like "The Shadow" (starring a young Orson Wells) or "Superman" (The radio serials really redefined the character from his comic roots into what we're more familiar with. Flying, heat vision, and Kryptonite are three examples of lore added by the radio show).
Your not mentioning radio serials is a bit amusing as radio drama is basically a dead form in the US, while still alive in the UK... And I've spent enough money on Big Finish to prove that point!
There's a larger point branching from a response to Caz (sorry, not remembering surname, and if I back out to check I lose this comment) elsewhere in the discussion. There I mentioned Hill Street Blues sketched out light 1/2 season "arc/growth" material seeded into "stories of the week," and noted an entire "Twin Peaks" subplot came from catching a crew member in a mirror, not catching it till editing, and being unable to remove him in the 80's. And that point is! (cliffhanger)
The 1970's and 80's started seeing a bridge between the purely episodic episodes of ongoing shows in 50's to early 1970's and the "pure arc" storytelling which emerged in the 2000's. For lack of a better term I'll call this "episodic, with consequences." In general the weekly stories remained self-contained, yet the episode didn't reset button everything at the end of the episode. Character growth and change was seeded in. At least in the US model this tended to be planned out every half season (every three months for a US soap opera). Still, this tended to relegated to "B" or "C" plot status. The "A" plot would still be a situation of the week. Sure, there were exceptions, but those shows - like "Dallas" or "Dynasty" (UK and US) - tended to be classed as "primetime soap operas."
Of course *I'm* going to bring Babylon 5 into the discussion too. Here's where we note it's unique (and basically still is) in, while other shows would occasionally have callbacks, this was the writer of the episode looking back at what had gone before to expand upon those events while Babylon 5 was the first (and I believe still ONLY) show to plan out a full 5-year arc from beginning to end which was supervised directly by a single showrunner for the entire run. Foreshadowing was absolutely deliberate, and here's where things would be seeded in the pilot to pay off on season 3 or 5. B5 did NOT end up following its initial plans (published in a limited edition volume from "B5 books") - seasons 4 and 5 in particular diverge quite far from the original outline - but the changes were being made by the originator of the show and end up being pretty seamless. I suppose the largest changes came from the departure of Michael O' Hare at the end of S1 over mental health issues. The original finale of B5 would have *SPOILER FOR ALMOST 30 YEAR OLD SHOW* covered Sinclair's transformation into Valen and the end of the show would have been Valen teaching his young son how to fish.
Other "arc" shows tend to be planned season-by-season. Some weren't intended as "arc" shows. "The X-Files" is a "Monster of the week" show that doesn't become an "arc" show till season 3. "Lost..." J.J. Abrahms had a plan. Lindolf didn't follow it after Abrahms left. "Lost" started throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck until, after the show did an episode on how a character got his tats (answer: the actor had them) the production team BEGGED the network to set an end date of finite episodes in advance so they could try to resolve the mess. The "Battlestar Galactica" reboot started with a beginning ("We must find Earth") and ending ("We found Earth"), but the middle... Look the producers admit they picked the final 5 Cylons by putting up pictures of the cast on the wall, putting on a blindfold and throwing darts. This is NOT preplanned arc work here, but frantic "pulling out of [our] asses."
Of course even today it's rare to find an "arc" show with a multi season arc. If one does, BTS research typically finds the show was contracted from the start for a limited number of episodes. The last Voltron series, for example, was contracted for a maximum of 71 episodes so the producers could plan for that 5-seasons of 13-episodes (and despite releasing more than "5 seasons" with some being "6 or 7 episodes" the production blocks were scheduled as 5 seasons of 13.
If you want the ultimate in "pulling it from [our] asses" media, I point to "South Park," which, for most of its run has had the legendary task of starting the episode on Thursday for the following Wednesday. At the beginning of a season the writers would come up with a few "kids being kids" plots to use if needed, but most episodes would be "what pissed off Trey and Matt this week?" Was it season 19 that did the full serial plot? Either way, fans didn't like that season, and Trey and Matt planned it expecting certain real world events going one way which went another way which messed up their planned ending and the whole thing fell apart in the last two episodes. South Park will never do that type of arc again. The guys work best in episodic.
Yeah, the historical order here is fairly loose! :D It was more about flowing between or contrasting the approaches, rather than going strictly chronological.
Radio serials are not something I've any experience of, really. I find it VERY difficult to listen to audio dramas, or even audiobooks. My brain can't decide whether to focus on the story or what's in front of me at the time, and can't do both. I'm fine with podcasts, as they're more like standard radio that you can dip in and out of slightly. Dip out of fiction and you'll be rapidly lost!
Very interesting about radio's impact on Superman, though. I didn't know that.
As you note, I think there's a difference between a later episode retroactively referencing something that came earlier (eg bringing back a popular guest character/villain), and deliberately planting seeds that you know will pay off in a specific way. That's what set B5 apart for me, at the time.
I don't like audio books (I can read faster than the narrator can speak), but love audio dramas. That said an audio drama is either something I'll headphone while doing an exercise walk (keeping pace doesn't require brainpower), while doing a long drive, or if I'm committing to sitting and listening to the silly thing (so getting home from walk or drive during the climax and wanting to know how it ends). I certainly wouldn't listen to an audio drama while working, or doing a creative project.
For me audio drama is also easier to track than an audio book as there are sound effects and music adding to the storytelling. I don't need a narrator saying (example), "the Dalek beams converged, blasting the door open in an explosion which shuddered the night," because there will be a hug my recognizable sound effect of the weapon and a loud boom.
Yes, yes, I said "Dalek." Big Finish. Gotta lot Doctor Who audio plays. Would you prefer "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," "Blake's 7," "Star Wars," or other radio dramas I own? Same point. Sound effects and character lines are more effective shorthand than a narrator describing everything!
But, as a youngster my parents bought me varied records of audio plays staged for kids so I guess I was "programmed" young to enjoy the art form. To each their own.
One would have to check the iOS store. A quick Google search finds "OTR Streamer," which streams 20k episodes of Golden Age Radio. So, yeah! You're set! Enjoy!
Great overview. My favorite thing about stories being serialized is what comics have done with retconning (overwriting a character’s backstory)—so much time passes that social trends and cultural zeitgeists shifts and so the writers have to keep up and start rewriting. Wrote an article about this a while back, on Magneto’s Jewish origins and how his backstory in X-Men kept changing because of shifting Holocaust discourse in the US. This is a really nice primer that you’ve written up and if I were still teaching comics and film, I’d 100% use it. Thanks for taking the time!
That continual reinvention of origin stories to be thematically or historically relevant, as the decades drift by, is indeed fascinating. Much like how Iron Man was updated for the films to be in Afghanistan.
It's such an interesting format! I'm almost finished with my book on story beats for ongoing serials, and one thing I decided to do was to define it as its own format, meaning, a "serial story" as opposed to "a story that is being serialized" (b/c any story can be serialized). I think this is a crucial step in allowing the form to spread out beyond genre fiction into styles such as historical fiction and literary fiction. There are ways to build a serial so that even "filler" material is a crucial part of the storytelling, but it really has to be done on purpose. Authors aren't being taught those techniques in any direct way (yet), which is why we crib from TV/manga/anime or long running novel series. It's such a wonderful format, though, I love it both as a reader and writer!!!!
Really interesting observations! It definitely feels like an untapped discipline, especially as it remains so genre-heavy. That genre emphasis is inevitable for a few reasons, I think: scifi and fantasy fandom has always been big online; genre stories lend themselves more easily to cliffhangers; it's not too much of a stretch to apply the pacing and logic of scifi TV to a written serial, and so on.
There's definitely potential for historical and literary fiction writers to explore the form. Hopefully that'll happen - Substack's slightly order demographic I thought might encourage that, compared to the younger readerships on the likes of Wattpad.
Jun 26, 2023·edited Jun 26, 2023Liked by Simon K Jones
Excellent overview. I found it interesting that you spent most of your time on TV and movies as I usually view my serials and novels as movies or television shows in my head while I write them. I have tried a few types of serials on my Substack.
I wrote my second novella on Substack as a serial. It didn't get many readers. You needed to have read the first book and I didn't have many followers at the time, but the ones who read it gave me lots of helpful comments and caught typos. They were sort of beta readers. I then self-published it as a book.
I have written 31 episodes a long-form open-ended continuous serial on Substack. It is a serial sci-fi sitcom, so it had three or four part "planet" arcs. But I was trying to do too much and had to put it on hiatus. Since it is open-ended, I can always return to it. Like starting another TV show season. I hope to return to it sometime.
I also have done some stand-alone short three to six part serials that have been popular. I put them in my weekly humor/fiction newsletter with two other humor or microfiction stories, so the newsletter wasn't just a serial part. Those who wanted to skip the serial still got something to read.
I plan to write book three of Baron Britpop Blastfurnace series on Substack just like I did book two. I don't expect a lot of readers, but the first two books are on my Substack for those who want to catch up.
I enjoy writing serials. It can be a challenge to get people to read them, though. I have been burned by reading abandoned serials many times, so I am hesitant to start them unless I know the writer. And Substack was not really designed for serial fiction, like WattPad or Royal Road. So the reading experience is not as good. But I tried Royal Road and get far more engagement on Substack. This is my writing home now.
This was a great piece and touches on a lot of things I have been thinking about. In American superhero comics, there is a constant struggle between telling a long-form story and trying to goose sales by restarting at issue 1. You have a title like Detective Comics, which is nearing issue 1100. For a new reader, it's hard to know what to make of that.
Marvel likes to restart their titles with number 1 when a new creative team starts, but then also tries to get new readers on board during the middle of an ongoing story arc, often times putting "New Arc! Great jumping on point!" on the cover or solicit copy. Also issue sales decrease from issue 1 onward, and it can be hard to find copies of the latest issue of titles on the shelf because very few walk-in customers are going to buy a copy of Captain Marvel 47.
Manga publishers don't seem to care about jumping on points. The chapters are released in monthly or weekly magazines and then collected in volumes. If you like the series that's 20, 30, 50 volumes deep, I guess you just plow your way through the whole thing. Everyone raves about One Piece, but the manga is currently at volume 105. It's intimidating to start.
I am deeply intimidated by One Piece and the other long running manga, never committing to that. Comic books already release trades where they collect issues into volumes. Maybe they just need to highlight those better? Following the trades is a bit more like following a book series.
The superhero comics have a bit too much range I feel. You've got standalone runs, series with decades long callbacks, series with regular crossovers with others, series where each issue stands alone, and no way to tell from the cover which is which. A volume of Captain America with a number one on it has far more ambiguity to it than the first volume of Naruto.
Manga is arguably simpler because you know you can pick up volume 1 of whatever title and just keep reading. And the publishers keep all the volumes in print.
The problem with comic trades as you note is that the numbering is meaningless, and that the books are not kept in print or released consistently in certain formats (sometimes a paperback trade is released then a hardcover later, or vice versa). Even the Marvel "Complete Collections" have multiple volumes published over several years.
This has really become apparent with the success of the Marvel movies, because there's still no easy on ramp to the comics. Despite the immense success of the movies, translating that into comics success feels elusive still. It's just too much of a mire.
Whereas the success of an anime like Attack on Titan I imagine leads directly to book sales. It seems like a much healthier setup.
Yes agreed. Marvel tries to line up related comics with the movie launches, but the pandemic mucked it all up when everything got pushed back a year. You had Kieron Gillen's Eternals launching in January 2021 nearly a year before the movie. But it's also never the same story, so it's much harder than picking up the AoT manga after watching the show. I think they make so much more money on the movies than the entirety of the comics division, that they don't focus on the synergy so much. The comics serve as the idea lab, really. The Children of Thanos characters in the Avengers movies were taken directly from Jonathan Hickman's Avengers/New Avengers run in the early 2010's, for example.
Also, my daughter is a walking encyclopedia of manga and anime and Webtoons serials if you ever want to interview anyone on this topic. Some of them are insanely long and so wild. She reads ones with 1,000+ episodes and they are made by teams.
Recently read one of her selections that was about a man who owned a rubber factory and destroyed his life by using it to make a zillion Donald Trump masks instead of flip flops.
I find the manga plots so novel compared to western popular fiction.
Lol what are you most interested in? I can ask her some questions if you send them. She’s very knowledgeable.
I always tell folks to start with the 30 episode Chinese Three Body series on YouTube by Tencent. You have to pay to watch it, but it’s only like 4 or 5 dollars for the whole thing, but I think you in particular will like it because it deals very much with the environment/climate, utopia, technology, human nature, and historical cycles.
Whew. You covered a lot! Super interesting. I really liked Jack London books and also read bios on him. His early stories were serials in, I think, Saturday Evening Post, which helped him stay alive as a writer and thrive. Loved that. Think it really kicked off his career. Thanks for the deep dive, Simon.
There are so many good examples when you start poking at it, yet history has papered over that a lot of the great authors that got their start - or did most of their original work - in serial form. They're simply known as novelists now.
It was great how you compared serials with novels and tele-novelas (as called in Mexico)-or soaps in US. So interesting. In one of London's biographies, the author stated that he was like John Lennon or super rock star status. Super famous. Think The Call of the Wild pushed him over the top. Loved this post.
Great rundown of long and short storytelling across genres, forms and eras! I used to be a short story writer because I loved wrapping everything up in a short narrative - the challenge of it was exciting. And then I tried novels. And now I'm writing a ten-novel series, of which I've already written 3 1/2 of them. But I really like serials, too, because they are a little more fun and fancy-free. Having written multiple serials now, including the latest 34-episode one and another ten years ago that was 138 episodes, I can't say I wouldn't do it again. But I need a new challenge.
All that said, the issue with serials still, I think, is as you noted -- getting readers in and keeping them going. And other than my website, which I've just started populating with the first few episodes of my 34-story serial, I haven't notice another website out there that does a great job of hosting and presentation. Wattpad sorta does, but again, I don't think it's as good as a website of your own. And Substack makes it impossible to use Sections for serials because Sections are just lists. Unfortunate.
I do like the 8-episode movie though, but only if I can binge it and knock it out all in a weekend. If anything, I hate coming back next week to try and remember what happened. That's no fun. Give the story at pace, and let me bask in it. That's what I want the serialized story to feel like.
Yeah, I've not found a website that does it especially well. Substack is messy for serialised work. Wattpad is built a lot more for that kind of stuff, but last time I checked was also quite creaky and old fashioned. I resorted to making my own index here, which does seem to have helped in helping people climb aboard.
I did the same on Medium for my noir serial, but I'm reposting it on my website, and I love the gallery view. This is what we need in Substack sections: https://www.sjstoneauthor.com/blog
Serial storytelling is my favorite type of storytelling, so this was super interesting to me!
One interesting example from the world of books is Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (which I recently started reading), which contains 41 novels. Inside the Discworld series are several sub-series, like the Rincewind series (which consists of 8 novels) and the Death series (which consists of 5 novels). Pratchett juggled multiple sub-series at a time. For example, the first two Discworld novels were Rincewind #1 & #2, the third one was Witches #1, and the fourth one was Death #1. These sub-series also had some crossover. So, this whole thing worked kind of like the MCU film series.
I need to read some Discworld. I bounced off them as a teenager (I was in my silly "I don't read fantasy, only science fiction" phase) and have only read Mort (which I loved). I hadn't quite realised there were that many of them, though! What an amazing creative output from one person.
This was a fascinating blend of history and classification regarding types of serialized storytelling. It put all the different types of serialization into clear definitions and also delved into their strengths and weaknesses. It would be interesting to see your thoughts on which of these types of serialization Substack might lend itself to.
What a brilliant piece! I've felt drawn to serialising my work for a long time. Before I even knew it might be possible. I find the whole area fascinating and hope we can return to some form of this method in the mainstream for fiction writers and readers. Also, just to add to your extensive knowledge, check out romance writing on Radish fiction. It allows writers (like me, Penny Best) to serialise our romance titles and publish them. It is a super successful modern version of serialising stories (with progression of character and plot) every week. Thanks for this Simon K Jones.
A solid overview of serial storytelling (in western media)! I love the Star Wars model in particular because it feels very well-thought-out with tons of character development.
Filler episodes & long monologues are inserted into anime due to timing weirdness. Basically, they happen when the anime has all but caught up to the manga in terms of story & has to 'wait' for new content from the manga (which is being serialized simultaneously). This is why I'm wary of super-long anime like Naruto because they almost always contain a lot of filler. Shorter works that are produced after the manga is finished don't have that problem & tend to feel a lot tighter with a more satisfying ending.
Oh, wow! I had *no idea* that was part of the reason for those extended monologues. Fascinating. I love that a practical production quirk of timing has led to a specific style of dialogue and exposition. Weird and cool.
As you note, this post is very much from a western POV. That's something that I've only recently acknowledged - my understanding of storytelling is very specific to the US and UK. Definitely want to put more effort into reading outside of that zone.
There is much to discover! Something that struck me too as I was reading your piece is that Asian TV seems much more comfortable with long drama series (20-50 episodes). I'm not sure why that is but they're still quite dense in plot & character. Some of the longer fantasy series really feel like sprawling epics.
Of course, we also have all sorts of Chinese web novels that seem to go on forever which might or might not be an influence.
One other interesting thing about anime adaptations of Manga "padding" - and DragonBall Z has an entire season of it waiting for the Manga to have a year's worth of stories to adapt - is it can often become fan favorite material.
Sticking with DBZ, there was a re-release of the show which basically was only the episodes adapting the Manga with everything else removed. Which reduces the series from over 300 episodes to under 150... This was obviously quite controversial. Some viewers preferred the more focused version of the show, others preferred the additional character or comedy episodes.
And yes, DBZ is a franchise that can take weeks to finish one fight. I remember an episode that is literally Goku and Freiza shouting variations of 'I'm SO about to kick your ass!' for 22 minutes.
Of course another reason Anime does so many long panning shots with VO monologs is to save money. Animate a character standing still with their hair being blown in the breeze on a two second loop, then do a tight crop, filling the screen with part of a face with a horizontal pan as that character pontificates on why they hate violence for 45 seconds and you've removed a background painting, and 42 seconds of animation from the budget to use when that character inevitably springs into action for the part of the episode that actually looks good. 😉 I tease with affection, but it's still true a lot of the stylistic choices came from reducing animation cost and leaning into the fact many anime do adapt Manga, which are... Still panels.
Yeah, it's very evident that Naruto saves a ton of its budget for the big fight scenes and goes absolutely minimal elsewhere. Even if it's for practical reasons, though, the end result is highly effective. Love the way practicality can give birth to an entire style that other creators can then choose to use, even when no longer restricted by the same concerns.
Yes and they seem to be miniseries too right? It might be 20-50 episodes but there will be an ending. I find that so refreshing compared to series that last eight seasons and then no one knows how to end it because they’ve been so focused on keeping it dramatic and cliffhangery without ever knowing where the story is going.
One thing that struck me about reading Legend of the Condor Heroes last year was how it felt like every anime I'd ever seen. Of course, it was written decades before anyone ever uttered the word anime. But you can see the DNA of everything from Dragonball Z to Pokemon in its structure and approach to storytelling.
One thing that especially struck me is how consistently hilarious it is and how willing it was to digress down strange subplot for so long that they sort of just became the actual plot. Even the idea of filler anime episodes feel like they fit right inside here, with the main difference being that Jin Yong's filler is delicious gourmet filler.
I've really noticed this watching Naruto with my son. It'll go off on a tangent for 10-20 episodes quite happily. There's no worry about losing viewers/readers. Going by western traditions, about 70% of the episodes could be removed and the main plot would remain intact. It wouldn't be the same, though, of course.
I suspect this is why Hollywood is doomed to never adapt any of them into live action, no matter how much they keep saying they're going to.
Honestly, even the idea of a live adaptation of cartoons seems to me to come from a place of misunderstanding the medium.
How old is your son? I'm always curious what age seems right to introduce various kinds of shows
Oh, and my son is 10. Naruto has all kinds of problematic sexual inappropriateness (primarily relating to Jiraiya), but otherwise is fine. And the icky Jiraiya stuff is an opportunity to talk about depiction of women in fiction, and how that's changed over the years etc.
Agreed. I think it's also quite a western thing to apply a hierarchy of importance to different mediums. Live action is clearly regarded as a 'higher' form of visual art than animation by a lot of people/Hollywood execs, with the assumption being that live action is somehow an improvement or privilege (see: all the pointless Disney remakes). That doesn't seem to be the case in Japan, with animation more respected generally.
Some games reporter (I forgot who) once remarked that in JRPGs, even the subplots & minor missions feel significant. They put as much care into side characters as they do into main characters & their development even when the former get less screen time.
I think this has something to do with Eastern philosophy. There is much less of an emphasis on cause & effect. Plot can digress as long as it provides something new & surprising. You see this trend in narrative structure too, & that has been around for a long time.
*Raises hand* Video games too have been experimenting with serialized story telling as well. Warning, this comment is long.
There's the very literal case with the brief boom of Telltale games, where the games were released episodically. They boasted that choices made in each episode would carry over to the rest of the 'season.' Never played any of them as they released however. A common critique is that they don't feel gamey enough to some, often citing how player choices change little about the plot.
I've only played Tales from the Borderlands, but my stance on the choices there is that while they don't really change the plot, they do change the relationships between characters and what they mean. For example one of the final choices is simply setting if you think one of its player characters has romantic feelings for another, and how the other player character feels about it. I found myself actively engaging and roleplaying a little with choices.
The other main source of serialization in gaming (discounting sequels) is MMOs and free to play games. World of Warcraft is still an ongoing story, though one that's hit a lot of fatigue. There's also 'gacha games,' free to play games where you get characters by spending resources on what's effectively a digital version of those 'insert the coin and get a random capsule' machine.
Part of how they keep people in is with a serialized story, not just updates to the 'main story' but limited time events with their own narrative. I played one game where the main story veered away from everything interesting about it, but the stories you got for acquiring each character and in the limited time events were solid. And now the game has been shut down so the narrative only survives via youtube and wiki transcripts.
What I hear is that gacha games didn't bother much with narrative as part of the appeal, then Fate Grand Order brought in the writer of the visual novel the game was based on for a story chapter, and the results prompted a shift to focus more on story as an appeal for the genre. So now we get things like the Pokemon gacha game continuing the narratives of the mainline games and having some of the franchise's best written rivals.
Every game with regular updates tends to have some form of narrative with it even if it's not highlighted and few look for it. Brawlhalla will often have new characters with profiles that link them to characters already on the roster. For example Roland's profile is about his romance with a valkyrie and his attempts to see her again, then a character was added later who is the daughter of that same valkyrie and whose father is only described as a human. They don't outright say Roland is her father, but Roland is clearly her father, the dots are right there.
Oh and talking about the big reset button, there actually is a case of it getting pressed in a MOBA. League of Legends at one point completely cleared away its lore and started over with a fresh slate, but as a game as service kept running. It wasn't a League of Legends 2 or remake, it was the same game, with completely rewritten narrative.
Only after the big reset did they start to actively use narrative to draw people to League of Legends with series like Arcane and various single player spin-off games. But people who enjoyed following the story from the start with character profiles and the like naturally felt betrayed by the complete replacement of what they had been following.
Then you also get downloadable content (DLC) as a form of serialization for console games, where one of the common terms is a season pass for a group of DLC. Unlike MMOs and free to play games these aren't trying to be infinite, and usually focus on building up on the base game. And I'd include expansion packs here as well.
For Soulcalibur VI something I liked was that its second 'season' of new characters actually did feel a bit like a season of a show. The story you got with each new playable character was standalone, but also built up on each other to tell a wider narrative setting up a new group of villains I fully expect to see in the next Soulcalibur in some form.
Also for manga/anime and serialization you might be interested in looking into Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. It's a long running manga divided into distinct parts with their own complete narrative, so while you'd miss some call backs you could start with any part. Many for example start with the third part, which I'm told basically codified the 'enemy of the week' type serial for manga.
Another bit of good serial-ish video game storytelling is Apex Legends. Similar games don't seem to put time into developing a story (probably too much fun to just shoot other players in a battle royale) but Apex went full throttle and introduced their characters with interweaving backstories to explain who gets along, why, who they hate, and how they're going to get revenge. Every time a new character gets released, Apex reveals a video about their lore and how they fit in with the rest of the world. It's certainly gotten more complicated over the past couple years, but it works wonders for keeping people interested in the game.
Apex spun out of Titanfall, which had a great setting. Titanfall 2's story is superb.
My wife plays Guild Wars 1 and 2 and she's always excited when they release another "season" of story.
Table-top RPGs can be looked at as a form of interactive, improvised serial storytelling... Unless you just use modules I guess. I have a longer comment, but it must wait. Time to head to the store for shopping.
Ah yeah, I didn't even get to oral storytelling and tabletop.
Whoof, stories are cool, aren't they?
True that! There are reasons we've had them for millenia on end.
And they said it was just a fad.
Longer comment.
Simon's already seen me discuss this many times over the years. I've done contract work for a TTRPG micropublisher for decades ("Micropublishers" only sell a hundred copies of a design if they're lucky, because the designer sucks at marketing and won't take advice), but the best innovation the designers ever had was a series of tarot card tables (with inversions) to generate both mission ideas AND basically run the structure of the entire game. Everything is still narrative based - cards aren't "fight 10 skeletons" but would indicate a "level 2 Campaign Event (something changing the structure of the game world outside the current mission)" with examples. A "level 2 Campaign Event" will have examples (i.e. Local ruler/ruler's wife is pregnant) but still has to be interpreted by the players. By allowing the deck to generate action one can play solo without knowing everything that's going to happen, or the Ref/GM/DM can run a PC, because, again, the Ref doesn't know everything that's going to happen. Heck, a card might change what happened in the LAST scene!
The tables aren't simple linear "card=event." It's more complex than that. For mission generation yeah, it's "card=suggestion for one of the eight categories flipped to generate the mission," but there's 1) 154 possible meanings per flip depending on the table (Wheel of Fortune is always "reshuffle"). 2) often multiple suggestions per card, 3) cross referenced to avoid "stupid" combinations, and 4) players are encouraged to use the tables as a guide not "law."
Quick, and true example from a game. It's "Phase A" (think "Act I" of a play, or a part of the game dedicated to research and preparation rather than travel and exploration or fighting and looting) and we're outfitting a ship to sail across the ocean. Tony is attempting to procure sailcloth. A "critical error" is flipped and the Ref says, "Well... Card says you failed. Tony, how did you screw this up?"
Tony thinks and says, "I come back with a slave."
All are confused and the Ref asks for Tony to clarify. Tony puts on a terrible accent and says, "You-a tell me to come back wit' 'sals.' Dis is-a Sal."
All laugh. Sal is freed and becomes a member of the crew and a valued NPC. We have a good time.
Always a good time to interpret the deck to tell a good game story. Also avoids GMs showing favoritism (or accusations of such), because we all knew that's a "you fail" card. Tony made it funny and memorable, because I'm still telling that tale a decade later.
Really interesting examples! I love games and I'm also surprised I didn't mention any in the article. I think it might be because I've not seen many new *forms* of serialisation in terms of the storytelling. The Telltale stuff (which I loved) was more about a release strategy rather than a new form of storytelling, as it was essentially replicating television structure.
MMOs is a curious example that I hadn't thought of, though. I wonder if they almost start straying into soap opera territory, with the general world carrying on, a regular cast of characters and occasional new arrivals. Swap Azeroth for Coronation Street and Ironforge for the Rover's Return, perhaps? :D
DLC, though, is an interesting one. Specifically when it folds into the existing game. I recently played Citizen Sleeper (highly recommended) and its DLC merges seamlessly into the main game, such that you almost wouldn't notice that it wasn't there in the first place. That's an interesting form of serialisation, where you're modifying the original text in a way.
In fact, open world games are something I probably should have covered. Main quests and sub quests are a form of serial storytelling, perhaps, with the open world being the means by which a player encounters those stories. That's perhaps where games have contributed an entirely new form of serial: episodic, but with pacing and order influenced by player decisions.
This was a terrific wrap-up. It's interesting to see also these different varieties summarized in one place. Being a writer and reader of fantasy, I'm definitely used to multi-book series. I wonder if most readers of this genre prefer three books or if they prefer four or more?
I tend to think there's enough types of reader to suit most models, as long as you can find them. Same goes for those of us trying serialisation here in Substack - we just need to find the right readers!
Well put!
“Infinite soap 🧼” could be the long awaited sequel mashup to Fight Club and Infinite Jest! Or just a great band name. Haha love this heading.
I think literary fiction doesn’t do series often because each one takes so long to write and are likely more from the mind of someone struck by inspiration vs calculated plotting, which I think serials demand calculated plotting.
Though, I remember reading Shonda Rhime’s book The Year of Yes where she discusses writing Greys Anatomy and Scandal at the same time in real time weekly all by herself. 😳 And she said she just thought of it as laying track for a train and didn’t she didn’t do advance plotting or outlining, but rather just let her characters do whatever.
That's probably it - plot really isn't important to a lot of literary fiction, and plot is the main reason to continue a series or serial. Whereas exploring a specific character can be done in a single novel.
As someone once said, historical fiction is about things that have happened, science fiction is about things that might happen, fantasy is about things that couldn't happen, and literary fiction is about nothing happening. :P
Hahaha ok that’s brilliant. Nothing happening. Haha low key true in many cases. That’s why sometimes I prefer classics or older books because they are literary and poetic but still have plots.
I read Rhimes’ book as well and still find it fascinating but use a drop of it if I’m planning a serial because sometimes a story is served with a bit less planning and a bit more moving through where it should go next.
Yes! And yeah, I also still think of that book on the regular though I read it years ago. It’s a good one for all creative people!
There are quite a few literary series, and definitely plotted, otherwise they wouldn't be so coherent and part of the literary canon.
Which ones are your favorites?
A Dance to the Music of Time, The Alexandria Quartet, and Proust, my personal top three.
Peerless, each in their own way.
Thank you! Putting these on my radar for later.
Good discussion, although I'm a bit surprised you didn't get to comic books earlier in the article - which I was waiting for because of historical placement... Obviously the rise of serialized comic book occurs between the rise of the novel and the dawn of motion picture serials and the TV soap opera.
Motion picture serials can, I'll argue, be treated as the forerunner of the "8 hour movie TV season." Serials were 10-12 minute shorts which might extend to 10-12 parts... Eventually forming a two hour story with strange pacing.
You did neglect to mention the old time radio serial. Was that something which slipped under your radar, or was that something that just didn't happen in the UK?
There's an Android App called "Old Time Radio Player (new UI)" which archives tens of thousands of old radio programs from stand alone light entertainment through serialized drama like "The Shadow" (starring a young Orson Wells) or "Superman" (The radio serials really redefined the character from his comic roots into what we're more familiar with. Flying, heat vision, and Kryptonite are three examples of lore added by the radio show).
Your not mentioning radio serials is a bit amusing as radio drama is basically a dead form in the US, while still alive in the UK... And I've spent enough money on Big Finish to prove that point!
There's a larger point branching from a response to Caz (sorry, not remembering surname, and if I back out to check I lose this comment) elsewhere in the discussion. There I mentioned Hill Street Blues sketched out light 1/2 season "arc/growth" material seeded into "stories of the week," and noted an entire "Twin Peaks" subplot came from catching a crew member in a mirror, not catching it till editing, and being unable to remove him in the 80's. And that point is! (cliffhanger)
The 1970's and 80's started seeing a bridge between the purely episodic episodes of ongoing shows in 50's to early 1970's and the "pure arc" storytelling which emerged in the 2000's. For lack of a better term I'll call this "episodic, with consequences." In general the weekly stories remained self-contained, yet the episode didn't reset button everything at the end of the episode. Character growth and change was seeded in. At least in the US model this tended to be planned out every half season (every three months for a US soap opera). Still, this tended to relegated to "B" or "C" plot status. The "A" plot would still be a situation of the week. Sure, there were exceptions, but those shows - like "Dallas" or "Dynasty" (UK and US) - tended to be classed as "primetime soap operas."
Of course *I'm* going to bring Babylon 5 into the discussion too. Here's where we note it's unique (and basically still is) in, while other shows would occasionally have callbacks, this was the writer of the episode looking back at what had gone before to expand upon those events while Babylon 5 was the first (and I believe still ONLY) show to plan out a full 5-year arc from beginning to end which was supervised directly by a single showrunner for the entire run. Foreshadowing was absolutely deliberate, and here's where things would be seeded in the pilot to pay off on season 3 or 5. B5 did NOT end up following its initial plans (published in a limited edition volume from "B5 books") - seasons 4 and 5 in particular diverge quite far from the original outline - but the changes were being made by the originator of the show and end up being pretty seamless. I suppose the largest changes came from the departure of Michael O' Hare at the end of S1 over mental health issues. The original finale of B5 would have *SPOILER FOR ALMOST 30 YEAR OLD SHOW* covered Sinclair's transformation into Valen and the end of the show would have been Valen teaching his young son how to fish.
Other "arc" shows tend to be planned season-by-season. Some weren't intended as "arc" shows. "The X-Files" is a "Monster of the week" show that doesn't become an "arc" show till season 3. "Lost..." J.J. Abrahms had a plan. Lindolf didn't follow it after Abrahms left. "Lost" started throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck until, after the show did an episode on how a character got his tats (answer: the actor had them) the production team BEGGED the network to set an end date of finite episodes in advance so they could try to resolve the mess. The "Battlestar Galactica" reboot started with a beginning ("We must find Earth") and ending ("We found Earth"), but the middle... Look the producers admit they picked the final 5 Cylons by putting up pictures of the cast on the wall, putting on a blindfold and throwing darts. This is NOT preplanned arc work here, but frantic "pulling out of [our] asses."
Of course even today it's rare to find an "arc" show with a multi season arc. If one does, BTS research typically finds the show was contracted from the start for a limited number of episodes. The last Voltron series, for example, was contracted for a maximum of 71 episodes so the producers could plan for that 5-seasons of 13-episodes (and despite releasing more than "5 seasons" with some being "6 or 7 episodes" the production blocks were scheduled as 5 seasons of 13.
If you want the ultimate in "pulling it from [our] asses" media, I point to "South Park," which, for most of its run has had the legendary task of starting the episode on Thursday for the following Wednesday. At the beginning of a season the writers would come up with a few "kids being kids" plots to use if needed, but most episodes would be "what pissed off Trey and Matt this week?" Was it season 19 that did the full serial plot? Either way, fans didn't like that season, and Trey and Matt planned it expecting certain real world events going one way which went another way which messed up their planned ending and the whole thing fell apart in the last two episodes. South Park will never do that type of arc again. The guys work best in episodic.
Yeah, the historical order here is fairly loose! :D It was more about flowing between or contrasting the approaches, rather than going strictly chronological.
Radio serials are not something I've any experience of, really. I find it VERY difficult to listen to audio dramas, or even audiobooks. My brain can't decide whether to focus on the story or what's in front of me at the time, and can't do both. I'm fine with podcasts, as they're more like standard radio that you can dip in and out of slightly. Dip out of fiction and you'll be rapidly lost!
Very interesting about radio's impact on Superman, though. I didn't know that.
As you note, I think there's a difference between a later episode retroactively referencing something that came earlier (eg bringing back a popular guest character/villain), and deliberately planting seeds that you know will pay off in a specific way. That's what set B5 apart for me, at the time.
Huh.
I don't like audio books (I can read faster than the narrator can speak), but love audio dramas. That said an audio drama is either something I'll headphone while doing an exercise walk (keeping pace doesn't require brainpower), while doing a long drive, or if I'm committing to sitting and listening to the silly thing (so getting home from walk or drive during the climax and wanting to know how it ends). I certainly wouldn't listen to an audio drama while working, or doing a creative project.
For me audio drama is also easier to track than an audio book as there are sound effects and music adding to the storytelling. I don't need a narrator saying (example), "the Dalek beams converged, blasting the door open in an explosion which shuddered the night," because there will be a hug my recognizable sound effect of the weapon and a loud boom.
Yes, yes, I said "Dalek." Big Finish. Gotta lot Doctor Who audio plays. Would you prefer "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," "Blake's 7," "Star Wars," or other radio dramas I own? Same point. Sound effects and character lines are more effective shorthand than a narrator describing everything!
But, as a youngster my parents bought me varied records of audio plays staged for kids so I guess I was "programmed" young to enjoy the art form. To each their own.
I hope there's an IoS version of that radio play app, sounds interesting.
One would have to check the iOS store. A quick Google search finds "OTR Streamer," which streams 20k episodes of Golden Age Radio. So, yeah! You're set! Enjoy!
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/otr-streamer/id353471785
Great overview. My favorite thing about stories being serialized is what comics have done with retconning (overwriting a character’s backstory)—so much time passes that social trends and cultural zeitgeists shifts and so the writers have to keep up and start rewriting. Wrote an article about this a while back, on Magneto’s Jewish origins and how his backstory in X-Men kept changing because of shifting Holocaust discourse in the US. This is a really nice primer that you’ve written up and if I were still teaching comics and film, I’d 100% use it. Thanks for taking the time!
That continual reinvention of origin stories to be thematically or historically relevant, as the decades drift by, is indeed fascinating. Much like how Iron Man was updated for the films to be in Afghanistan.
It's such an interesting format! I'm almost finished with my book on story beats for ongoing serials, and one thing I decided to do was to define it as its own format, meaning, a "serial story" as opposed to "a story that is being serialized" (b/c any story can be serialized). I think this is a crucial step in allowing the form to spread out beyond genre fiction into styles such as historical fiction and literary fiction. There are ways to build a serial so that even "filler" material is a crucial part of the storytelling, but it really has to be done on purpose. Authors aren't being taught those techniques in any direct way (yet), which is why we crib from TV/manga/anime or long running novel series. It's such a wonderful format, though, I love it both as a reader and writer!!!!
Really interesting observations! It definitely feels like an untapped discipline, especially as it remains so genre-heavy. That genre emphasis is inevitable for a few reasons, I think: scifi and fantasy fandom has always been big online; genre stories lend themselves more easily to cliffhangers; it's not too much of a stretch to apply the pacing and logic of scifi TV to a written serial, and so on.
There's definitely potential for historical and literary fiction writers to explore the form. Hopefully that'll happen - Substack's slightly order demographic I thought might encourage that, compared to the younger readerships on the likes of Wattpad.
Excellent overview. I found it interesting that you spent most of your time on TV and movies as I usually view my serials and novels as movies or television shows in my head while I write them. I have tried a few types of serials on my Substack.
I wrote my second novella on Substack as a serial. It didn't get many readers. You needed to have read the first book and I didn't have many followers at the time, but the ones who read it gave me lots of helpful comments and caught typos. They were sort of beta readers. I then self-published it as a book.
I have written 31 episodes a long-form open-ended continuous serial on Substack. It is a serial sci-fi sitcom, so it had three or four part "planet" arcs. But I was trying to do too much and had to put it on hiatus. Since it is open-ended, I can always return to it. Like starting another TV show season. I hope to return to it sometime.
I also have done some stand-alone short three to six part serials that have been popular. I put them in my weekly humor/fiction newsletter with two other humor or microfiction stories, so the newsletter wasn't just a serial part. Those who wanted to skip the serial still got something to read.
I plan to write book three of Baron Britpop Blastfurnace series on Substack just like I did book two. I don't expect a lot of readers, but the first two books are on my Substack for those who want to catch up.
I enjoy writing serials. It can be a challenge to get people to read them, though. I have been burned by reading abandoned serials many times, so I am hesitant to start them unless I know the writer. And Substack was not really designed for serial fiction, like WattPad or Royal Road. So the reading experience is not as good. But I tried Royal Road and get far more engagement on Substack. This is my writing home now.
Really interesting! I’ve been struggling with knowing how long to keep my serial novel but it seems that there’s no one-size-fits all answer!
This was a great piece and touches on a lot of things I have been thinking about. In American superhero comics, there is a constant struggle between telling a long-form story and trying to goose sales by restarting at issue 1. You have a title like Detective Comics, which is nearing issue 1100. For a new reader, it's hard to know what to make of that.
Marvel likes to restart their titles with number 1 when a new creative team starts, but then also tries to get new readers on board during the middle of an ongoing story arc, often times putting "New Arc! Great jumping on point!" on the cover or solicit copy. Also issue sales decrease from issue 1 onward, and it can be hard to find copies of the latest issue of titles on the shelf because very few walk-in customers are going to buy a copy of Captain Marvel 47.
Manga publishers don't seem to care about jumping on points. The chapters are released in monthly or weekly magazines and then collected in volumes. If you like the series that's 20, 30, 50 volumes deep, I guess you just plow your way through the whole thing. Everyone raves about One Piece, but the manga is currently at volume 105. It's intimidating to start.
I am deeply intimidated by One Piece and the other long running manga, never committing to that. Comic books already release trades where they collect issues into volumes. Maybe they just need to highlight those better? Following the trades is a bit more like following a book series.
The superhero comics have a bit too much range I feel. You've got standalone runs, series with decades long callbacks, series with regular crossovers with others, series where each issue stands alone, and no way to tell from the cover which is which. A volume of Captain America with a number one on it has far more ambiguity to it than the first volume of Naruto.
Manga is arguably simpler because you know you can pick up volume 1 of whatever title and just keep reading. And the publishers keep all the volumes in print.
The problem with comic trades as you note is that the numbering is meaningless, and that the books are not kept in print or released consistently in certain formats (sometimes a paperback trade is released then a hardcover later, or vice versa). Even the Marvel "Complete Collections" have multiple volumes published over several years.
This has really become apparent with the success of the Marvel movies, because there's still no easy on ramp to the comics. Despite the immense success of the movies, translating that into comics success feels elusive still. It's just too much of a mire.
Whereas the success of an anime like Attack on Titan I imagine leads directly to book sales. It seems like a much healthier setup.
Yes agreed. Marvel tries to line up related comics with the movie launches, but the pandemic mucked it all up when everything got pushed back a year. You had Kieron Gillen's Eternals launching in January 2021 nearly a year before the movie. But it's also never the same story, so it's much harder than picking up the AoT manga after watching the show. I think they make so much more money on the movies than the entirety of the comics division, that they don't focus on the synergy so much. The comics serve as the idea lab, really. The Children of Thanos characters in the Avengers movies were taken directly from Jonathan Hickman's Avengers/New Avengers run in the early 2010's, for example.
Also, my daughter is a walking encyclopedia of manga and anime and Webtoons serials if you ever want to interview anyone on this topic. Some of them are insanely long and so wild. She reads ones with 1,000+ episodes and they are made by teams.
Recently read one of her selections that was about a man who owned a rubber factory and destroyed his life by using it to make a zillion Donald Trump masks instead of flip flops.
I find the manga plots so novel compared to western popular fiction.
Whoa tell me more
Lol what are you most interested in? I can ask her some questions if you send them. She’s very knowledgeable.
I always tell folks to start with the 30 episode Chinese Three Body series on YouTube by Tencent. You have to pay to watch it, but it’s only like 4 or 5 dollars for the whole thing, but I think you in particular will like it because it deals very much with the environment/climate, utopia, technology, human nature, and historical cycles.
Ok looking it up right now. Thank you!!!!
Whew. You covered a lot! Super interesting. I really liked Jack London books and also read bios on him. His early stories were serials in, I think, Saturday Evening Post, which helped him stay alive as a writer and thrive. Loved that. Think it really kicked off his career. Thanks for the deep dive, Simon.
There are so many good examples when you start poking at it, yet history has papered over that a lot of the great authors that got their start - or did most of their original work - in serial form. They're simply known as novelists now.
It was great how you compared serials with novels and tele-novelas (as called in Mexico)-or soaps in US. So interesting. In one of London's biographies, the author stated that he was like John Lennon or super rock star status. Super famous. Think The Call of the Wild pushed him over the top. Loved this post.
Great rundown of long and short storytelling across genres, forms and eras! I used to be a short story writer because I loved wrapping everything up in a short narrative - the challenge of it was exciting. And then I tried novels. And now I'm writing a ten-novel series, of which I've already written 3 1/2 of them. But I really like serials, too, because they are a little more fun and fancy-free. Having written multiple serials now, including the latest 34-episode one and another ten years ago that was 138 episodes, I can't say I wouldn't do it again. But I need a new challenge.
All that said, the issue with serials still, I think, is as you noted -- getting readers in and keeping them going. And other than my website, which I've just started populating with the first few episodes of my 34-story serial, I haven't notice another website out there that does a great job of hosting and presentation. Wattpad sorta does, but again, I don't think it's as good as a website of your own. And Substack makes it impossible to use Sections for serials because Sections are just lists. Unfortunate.
I do like the 8-episode movie though, but only if I can binge it and knock it out all in a weekend. If anything, I hate coming back next week to try and remember what happened. That's no fun. Give the story at pace, and let me bask in it. That's what I want the serialized story to feel like.
Yeah, I've not found a website that does it especially well. Substack is messy for serialised work. Wattpad is built a lot more for that kind of stuff, but last time I checked was also quite creaky and old fashioned. I resorted to making my own index here, which does seem to have helped in helping people climb aboard.
I did the same on Medium for my noir serial, but I'm reposting it on my website, and I love the gallery view. This is what we need in Substack sections: https://www.sjstoneauthor.com/blog
Serial storytelling is my favorite type of storytelling, so this was super interesting to me!
One interesting example from the world of books is Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (which I recently started reading), which contains 41 novels. Inside the Discworld series are several sub-series, like the Rincewind series (which consists of 8 novels) and the Death series (which consists of 5 novels). Pratchett juggled multiple sub-series at a time. For example, the first two Discworld novels were Rincewind #1 & #2, the third one was Witches #1, and the fourth one was Death #1. These sub-series also had some crossover. So, this whole thing worked kind of like the MCU film series.
I need to read some Discworld. I bounced off them as a teenager (I was in my silly "I don't read fantasy, only science fiction" phase) and have only read Mort (which I loved). I hadn't quite realised there were that many of them, though! What an amazing creative output from one person.
This was a fascinating blend of history and classification regarding types of serialized storytelling. It put all the different types of serialization into clear definitions and also delved into their strengths and weaknesses. It would be interesting to see your thoughts on which of these types of serialization Substack might lend itself to.
What a brilliant piece! I've felt drawn to serialising my work for a long time. Before I even knew it might be possible. I find the whole area fascinating and hope we can return to some form of this method in the mainstream for fiction writers and readers. Also, just to add to your extensive knowledge, check out romance writing on Radish fiction. It allows writers (like me, Penny Best) to serialise our romance titles and publish them. It is a super successful modern version of serialising stories (with progression of character and plot) every week. Thanks for this Simon K Jones.