Thanks for your tips and sharing your advice on this Simon. With each newsletter I'm feeling a little bit braver about starting a fiction Substack alongside my non-fiction. I think I just need to dive in, with no pressure and find my feet with it.
Thank you for this extremely helpful serial story advice! I shall now go home & tweak my index page, my chapter layout & some other little details in hopes of providing a better reader experience with Requiem of the Moth. Maybe even design a dinkus... (it is a fun word)
Thank you so much for this - I have been following your advice as I've been setting up my serial over the last few months. For me, I wanted to have my Substack as more of a "magazine" and then my fiction serial as a part of that magazine, so I made it be a section. I was torn about this, but I think it will make it cleaner as my Substack (hopefully) continues to grow. I'm not crazy about having the site banner on my emails and then the serial banner/chapter image below, but think that it will make more sense long-term.
The index section is VERY helpful now that I have 30+ chapters. I have my Index as a post, so I'm wondering how you can have it remain on the site main page they way you have it? Is that a specific custom section you made? How do you do it? Thanks so much for all of the insight.
If you look at the little menu associated with any of your posts, you can 'pin' a post to the top. This keeps a particular post at the top of the list, no matter how old it is.
Through trial and error, I've figured out how to make it work best on my Substack (my small 5-part foray into serial writing "The Intern"). I've got two more shorter serials in the works before I take on the 50-parter I'm planning. Thank you. You've been very helpful as I first dip a toe, then dive right in on serial fiction writing in Substack.
It would be really really great if Substack would remember which piece you were previously reading in a given substack, particularly for reading serials, but providing a list of links for every part/episode seems like the next best thing.
Agreed, being able to return to where you left off would be hugely useful. They've recently added the ability to remember how far down an article you'd read, so it feels like some of the tech is in place already.
For the navigation elements within a newsletter, I find custom '<< Prev | Contents | Next >>' links are a less intrusive and wrappable option compared to buttons.
Hi Simon, your serialisation guide helped me tremendously as I planned and launched my newsletter. I had a question: you mention creating an index page for the story. I am still new to Substack, still feeling my way around. Is this a page I can create, or is it another post that is sent out, then updated as I make my way through the story? Thanks!
You can actually do it either way these days. With Triverse, my index is actually a post, because that was the only way to do it back then (as I recall). I go back and edit it periodically to include the latest stories.
You can also create custom pages from within the settings, which don't get sent out and don't have things like a publish date attached.
If I was starting today, I'd probably still make it a post, and have that be a kind of 'intro' post for the start of the serial. My index I only created once I was already a year into serialising, when I realised that the whole thing had become very unwieldy for newcomers.
Thanks for your tips and sharing your advice on this Simon. With each newsletter I'm feeling a little bit braver about starting a fiction Substack alongside my non-fiction. I think I just need to dive in, with no pressure and find my feet with it.
The 'no pressure' bit is important!
Dinkus
Dinkus
Thank you for this extremely helpful serial story advice! I shall now go home & tweak my index page, my chapter layout & some other little details in hopes of providing a better reader experience with Requiem of the Moth. Maybe even design a dinkus... (it is a fun word)
DInkus!
Glad it was helpful. :)
Thank you so much for this - I have been following your advice as I've been setting up my serial over the last few months. For me, I wanted to have my Substack as more of a "magazine" and then my fiction serial as a part of that magazine, so I made it be a section. I was torn about this, but I think it will make it cleaner as my Substack (hopefully) continues to grow. I'm not crazy about having the site banner on my emails and then the serial banner/chapter image below, but think that it will make more sense long-term.
The index section is VERY helpful now that I have 30+ chapters. I have my Index as a post, so I'm wondering how you can have it remain on the site main page they way you have it? Is that a specific custom section you made? How do you do it? Thanks so much for all of the insight.
If you look at the little menu associated with any of your posts, you can 'pin' a post to the top. This keeps a particular post at the top of the list, no matter how old it is.
Through trial and error, I've figured out how to make it work best on my Substack (my small 5-part foray into serial writing "The Intern"). I've got two more shorter serials in the works before I take on the 50-parter I'm planning. Thank you. You've been very helpful as I first dip a toe, then dive right in on serial fiction writing in Substack.
This is very useful!
I'm not yet ready to go full-on sophisticated, but I have been inspired to create a "table of contents" page:
https://fictionalaether.substack.com/p/table-of-contents?r=cohn5
It would be really really great if Substack would remember which piece you were previously reading in a given substack, particularly for reading serials, but providing a list of links for every part/episode seems like the next best thing.
Agreed, being able to return to where you left off would be hugely useful. They've recently added the ability to remember how far down an article you'd read, so it feels like some of the tech is in place already.
The index is such a helpful reminder. Imma gonna call it a table of contents just to be different
Definitely! An index feels like it should be in alphabetical order, with lots of fiddly sub-entries like “Forest, see Trees”.
Uuuuuuugh FINE Simon, I'll make an index for my serials....
(but seriously, very smart stuff in here, thanks so much for this - I have a lot of updates to make)
I'll check your homework next week.
😬
Dinkus!
Dinkus!
So helpful! Thank you!
Thank you very kindly. I've been wanting to start serializing my work here for a while, and this is an excellent summary of some ways of doing it.
This was a very informative post. I will probably make use of your tips when I get around to starting a serial
For the navigation elements within a newsletter, I find custom '<< Prev | Contents | Next >>' links are a less intrusive and wrappable option compared to buttons.
Hi Simon, your serialisation guide helped me tremendously as I planned and launched my newsletter. I had a question: you mention creating an index page for the story. I am still new to Substack, still feeling my way around. Is this a page I can create, or is it another post that is sent out, then updated as I make my way through the story? Thanks!
You can actually do it either way these days. With Triverse, my index is actually a post, because that was the only way to do it back then (as I recall). I go back and edit it periodically to include the latest stories.
You can also create custom pages from within the settings, which don't get sent out and don't have things like a publish date attached.
If I was starting today, I'd probably still make it a post, and have that be a kind of 'intro' post for the start of the serial. My index I only created once I was already a year into serialising, when I realised that the whole thing had become very unwieldy for newcomers.
Thanks, Simon. This is helpful.
Many thanks for this, Simon. Really useful for something I have coming up.
I saw a tips post about writing serials before and it helped a lot.
This post just gave me some ideas for my new scifi serial :) so thanks for the well-timed post haha.