72 Comments

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.

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The 'no pressure' bit is important!

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Dinkus

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Dinkus

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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)

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DInkus!

Glad it was helpful. :)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The index is such a helpful reminder. Imma gonna call it a table of contents just to be different

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Definitely! An index feels like it should be in alphabetical order, with lots of fiddly sub-entries like “Forest, see Trees”.

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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)

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I'll check your homework next week.

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😬

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Dinkus!

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Dinkus!

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So helpful! Thank you!

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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.

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this was really helpful, and actually quite inspiring - it's fun to engineer a desired reader experience by learning the ins and outs of each platform. at least it's fun to me - nerdy introvert, yes, guilty as charged. thanks a lot :)

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Dinkus. There, I said it.

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Welcome to the dinkus society. We meet every Wednesday at midnight. Don’t tell anyone.

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The tips for tweaking today: I really love that you use Episodes and Seasons. I think you’re right. In today’s mindset coming from TV it’s the closest and most familiar that we have to the serialized novel. And it puts the reader in *that* mindset, rather than one-off short stories & articles.

And I love that you use the custom buttons for Next Chapter. Because yes, the built in toggle is super subtle. And sometimes my Section has other ‘verse content than the chapters themselves. I usually do a link with a teaser blurb at the bottom of every chapter, but that custom button makes it look so slick, and is stand-out.

Umph. And I always forget about Duplicate Post. Durrrr… 🤦‍♀️

Thanks for re-sharing this one!

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Thank you so much. This was very helpful. I’ll be digesting all of this information and creating my index page before publishing my second episode this week.

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This is so helpful...thank you for your generous share. I’ve been noodling over the idea of doing a serial but the logistics hurt my brain a bit...so this is really valuable info!

And dinkus?!? Who knew it was more than just a scathing elementary school insult?!?! 😆

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