How to write serialised fiction
simonkjones.substack.com
How to write serialised fiction
Write more, write better
This is a 22 chapter rough guide, taking you from understanding the core form of serial storytelling, through plotting and themes, character creation, plot twists and much more, all the way through to hitting the ‘publish’ button. There’s even a chapter all about how to cope when people say nasty things about your writing.
And so, whether you are here to stay, or passing through on your way to parts unknown - welcome. I hope you find this guide useful. If you are writing your own serial, please let me know!
If you want to see what I’m doing with serial fiction, you can head over to my Tales from the Triverse weekly sci-fi/fantasy/crime story:
I'm working on a serial version of my novel, REPAIRING THE LEGACY. At the same time, I also have a serial running on Kindle Vella.
Your guide to serial writing/publishing has been very helpful to me. I'm an older writer who has been writing reviews and humor pieces for a long time, usually at a length of 12-1500 words. I'd accepted that that was my length, and that I wouldn't be writing longer fiction because it just wasn't my way. But using your serial approach, I'm just finishing my second historical novella (of a projected three interrelated ones) - the first with 13 parts and the second with 20 - each part in the range of 1500 words. So now I have two thirds of what will be, when novella three is finished, a novel-length work of fiction! Never thought it could happen for me.
And, though I have a vague idea of plot trajectory at the beginning, I haven't tacked each part down until I've sat down and written it. Which has been SUCH FUN. Your suggestions helped me become comfortable with that. I've surprised myself time after time with where individual parts have gone, and how my beginning idea of plot has changed as I've gone along. I look forward to sitting down every morning and finding out where things will be going just that day, and not worrying that I have to get to a predetermined point way out there somewhere, by way of a predetermined set of steps. I so often surprise myself with where things go. How exciting that is. (Of course, this doesn't mean that what I write is "good" in a cosmic sense, but I'm old enough now that I don't care so very much about that.)
And since I have half a dozen regular readers on Substack (maybe more, but that many who regularly comment - the Randy Readers, so named by one of them, appropriate considering some of the themes I've developed in the pieces), I'm having the time of my writing life - here at what is getting close to the end. Thanks for all you help with that.