Planning your story's big finale

How to land the ending of your long-running serial project

The first chapter of Tales from the Triverse was posted on this newsletter on 24 September 2021. New chapters have gone out every week since then, and the book currently sits at just over 150,000 words.¹

Eighteen months in, I can see the end. It’s just peeking over the horizon, still a fair ways off but approaching with alarming rapidity. Which means I’m entering into a new phase: wrapping it all up. That process is what I’m talking about today.

If you haven’t read any of it yet, you can check out the collection of stories so far here:

The three phases of an online serial

I’ve been writing like this since 2015, publishing new chapters of a larger story each week. Those chapters are hot off the press, which means I’m constructing the novel in public, chapter-by-chapter. I’ve done three complete projects this way, with Triverse being my fourth.

Over the years I’ve noticed that there are (at least) three distinct structural phases of writing like this, which loosely correspond to rising and falling action in story arcs.

Phase 1: Discovery & rising action

Phase 2: Familiarity & the long middle

Phase 3: Culmination & finale

I’m currently hitting the end of phase 2 with Triverse. Let’s poke at what each of those actually mean, in terms of how I define them.