This has been a question in my mind for so many years! We’re in the book store or the library. We get excited about a book cover, then its blurb. We happily grab it off the shelf and take it home, knowing it’s Book 1 of 5. We tear through it, lugging it around and giving ourselves a crick in the neck from how heavily this brick weights our bag. At the end of the book (the ones we adore) we squeal in delight because there are gobs more pages to spend with these beloved characters in this fascinating world. The books toward the end are even thicker than the debut and pee our pants in excitement! (Unless we’ve been burned by overbloated tripe that overstays its welcome.) But if the series starts out well and keeps sprinting, we hope for the amazing finish, and even give ourselves scoliosis from hucking around Books 4 & 5, hoping Book 3 was just an off year for the author.
And yet, online we fall in lurve with a piece of writing, only to realize that it is part of a serial. There’s no hucking. There’s no crick in the neck. Yet we groan “Ugggggh I have to go back allllll the way to the—“
What IS that?!?! Why do we do this?
(Okay, since becoming a serial writer, I don’t anymore. I’m more likely to balk until it’s finished because The Binger doesn’t like to wait a week, and I got too burned on KKC, ASoIaF, and GB.)
Part of it is that reading online is still quite awkward. Whereas with a long book series, the book is the book. You don’t have to navigate a fiddly UI to get back to the page you were reading!
Totally. And Substack still doesn’t let us see Sections on our phones. A lot of the series are in Sections. I think the platforms that are designed for longer series do better with the reader end. Hopefully those features will be added here someday. In the meanwhile, we do our hacks and pray. 🤣🤪🤓
Yup. I'm surprised they haven't upgraded the serial reading experience yet - it'd help non-fic as well as fiction, and most of the component pieces are already in place. It's a UI issue, really.
Same. One of yall who write about this issue regularly had such a great and simple idea of us being able to create playlists of our stuff like Spotify. Boom. Easy peasy. Esp for those of us who write multiple types of serials. As you said, a bunch of my nonfiction is also serial, as are some of the people I read. *sending out the vibes to the TechGods* 😜
It’s interesting for me because I grew up on webcomics and flash games etc, where “oh wow five hundred entries in the archive!!” was always an exciting moment. Often mitigated by discovering that the quality of the starting content was, uh, very different. 😆
Sadly, since health issues throttled my cognition, serial works no longer work for me because I can’t hold the story in my head that long. If I gnaw through a book in a few weeks that’s doable, but spread it out over years and I simply can’t remember what came before. 😅 Perhaps that’s a factor for people? That a serial work can feel like too long a commitment?
Fortunately it’s increasingly common for creators to do a book after a serial/arc completes. So now rather than reading webcomics etc as they release I follow the authors for when the book version comes out. But I do miss that “fresh off the press” excitement and the experience of chatting away with fellow fans in the comments, buzzing over new information.
I suppose it depends what capacity people have and what experience they prefer? And perhaps what they’re used to.
I find long-running stories a challenge simply through being older and having more responsibilities. As a kid and in my early 20s, I could hold fictional information in my head very easily. As a 40-something, my brain is far too occupied with simply trying to exist. :D
I'm one of those who, on an LotR reread skips the songs. Especially in Elvish. I'm NOT translating that!
As I've stated before, I prefer Brandon Sanderson's "Wheel of Time" books because he doesn't stop between two lines of dialog for Jesus-I-counted-THIRTEEN-pages-of-clothing-description.
In Triverse's case, you're not indulgent with, say, three of your chapters describing clothes.
And, sometimes, you only need "Baby shoes for sale. Never worn."
It’s ultimately the story that decides what size it wants to become! What can we poor authors and executors of its will do? When I began writing my urban fantasy “Theodora’s Necklace” short story, I thought it would have four instalments, and then it grew to eight parts, and I believe in fact it should have become a novel…
This is a timely topic as I find that my Southern roots are sprouting in full form in my first full length book. All tell me I am too verbose and that's true, but as a lawyer and former government fed, I've made my mark being wordy and talking so no one else could say a word (bad habit of lobbyists). Alas, I digress. Thank you for reminding me that words matter and each word matters even more.
It's a conundrum I struggle with as well, as a writer & even a reader...
It might be ok to have long serials but also short fiction in between? Offer something for everyone who for whatever reason stumbles into your newsletter. Not every subscriber has to read every post, no? (At least that's what I'm telling myself.)
At the same time, it's a good reminder to think about what the story needs first & foremost. That's by no means a new thing--I mean, come on, does Moby Dick really need all that exposition about whaling? How much thinner would that book be if those chapters were cut? It's also interesting to see anime like Naruto with heaps of filler episodes caused by the nature of the medium & its industry--the anime series having to wait for new story to be delivered in the manga. I have no idea why Melville wrote Moby Dick the way he did but I know I want neither filler nor missing pieces in my stories. I always try to make them as long as they need to be.
I do think that mindset is preferable to thinking about what's suitable to the medium you find yourself in. Ideally, you change the medium to suit the story or you find different ways of packaging it, with minimal adjustment. I don't know if that's the best answer but there it is... (and it seems we're in agreement!)
I've an article coming up in the Bookseller on this very topic. It's all about understanding your story and knowing what it needs, be it 400 or 400,000
100%!!! After six brain traumas, I’ve had to claw back reading comprehension multiple times, and definitely the memory it takes to digest a longer work. Like you said, especially a series. It's still really hard. Sometimes it takes me multiple tries to get through a book, and I use it like cognitive therapy. Blahhhh. That is the other reason it’s really hard for me to do an online serial novel or a TV show as it comes out on a weekly basis. It’s why I will wait to binge the whole thing once it’s out. Of course, in a really long work that is ongoing, that’s a really long wait and I’ll be likely to forget about it. So… Yeah. It doesn’t work for me as a reader, but it’s been the only option I’ve been able to make work as a writer on my particular breed of Dain Bramage, if I ever want to share my fiction with anybody other than my dust bunnies. 🤪 I’m hoping it’ll go better once each of the tales are completed so people can binge them like a book instead of having to wait.
Indeed, Simon. My works are not as long as your Triverse, but I get the feeling that people are loath to commit to my serials after about twenty episodes (for me, about halfway through). But I carry on because the story itself is my focus, along with finishing it. I just hope there are enough binge-ers on Substack to land me a few subscribers.
Exactly — ultimately we do it because we have a story we want to tell. I’ve always tried to have the attitude that one reader is enough.
It does emphasise the point that it’s important to put out a serial as a book once it’s completed, though, to make it available for different types of reader.
I have been intimidated by the massive minimum word counts so many publishers want that I haven't attempted too many novels (I tend to write short). The one "novel" I have written is actually a novella depending on how you define the categories...
If you get how-to-write books out of the library, you may discover that their marketing advice is off. For instance, they may have been written in a time when short-story to novel was the normal pathway, or when a 50,000 word novel was the target.
Nowadays, you need to be a Big Name or go indie for 50,000 words.
80 to 100K words has always been the standard expectation for a novel.
50K words is an awkward length for any publisher, slightly longer than a novella, but not nearly long enough to be be a novel, with the same price - it's just a hard sell.
Thank you for sharing this. As one who has been diagnosed with aphantasia, I am generally indifferent to lengthy descriptive passages. I focus more on crisp, concise dialogue and plot developments, so a shorter work without as many descriptions is perfectly fine.
All that said...A book is finished when it is finished. I worked on what I thought would become a novel, but it was absolutely complete at around the 35,000-words mark. Could it have been stretched out (with a number of poorly written descriptive passages)? Perhaps, but the structure and internal urgency of the story arc would have been severely compromised.
From a commercial standpoint, we have seen a rise in interest in the shorter novels and novellas, and novelettes (ideally in the 10-to-15,000-words range) are also selling successfully. [Perhaps this is due to "shorter attention spans"?] For a new author trying to break in with the "Big Five," an extremely long novel may prove far more challenging.
On the other hand, I believe my series took a severe beating because of a publisher's judgment. I had written a trilogy; they made it a four-novel series, with each volume in the 60-to-70,000-words range. The problem? The series is inherently a romance, and the contemporary trend with that genre is to conclude either "happily ever after" or at least "happily ever after for now." The disruptions and ill timing at the ends of the first three volumes ignored the norm, and it was impossible to market the works under that category. Now that I have recovered my rights, I intend to restore the series to its original form...
When I finished the first draft of my memoir it was a bloated 80,000 words. A good friend read it and pointed out there were too many places…but it’s a travel memoir, I protested. But she was right and that made it easier to cut certain parts that didn’t fit the thematic arc I decided on.
This has been a question in my mind for so many years! We’re in the book store or the library. We get excited about a book cover, then its blurb. We happily grab it off the shelf and take it home, knowing it’s Book 1 of 5. We tear through it, lugging it around and giving ourselves a crick in the neck from how heavily this brick weights our bag. At the end of the book (the ones we adore) we squeal in delight because there are gobs more pages to spend with these beloved characters in this fascinating world. The books toward the end are even thicker than the debut and pee our pants in excitement! (Unless we’ve been burned by overbloated tripe that overstays its welcome.) But if the series starts out well and keeps sprinting, we hope for the amazing finish, and even give ourselves scoliosis from hucking around Books 4 & 5, hoping Book 3 was just an off year for the author.
And yet, online we fall in lurve with a piece of writing, only to realize that it is part of a serial. There’s no hucking. There’s no crick in the neck. Yet we groan “Ugggggh I have to go back allllll the way to the—“
What IS that?!?! Why do we do this?
(Okay, since becoming a serial writer, I don’t anymore. I’m more likely to balk until it’s finished because The Binger doesn’t like to wait a week, and I got too burned on KKC, ASoIaF, and GB.)
But whyyyyy! 🤣🤓🤪 Humans. We make me tired.
Part of it is that reading online is still quite awkward. Whereas with a long book series, the book is the book. You don’t have to navigate a fiddly UI to get back to the page you were reading!
Totally. And Substack still doesn’t let us see Sections on our phones. A lot of the series are in Sections. I think the platforms that are designed for longer series do better with the reader end. Hopefully those features will be added here someday. In the meanwhile, we do our hacks and pray. 🤣🤪🤓
Yup. I'm surprised they haven't upgraded the serial reading experience yet - it'd help non-fic as well as fiction, and most of the component pieces are already in place. It's a UI issue, really.
One day!
Same. One of yall who write about this issue regularly had such a great and simple idea of us being able to create playlists of our stuff like Spotify. Boom. Easy peasy. Esp for those of us who write multiple types of serials. As you said, a bunch of my nonfiction is also serial, as are some of the people I read. *sending out the vibes to the TechGods* 😜
It’s interesting for me because I grew up on webcomics and flash games etc, where “oh wow five hundred entries in the archive!!” was always an exciting moment. Often mitigated by discovering that the quality of the starting content was, uh, very different. 😆
Sadly, since health issues throttled my cognition, serial works no longer work for me because I can’t hold the story in my head that long. If I gnaw through a book in a few weeks that’s doable, but spread it out over years and I simply can’t remember what came before. 😅 Perhaps that’s a factor for people? That a serial work can feel like too long a commitment?
Fortunately it’s increasingly common for creators to do a book after a serial/arc completes. So now rather than reading webcomics etc as they release I follow the authors for when the book version comes out. But I do miss that “fresh off the press” excitement and the experience of chatting away with fellow fans in the comments, buzzing over new information.
I suppose it depends what capacity people have and what experience they prefer? And perhaps what they’re used to.
I find long-running stories a challenge simply through being older and having more responsibilities. As a kid and in my early 20s, I could hold fictional information in my head very easily. As a 40-something, my brain is far too occupied with simply trying to exist. :D
I *totally* get that! 😆
Absolutely nothing! Sing it again!
Words! Huh! What are they good for?
(This child of the 80s will now go read the post.)
Glad someone got that.
Triverse needs the space, man...
I'm one of those who, on an LotR reread skips the songs. Especially in Elvish. I'm NOT translating that!
As I've stated before, I prefer Brandon Sanderson's "Wheel of Time" books because he doesn't stop between two lines of dialog for Jesus-I-counted-THIRTEEN-pages-of-clothing-description.
In Triverse's case, you're not indulgent with, say, three of your chapters describing clothes.
And, sometimes, you only need "Baby shoes for sale. Never worn."
It’s ultimately the story that decides what size it wants to become! What can we poor authors and executors of its will do? When I began writing my urban fantasy “Theodora’s Necklace” short story, I thought it would have four instalments, and then it grew to eight parts, and I believe in fact it should have become a novel…
This is a timely topic as I find that my Southern roots are sprouting in full form in my first full length book. All tell me I am too verbose and that's true, but as a lawyer and former government fed, I've made my mark being wordy and talking so no one else could say a word (bad habit of lobbyists). Alas, I digress. Thank you for reminding me that words matter and each word matters even more.
It's a conundrum I struggle with as well, as a writer & even a reader...
It might be ok to have long serials but also short fiction in between? Offer something for everyone who for whatever reason stumbles into your newsletter. Not every subscriber has to read every post, no? (At least that's what I'm telling myself.)
At the same time, it's a good reminder to think about what the story needs first & foremost. That's by no means a new thing--I mean, come on, does Moby Dick really need all that exposition about whaling? How much thinner would that book be if those chapters were cut? It's also interesting to see anime like Naruto with heaps of filler episodes caused by the nature of the medium & its industry--the anime series having to wait for new story to be delivered in the manga. I have no idea why Melville wrote Moby Dick the way he did but I know I want neither filler nor missing pieces in my stories. I always try to make them as long as they need to be.
I do think that mindset is preferable to thinking about what's suitable to the medium you find yourself in. Ideally, you change the medium to suit the story or you find different ways of packaging it, with minimal adjustment. I don't know if that's the best answer but there it is... (and it seems we're in agreement!)
I've an article coming up in the Bookseller on this very topic. It's all about understanding your story and knowing what it needs, be it 400 or 400,000
Ah, nice! Do share the link as and when it’s published.
https://www.thebookseller.com/comment/does-size-matter
Landed today!
100%!!! After six brain traumas, I’ve had to claw back reading comprehension multiple times, and definitely the memory it takes to digest a longer work. Like you said, especially a series. It's still really hard. Sometimes it takes me multiple tries to get through a book, and I use it like cognitive therapy. Blahhhh. That is the other reason it’s really hard for me to do an online serial novel or a TV show as it comes out on a weekly basis. It’s why I will wait to binge the whole thing once it’s out. Of course, in a really long work that is ongoing, that’s a really long wait and I’ll be likely to forget about it. So… Yeah. It doesn’t work for me as a reader, but it’s been the only option I’ve been able to make work as a writer on my particular breed of Dain Bramage, if I ever want to share my fiction with anybody other than my dust bunnies. 🤪 I’m hoping it’ll go better once each of the tales are completed so people can binge them like a book instead of having to wait.
@LeeronHeywood I'm not sure why it didn't do the reply thing. Anyway...
Indeed, Simon. My works are not as long as your Triverse, but I get the feeling that people are loath to commit to my serials after about twenty episodes (for me, about halfway through). But I carry on because the story itself is my focus, along with finishing it. I just hope there are enough binge-ers on Substack to land me a few subscribers.
Exactly — ultimately we do it because we have a story we want to tell. I’ve always tried to have the attitude that one reader is enough.
It does emphasise the point that it’s important to put out a serial as a book once it’s completed, though, to make it available for different types of reader.
Crikey. I'm blushing - thank you so much for the kind words, Simon! 💜💜💜💜
Well deserved! I need to go dig through your other work. :)
I have been intimidated by the massive minimum word counts so many publishers want that I haven't attempted too many novels (I tend to write short). The one "novel" I have written is actually a novella depending on how you define the categories...
This is why I like writing a weekly serial: the only word count I pay attention to is per-chapter, which is much easier to grasp. :)
If you get how-to-write books out of the library, you may discover that their marketing advice is off. For instance, they may have been written in a time when short-story to novel was the normal pathway, or when a 50,000 word novel was the target.
Nowadays, you need to be a Big Name or go indie for 50,000 words.
80 to 100K words has always been the standard expectation for a novel.
50K words is an awkward length for any publisher, slightly longer than a novella, but not nearly long enough to be be a novel, with the same price - it's just a hard sell.
I personally own many paperbacks of some age and they are not only about 50,000, but were obviously mass produced to that length.
They are a hard sell *now*. They were not before, and therefore it was not, at the time, the standard expectation that it would be longer.
Ah, that would be early to mid 20th century, before my time.
In my lifetime, 200 page books would be around right for YA novels, and perhaps some genre fiction, or poetry.
There are no doubt libraries that still have how-to-write books from that era.
Thank you for sharing this. As one who has been diagnosed with aphantasia, I am generally indifferent to lengthy descriptive passages. I focus more on crisp, concise dialogue and plot developments, so a shorter work without as many descriptions is perfectly fine.
All that said...A book is finished when it is finished. I worked on what I thought would become a novel, but it was absolutely complete at around the 35,000-words mark. Could it have been stretched out (with a number of poorly written descriptive passages)? Perhaps, but the structure and internal urgency of the story arc would have been severely compromised.
From a commercial standpoint, we have seen a rise in interest in the shorter novels and novellas, and novelettes (ideally in the 10-to-15,000-words range) are also selling successfully. [Perhaps this is due to "shorter attention spans"?] For a new author trying to break in with the "Big Five," an extremely long novel may prove far more challenging.
On the other hand, I believe my series took a severe beating because of a publisher's judgment. I had written a trilogy; they made it a four-novel series, with each volume in the 60-to-70,000-words range. The problem? The series is inherently a romance, and the contemporary trend with that genre is to conclude either "happily ever after" or at least "happily ever after for now." The disruptions and ill timing at the ends of the first three volumes ignored the norm, and it was impossible to market the works under that category. Now that I have recovered my rights, I intend to restore the series to its original form...
When I finished the first draft of my memoir it was a bloated 80,000 words. A good friend read it and pointed out there were too many places…but it’s a travel memoir, I protested. But she was right and that made it easier to cut certain parts that didn’t fit the thematic arc I decided on.