Types of serialisation: your thoughts!
The community responds
Last week I published an article about different forms of serialisation. I also asked in Chat for your thoughts, which produced so many good responses I’ve decided to spin them out into this follow-up post.
If you missed the original piece, it’s here:
Different types of serial storytelling
Let’s talk about modes of serial storytelling. I mean, to be fair, I’m always banging on about serial storytelling, but today I’m going to attempt to deconstruct different approaches across various mediums. I have definitely forgotten and overlooked some great stuff. See you down in the comments, where we can all have a collective nerd session.
I’m going to pick out selections from the Chat and add some commentary below.
TL;DR I am blessed to have very clever and insightful readers.
“I have to say I prefer stand alone novels. When it comes to TV though, that's different and if I love the characters I'll watch for multiple seasons, for example The Sopranos or Sex And The City or Mad Men. Films on the other hand are, for me, more like novels in that I prefer the standalones, when there's sequels, I always like the first film best. The exception to this is Aliens which I think is the best sequel ever!”
This I found very interesting from Susan. In my article, it was noted that I’d focused on television. We’re all trained to parse different forms from childhood - I recall David Simon of The Wire talking about having to ease people gently onto what they were doing on that show, because it was structurally so different - and for a long time TV has been the main venue for serials.
That creates an immediate challenge for those of us trying to serialise our work online. There are generations of readers and viewers who aren’t used to reading serials. I wonder if this is connected to Wattpad and Webtoon’s readerships skewing quite young - newer generations are less shackled to existing structures.
“…shows that don't have an end just never feel right to me. As much as I love The X-Files, there was a long period where it felt like autopilot, with the occasional wonderful episode amongst many average, rather than the other way around. everything needs an end, which seems a good place to leave this overly long comment!?”
Alexander was one of several people to mention The Expanse. I am extremely pleased to discover I have such discerning readers. The Expanse is one of my favourite things (book and show), and is a masterclass in elegant world building. It’s also fairly unique in that it uses (mostly) real science to create crises, rather than using made-up science to solve crises (like almost all other television science fiction).
As to his point above: endings are critical, I think. Unless the specific point of a story is to go on forever, there needs to be a destination in mind. It can shift, move, change entirely, but a destination is what creates a trajectory and gives a story definite purpose.
When it comes to serials, there’s an additional benefit to your story having an ending (or a promise of one): it reassures the reader that they’re not wasting their time. A serial is an investment and has inherent risk, such as the writer giving up or vanishing from the internet. In fact,
had an interesting example of an Alan Moore comic series, The Ballad of Halo Jones, which was never completed due to publisher conflicts - which highlights how committing to any serial is a risk, regardless of where or how it’s being published.“And without open-ended serialised stories you'd never have any comic books (like Groo the Wanderer), or TV shows like Doctor Who and The Simpsons. I can't choose a favourite style of serial telling - it just has to be done well.”
Stephen offers a slight counterpoint, with the useful example of Doctor Who and The Simpsons - both phenomenally successful shows that have never had anything like an ‘end’. They’re also inherently episodic, where the only promise is to get to the end of the current episode.
Perhaps that’s it: it’s fine to not have ‘an end’ if you’re purely episodic, but if you’re presenting your story as having an over-arching structure, it helps to have a plan.
“I am an avid reader of detective fiction and love revisiting the same characters through various mysteries. Jonathan Kellerman and Janet Evanovich stand out for me when I think about this (but hate to play favorites!). I am though hesitant to start series when I know there are a lot of books to go--I can get into a completionist streak even if I am not fully immersed. For TV, I think a 3-5 season arc is best. It really needs something cohesive to pull me through it.”
That point about being hesitant to commit to something if you know there’s a lot of it is always on my mind with Tales from the Triverse. As the story continues to expand every week, the ‘catching up slog’ barrier gets ever larger. I’ve tried to take the edge off this by designing Triverse to be an anthology of sorts, as well as providing a useful story guide and an ebook collection for paid subscribers, but it’s always going to be an issue.
So here you can see the ‘intro’ post the makes it easier to hop on:
Occasionally I’ll write a story that is designed to work as an ‘on ramp’ for new readers, setting out the stakes again - in a hopefully natural way. In fact, last week’s chapter was one of those:
Once Triverse is complete I will probably have a go at shorter projects, to see if they suit the newsletter format more naturally.
“I like novel series, but I prefer a three or five-story arc, rather than an endless round of books (Robin Hobb’s Assassins series comes to mind). It usually means a tighter plot and you don't stray off-track whilst waiting for the next book to be published - or end up wondering if it will ever end! I do think we can learn a lot from the comic industry; The Sandman series was brilliant, for example of running a number of stories in a self-contained universe that you could dip in and out of, whilst following a longer story arc.”
The example here from Natalie of The Sandman - and comics more generally - is really useful. I’ve certainly taken inspiration from comics, as well as television, when structuring my serial, and when understanding how much story needs to be present in each instalment. Rather than a singular, novelistic story split over multiple instalments, Triverse is lots of individual shorter stories, but which connect into a much larger whole.
“Analysing seasons based on novels can teach us a lot about serialisation. And we're learning from the best because right now the best writers work in TV series. There are lots of series I love, not all of them are based on books. From the ones based on books, many deviated a lot from the plot, or the original story rendered itself very well for serialisation. One first example that comes to mind and would be a great case study is Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. Why? This is a classic novel that you would be hard pressed to split in chunks that will keep the viewer's interest. Yet, Netflix managed to do exactly that.”
This is an extract of Claudia’s thoughtful, longer response, which focuses on the need to adapt a story to its environment. A story that works perfectly in a novel won’t necessarily work if told in a movie, or in a TV show, or as an online serial. Adaptation is required, in order to take advantage of the unique opportunities within each medium.
“I also prefer when the author/creator has the ending in mind and the story is contained. I adore this new era of television (episodic series) we’ve entered. I think a miniseries is the best way to adapt a novel and the best comparison to a novel. Enough time for building out characters and storylines. Currently trying to write a novel in this fashion here on substack. Not sure readers have the attention span for serialized writing these days, but hoping so!”
Molly picks up on Claudia’s point, and I wholeheartedly concur that a TV mini-series is the best way to adapt a novel. The two forms are more closely matched and fewer compromises are required: while it’s not impossible to adapt a novel into a successful film, it’s certainly a lot harder and often disappoints both film lovers and fans of the original.
I’m so pleased that the production value of television now matches film, in most of the ways that matter, outside of the very top tier blockbuster stuff. There’s no longer that artificial separation, which makes it much easier for filmmakers and showrunners to embrace whichever medium suits the story, rather than having to follow the money.
“I prefer long form serialized stories. Most of what I have read up until this point has been fiction-fantasy stories. From reading or watching Naruto or One Piece or viewing other people's personal stories on websites. Poetry has become a past time lately. Not to familiar with to many poets but the short excerpts have a nice feel to them.”
The Emperor (if that’s your real name) brought up anime and manga, which I touched upon in my article having just devoured Attack on Titan. There’s a much larger discussion on Japanese storytelling over on
’s comment from the original article, so do check that out if you’re interested. It does seem that manga has been way ahead of English language storytelling when it comes to serials, and has been for some time.That’s not even all of the responses in the Chat! When I think of the scarcity of insightful conversation online for the last few years, it makes me all the more grateful to have all of you to discuss these nerdy things with.
Do check out all of the writers I’ve tagged here - many of them have publications of their own that are worth your time.
I’ve got a couple of book giveaways I’m taking part in this month. If you’re looking for new fantasy to read, go grab yourself some free ebooks:
On Saturday I headed down to London for a school reunion, seeing people that I’ve been out of touch with for thirty years. The last time I saw them, we were all 11 years old. My brain is still processing.
The reason this is relevant is that we were obviously curious about what we’d all been up to. When it came to talking about my writing, I found myself stumbling. I didn’t have a good way to summarise my Substack publication, nor Tales from the Triverse. Especially the latter, I realised I didn’t have a decent way of describing the book for someone that isn’t already familiar with speculative fiction.
That’s something I need to return to, I think. Refining the pitch, basically. More to come on that.
Thanks for reading! Hope you all have a good week.
Photo by Oleg Laptev on Unsplash
What's wrong with "A police procedural which takes place between three universes connected by wormholes?"
The biggest movies and franchises are spec-fic. Multiverse movies make hundreds of millions. Dude, you're basically mainstream.
Excellent piece - love how you blend the chat comments with your own journey and thoughts, really good stuff, thanks.