Yeah, that almost works except for the wormholes. Because I'd then need to explain wormholes. :) I think for non-genre fans, leaning into the themes rather than the core setup might be the way to go.
Triverse is easier to explain in setup than theme, as thematically you've got a lot going on. I'd argue your setup premises - especially for Triverse - are an easier sell than your themes and meanings. I can, as always, be wrong.
Sell your themes and some idiot will dismissively call you "woke." Of course when someone attempts to use "woke" as an insult I'd know that's someone I won't get along with.
For the Substack itself, part of the issue is it's bifurcated message - there's your current fiction and your musings ABOUT fiction. As a singular Substack it's unfocused, and you, following all the marketing logic of your day job, should split into two, focused newsletters. You haven't because you don't like asking for money from readers so you don't want to do so twice, but...
Blipping to the YouTube Paradigm for a moment, that's the general advice there as well. Don't do a channel where you have cooking videos, travel videos, VFX tutorials and film pitches on one channel, because you don't have a clear message. Your cooking fans probably don't care about your VFX tutorials and vice/versa. So any videos appeal to only 1/4 to maybe 40% of your audience (in this hypothetical, maybe you get 70% crossover on VFX/film pitch). Then you look at your stats and wonder why you have a thousand subs but your videos get 200-300 views.
Going back to "The Pitch" for Triverse, fiction has a PLOT, some THEMES, and the "COOL SHIT" (or "STORY"). Now, for much of this I'm going to talk film, because if you see a rare commercial for a book it's, "The new >book< from >author< who brought you >list of other books<." Film gives ready examples.
The original Star Wars Trilogy wasn't advertised on its themes, of which the primary is natural vs industrialized society, and evidenced by the Ewoks kicking Empire ass (changed from Wookies, supposedly, because Chewie's skill with machines undercut this point). Star Wars movies are sold on the COOL SHIT. Space battles, lightsabers, Darth Vader's sweet costume.
Look at the trailers for Dune pt 2. There's diddly-squat telling you this is a story about colonialism and environmentalism. It's Paul mounting the sandworm, a bunch of COOL SHIT and, "May thy knife chip and shatter." If you don't already know Dune then the entire trailer (outside of the wormride) is a bunch of random images of COOL SHIT.
Indiana Jones 5. Trailer told me nothing, other than there's a digitally de-aged Indy. COOL SHIT. I wouldn't know it's a time travel tale without having read the press.
Across the Spider-Verse actually hinted at its largest theme - the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few - by dropping the line about Miles trying to save his Dad risking the Multiverse, but it didn't go into the secondary themes of acceptance for one's identity... But we saw lots of the Spider Squad - COOL SHIT.
If you explain Triverse as an allegorical tale about multiculturalism and acceptance, then you'll sound boring and preachy. The hook is the police procedural set between three universes. That's COOL SHIT that is easily understandable, and, let's face it that's cool COOL SHIT.
Even Babylon 5. It's elevator pitch wasn't the show's allegory for outgrowing the need for religion (spelled out explicitly when Sheridan has the "It's a Third Age," speech in season 4), but "Casablanca in Space." The lives of the people in this station caught up in interplanetary war. THAT'S COOL SHIT!
Hell sometimes when a work is translated between mediums even the most gifted storyteller can mis-step. "Lord of the Rings." Tolkien himself said the two most important parts of the saga are Tom Bombadil (representing the ideal life) and the "Scouring of the Shire" (how the "big events far away affect the little people at home"). Guess what bits Jackson cut... And it's a shame, because he did a really good job with the supporting themes of addiction (Gollum/Frodo) and the evils of industry (Saruman/Sauron). But, in the end, by cutting Bombadil and "The Scouring of the Shire" he removed everything Tolkien would have (and did) say the story was ultimately about. We lose the impact of the far away on home. We lose the end growth of Sam, Merry and Pippin into heroes and leaders. We lose how Frodo is utterly broken by his ordeal and becomes a passive observer to the horrors of the invasion of his home, and his ability to relate to others. But, damn, did the movie trilogy revel in the COOL SHIT. It does so well with the COOL SHIT even I forgive the adaptation for ultimately missing the entire point.
Ok, that last paragraph is off topic, but it took awhile to type, so it stays.
Point being, your pitch for Triverse is it's genre hook. A police procedural across three worlds, feudal, modern, and future. For the 30 second pitch you can ignore how imprecise that is, since Palinor is more nuanced and the 1970's is far enough ago to be "period." It's close enough to set the hook. It's enough for the first judgement of, "Doesn't sound like my kind of story" or, "Wow! Tell me more!"
Besides, pitching at a reunion is tough. You're already having to decide what the most important things to summarize the past 30 years in 30 seconds are.
Oops missed something important - you brought up selling the book to non-genre fans. You can't. Someone who doesn't appreciate Sci-fi/fantasy isn't going to read the book no matter how eloquently you explain the themes. Look at Star Trek... If ever there was a franchise about overcoming our biases about race, religion and culture to set aside our differences and build a better tomorrow, while appreciating the differences that make us unique, it's Trek, from it's multicultural casts, to the "Prime Directive," and IDIC. Doesn't matter. A non-sci-fi-fan, even if they are the most progressively liberal bastion of equality for all just isn't gonna watch "The space show."
You can't sell everybody, and trying run the risk of disillusioning yourself. Throw the "Triverse" hook. If no bite, plenty o' fish.
Also, to reiterate, the split focus between fiction and mulling over fiction makes the Substack as a whole tough to summarize. You've covered this yourself in your mulling articles. You don't want to split publications at the moment, so keep doing what your doing and don't psych yourself out over the fact that you have two audiences with only limited crossover.
Just write for the love of it. Stress too much about the rest and you'll poison that love. Trust me on this, man. I've done it to myself. There's a lot I USED to do I don't do anymore because I stressed myself out of the joy. Don't do that. In many ways I'm less than I was 20 years ago.
Thanks! Was a bit of an experiment to see if this would produce an interesting post in itself, which I think it has. :) I'd originally planned to incorporate comments into the original article, but that would have made it even longer.
I'm really interested in exploring ways to better engage with the community aspects of writing on Substack. This seems to have gone well. :) All thanks to the quality of the comments from other people, of course!
The TV show Supernatural comes to mind as a serial that should have ended, but fan service kept it going. The original story arc was only supposed to be for five seasons, and Eric Kripke kept to his word and left at the end of those five seasons. Yet the series got ten more seasons that, IMO, got painful. Especially when they started rehashing plot lines. Okay, who’s going to hell this season?
One thing I just learned is that the author of the original Perry Mason books would use a plot wheel to decide where the story went next. I believe the books themselves are more episodic, so creating self-contained stories within a world like that makes sense. Sherlock Holmes is similar, right?
When it comes to TV, people are definitely hitting cancellation fatigue and some will not invest any time until they know a show will be released to completion or, to a lesser extent, a new season has been confirmed. While rarer in publishing (I think), cancelled book series are definitely a thing. Thankfully for self publishing, if a book series gets cancelled, the author can get their rights reverted and complete the books on their own.
The most pernicious form of cancellation is the new tendency for streamers to actually remove content from the platform, even if it isn't available elsewhere (eg on blu-ray). That active destruction of cultural heritage I find very disturbing.
Yeah, I’ve seen arguments about this as well. It leads into the idea that longer stories take longer to get people interested in them. They’re less about flash in the pans like movies are. But if streamers treat series like movies and they don’t get that flash in the pan hit, they pull it, and remove the content entirely for reasons beyond what any of us know. I’m lamenting the loss of the latest iteration of Perry Mason. Such a good show and cancelled after two seven or eight episode seasons.
I don't know if this has been mentioned, but one of my favourite types of serialisation is the 'universe'. What often happens in this kind of work (See the Liaden books) is that you have a larger 'universe' in which the stories are set, and then you have pocked series within that universe with some of the same characters but then... and this is my favourite parts... you have some of these series intersect or merge.
It reminds me a little bit of when TV would have, say, Andy Griffith visit the Beverly Hillbillies or such. Only these are much more plot driven.
Let me be selfish for a sec here and pick your brain: would serialization like this work for nonfiction? If so, what approach might work best?
I write every day, which is great! But sometimes I want to say a little more, or maybe even a lot more. There are some stories that take a lot longer to flesh out, and viewpoints and nuance to share, etc. Just wondering if you've put any thought into serializing nonfiction in a similar vein!
Non-fiction is, as far as I can tell, far more successful on Substack than fiction. Though it's perhaps not exactly serialised - it's more topical, but with standalone issues. More magazine-like than a serial? Though I always point to Mike Sowden and Everything Is Amazing, as he writes in a seasonal manner, with thematically linked posts over a period.
"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)."
- This reminds me of this newsletter by fantasy writer Holly Lisle in which she talked about how magic should make things worse, not better, otherwise you're just looking at deus ex machina. I do believe that in science fiction, futuristic science takes the place of magic so it should definitely work the same way!
Another thought, while I'm here: I currently see two audience splits currently for consumption of serialised novels:
1) Generational (~35yrs+ vs. YA, esp manga), and
2) Cultural (East (esp. Korea/SE Asia) vs West (Anglophone published countries in particular).
So cultural crossovers/fusion and a maturing consumer cycle should organically grow serialisation demand going forward. I think some publishers are already acknowledging this.
Thanks for incorporating my comment, Simon. It was an interesting discussion overall and well done with this 'experiment'. It's very refreshing to see someone not only acknowledging, but looping readers' comments back into a subsequent post iteration.
I hope it ends up benefiting everyone - readers who don't get involved with Chat still get to see the discussion highlights, I get to have a slightly easier week in terms of writing a newsletter, and hopefully it sends new readers in the direction of those quoted. That's the plan, anyway! :)
Yeah, absolutely the norm! It was primarily the only option, for many reasons. And you're right that there have been many good novel>film adaptations, through the hard work of skilled people. I do think that novels 'fit' a TV serial more naturally, though.
Yet it never occurred to anyone, since the medium and duration of cinema films were more than merely adequate. (Did anyone ever need a longer Gone with the Wind?)
Even after the ground breaking and still magnificent serialization of Brideshead Revisited, there was no stampede away from film adaptations. Selective multi episode TV adaptations remained special event TV for decades later.
Only over the last decade or so, with more movement to small screen series, adaptations for TV have too often diluted the source material. A camera, after all, can vividly convey several chapters of a book within minutes. That's the difference between the mediums.
That's part of it, though, picking up on Gone With The Wind: film adaptations have always had to choose between either heavily truncating and altering the material to make a film or reasonable length, OR they make a tediously long film in order to fit everything in. In both cases, a serial approach would likely be more appropriate.
Pride and Prejudice is a good example: the 90s TV show and the film version are both well made and lavishly produced, but the TV show is able to accommodate the novel more naturally, and has room to breathe.
Ah, I wasn't referring to box office and revenue from the project; I was talking about the available production assets. Back in the day, if you wanted to make something cinematic then 9/10 you would need to make it a feature film. That's not quite the case now - there's a lot more funding available to TV through streaming, and the available production value is much more even.
Except that one of those options still isn't making money.
Funny thing with streaming, there are so many short productions, six or eight parts, sometimes quite good, often forgettable. I think of them as fillers. Netflix seems to have hundreds of thousands of them. I sometimes wonder if this is catering to reduced attention spans, or just a quick way to keep churning out new content.
Even proper series on streaming are rarely like the days of old, when there were 22 episodes a season. Long story arcs are becoming truncated, when compared with old traditional television. There's no need to settle in for the long haul anymore, everything is becoming more bite sized.
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.
Yeah, that almost works except for the wormholes. Because I'd then need to explain wormholes. :) I think for non-genre fans, leaning into the themes rather than the core setup might be the way to go.
"Portal?" "Gateway?" "Holes?"
Triverse is easier to explain in setup than theme, as thematically you've got a lot going on. I'd argue your setup premises - especially for Triverse - are an easier sell than your themes and meanings. I can, as always, be wrong.
Sell your themes and some idiot will dismissively call you "woke." Of course when someone attempts to use "woke" as an insult I'd know that's someone I won't get along with.
I'm still thinking about "The pitch."
For the Substack itself, part of the issue is it's bifurcated message - there's your current fiction and your musings ABOUT fiction. As a singular Substack it's unfocused, and you, following all the marketing logic of your day job, should split into two, focused newsletters. You haven't because you don't like asking for money from readers so you don't want to do so twice, but...
Blipping to the YouTube Paradigm for a moment, that's the general advice there as well. Don't do a channel where you have cooking videos, travel videos, VFX tutorials and film pitches on one channel, because you don't have a clear message. Your cooking fans probably don't care about your VFX tutorials and vice/versa. So any videos appeal to only 1/4 to maybe 40% of your audience (in this hypothetical, maybe you get 70% crossover on VFX/film pitch). Then you look at your stats and wonder why you have a thousand subs but your videos get 200-300 views.
Going back to "The Pitch" for Triverse, fiction has a PLOT, some THEMES, and the "COOL SHIT" (or "STORY"). Now, for much of this I'm going to talk film, because if you see a rare commercial for a book it's, "The new >book< from >author< who brought you >list of other books<." Film gives ready examples.
The original Star Wars Trilogy wasn't advertised on its themes, of which the primary is natural vs industrialized society, and evidenced by the Ewoks kicking Empire ass (changed from Wookies, supposedly, because Chewie's skill with machines undercut this point). Star Wars movies are sold on the COOL SHIT. Space battles, lightsabers, Darth Vader's sweet costume.
Look at the trailers for Dune pt 2. There's diddly-squat telling you this is a story about colonialism and environmentalism. It's Paul mounting the sandworm, a bunch of COOL SHIT and, "May thy knife chip and shatter." If you don't already know Dune then the entire trailer (outside of the wormride) is a bunch of random images of COOL SHIT.
Indiana Jones 5. Trailer told me nothing, other than there's a digitally de-aged Indy. COOL SHIT. I wouldn't know it's a time travel tale without having read the press.
Across the Spider-Verse actually hinted at its largest theme - the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few - by dropping the line about Miles trying to save his Dad risking the Multiverse, but it didn't go into the secondary themes of acceptance for one's identity... But we saw lots of the Spider Squad - COOL SHIT.
If you explain Triverse as an allegorical tale about multiculturalism and acceptance, then you'll sound boring and preachy. The hook is the police procedural set between three universes. That's COOL SHIT that is easily understandable, and, let's face it that's cool COOL SHIT.
Even Babylon 5. It's elevator pitch wasn't the show's allegory for outgrowing the need for religion (spelled out explicitly when Sheridan has the "It's a Third Age," speech in season 4), but "Casablanca in Space." The lives of the people in this station caught up in interplanetary war. THAT'S COOL SHIT!
Hell sometimes when a work is translated between mediums even the most gifted storyteller can mis-step. "Lord of the Rings." Tolkien himself said the two most important parts of the saga are Tom Bombadil (representing the ideal life) and the "Scouring of the Shire" (how the "big events far away affect the little people at home"). Guess what bits Jackson cut... And it's a shame, because he did a really good job with the supporting themes of addiction (Gollum/Frodo) and the evils of industry (Saruman/Sauron). But, in the end, by cutting Bombadil and "The Scouring of the Shire" he removed everything Tolkien would have (and did) say the story was ultimately about. We lose the impact of the far away on home. We lose the end growth of Sam, Merry and Pippin into heroes and leaders. We lose how Frodo is utterly broken by his ordeal and becomes a passive observer to the horrors of the invasion of his home, and his ability to relate to others. But, damn, did the movie trilogy revel in the COOL SHIT. It does so well with the COOL SHIT even I forgive the adaptation for ultimately missing the entire point.
Ok, that last paragraph is off topic, but it took awhile to type, so it stays.
Point being, your pitch for Triverse is it's genre hook. A police procedural across three worlds, feudal, modern, and future. For the 30 second pitch you can ignore how imprecise that is, since Palinor is more nuanced and the 1970's is far enough ago to be "period." It's close enough to set the hook. It's enough for the first judgement of, "Doesn't sound like my kind of story" or, "Wow! Tell me more!"
Besides, pitching at a reunion is tough. You're already having to decide what the most important things to summarize the past 30 years in 30 seconds are.
Oops missed something important - you brought up selling the book to non-genre fans. You can't. Someone who doesn't appreciate Sci-fi/fantasy isn't going to read the book no matter how eloquently you explain the themes. Look at Star Trek... If ever there was a franchise about overcoming our biases about race, religion and culture to set aside our differences and build a better tomorrow, while appreciating the differences that make us unique, it's Trek, from it's multicultural casts, to the "Prime Directive," and IDIC. Doesn't matter. A non-sci-fi-fan, even if they are the most progressively liberal bastion of equality for all just isn't gonna watch "The space show."
You can't sell everybody, and trying run the risk of disillusioning yourself. Throw the "Triverse" hook. If no bite, plenty o' fish.
Also, to reiterate, the split focus between fiction and mulling over fiction makes the Substack as a whole tough to summarize. You've covered this yourself in your mulling articles. You don't want to split publications at the moment, so keep doing what your doing and don't psych yourself out over the fact that you have two audiences with only limited crossover.
Just write for the love of it. Stress too much about the rest and you'll poison that love. Trust me on this, man. I've done it to myself. There's a lot I USED to do I don't do anymore because I stressed myself out of the joy. Don't do that. In many ways I'm less than I was 20 years ago.
Excellent piece - love how you blend the chat comments with your own journey and thoughts, really good stuff, thanks.
Thanks! Was a bit of an experiment to see if this would produce an interesting post in itself, which I think it has. :) I'd originally planned to incorporate comments into the original article, but that would have made it even longer.
I'm really interested in exploring ways to better engage with the community aspects of writing on Substack. This seems to have gone well. :) All thanks to the quality of the comments from other people, of course!
It was certainly a successful experiment! There is definitely a happy medium with article length, something I am still struggling/experimenting with.
And I hear you about the community aspects of writing, or anything, for that matter, here on Substack. Yours is a good example to follow!
The TV show Supernatural comes to mind as a serial that should have ended, but fan service kept it going. The original story arc was only supposed to be for five seasons, and Eric Kripke kept to his word and left at the end of those five seasons. Yet the series got ten more seasons that, IMO, got painful. Especially when they started rehashing plot lines. Okay, who’s going to hell this season?
One thing I just learned is that the author of the original Perry Mason books would use a plot wheel to decide where the story went next. I believe the books themselves are more episodic, so creating self-contained stories within a world like that makes sense. Sherlock Holmes is similar, right?
When it comes to TV, people are definitely hitting cancellation fatigue and some will not invest any time until they know a show will be released to completion or, to a lesser extent, a new season has been confirmed. While rarer in publishing (I think), cancelled book series are definitely a thing. Thankfully for self publishing, if a book series gets cancelled, the author can get their rights reverted and complete the books on their own.
The most pernicious form of cancellation is the new tendency for streamers to actually remove content from the platform, even if it isn't available elsewhere (eg on blu-ray). That active destruction of cultural heritage I find very disturbing.
Yeah, I’ve seen arguments about this as well. It leads into the idea that longer stories take longer to get people interested in them. They’re less about flash in the pans like movies are. But if streamers treat series like movies and they don’t get that flash in the pan hit, they pull it, and remove the content entirely for reasons beyond what any of us know. I’m lamenting the loss of the latest iteration of Perry Mason. Such a good show and cancelled after two seven or eight episode seasons.
I don't know if this has been mentioned, but one of my favourite types of serialisation is the 'universe'. What often happens in this kind of work (See the Liaden books) is that you have a larger 'universe' in which the stories are set, and then you have pocked series within that universe with some of the same characters but then... and this is my favourite parts... you have some of these series intersect or merge.
It reminds me a little bit of when TV would have, say, Andy Griffith visit the Beverly Hillbillies or such. Only these are much more plot driven.
Let me be selfish for a sec here and pick your brain: would serialization like this work for nonfiction? If so, what approach might work best?
I write every day, which is great! But sometimes I want to say a little more, or maybe even a lot more. There are some stories that take a lot longer to flesh out, and viewpoints and nuance to share, etc. Just wondering if you've put any thought into serializing nonfiction in a similar vein!
Non-fiction is, as far as I can tell, far more successful on Substack than fiction. Though it's perhaps not exactly serialised - it's more topical, but with standalone issues. More magazine-like than a serial? Though I always point to Mike Sowden and Everything Is Amazing, as he writes in a seasonal manner, with thematically linked posts over a period.
That's a cool tip! I like the idea of seasonal or thematic bigger pieces. Let me chew that around for a while.
Oh, lots of good stuff here!
"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)."
- This reminds me of this newsletter by fantasy writer Holly Lisle in which she talked about how magic should make things worse, not better, otherwise you're just looking at deus ex machina. I do believe that in science fiction, futuristic science takes the place of magic so it should definitely work the same way!
Another thought, while I'm here: I currently see two audience splits currently for consumption of serialised novels:
1) Generational (~35yrs+ vs. YA, esp manga), and
2) Cultural (East (esp. Korea/SE Asia) vs West (Anglophone published countries in particular).
So cultural crossovers/fusion and a maturing consumer cycle should organically grow serialisation demand going forward. I think some publishers are already acknowledging this.
Thanks for incorporating my comment, Simon. It was an interesting discussion overall and well done with this 'experiment'. It's very refreshing to see someone not only acknowledging, but looping readers' comments back into a subsequent post iteration.
I hope it ends up benefiting everyone - readers who don't get involved with Chat still get to see the discussion highlights, I get to have a slightly easier week in terms of writing a newsletter, and hopefully it sends new readers in the direction of those quoted. That's the plan, anyway! :)
Sounds like a plan. I find weekly is good, but sometimes taxing/diversionary - a.k.a "good for me".
I'm repeating myself: countless critically acclaimed films adapted from novels. In the past that was the norm. Even of Dickens, that great serializer.
Yeah, absolutely the norm! It was primarily the only option, for many reasons. And you're right that there have been many good novel>film adaptations, through the hard work of skilled people. I do think that novels 'fit' a TV serial more naturally, though.
Yet it never occurred to anyone, since the medium and duration of cinema films were more than merely adequate. (Did anyone ever need a longer Gone with the Wind?)
Even after the ground breaking and still magnificent serialization of Brideshead Revisited, there was no stampede away from film adaptations. Selective multi episode TV adaptations remained special event TV for decades later.
Only over the last decade or so, with more movement to small screen series, adaptations for TV have too often diluted the source material. A camera, after all, can vividly convey several chapters of a book within minutes. That's the difference between the mediums.
That's part of it, though, picking up on Gone With The Wind: film adaptations have always had to choose between either heavily truncating and altering the material to make a film or reasonable length, OR they make a tediously long film in order to fit everything in. In both cases, a serial approach would likely be more appropriate.
Pride and Prejudice is a good example: the 90s TV show and the film version are both well made and lavishly produced, but the TV show is able to accommodate the novel more naturally, and has room to breathe.
Thank goodness The Godfather was made before anyone thought of turning it into a mini series.
Thanks for the mention, there was so many good examples in that thread, some I'd forgotten about that I'd like to revisit.
Interesting to think about! Thanks for including my comment. Your triverse sounds really intriguing
Now you’ve got me pondering what elements equal then never ending series like South Park and The Simpsons. Barbie. Etc.
https://jmatsonheininger.substack.com/archive My attempt with audio and free.
Showrunners still follow the money, as do producers.
Ah, I wasn't referring to box office and revenue from the project; I was talking about the available production assets. Back in the day, if you wanted to make something cinematic then 9/10 you would need to make it a feature film. That's not quite the case now - there's a lot more funding available to TV through streaming, and the available production value is much more even.
Except that one of those options still isn't making money.
Funny thing with streaming, there are so many short productions, six or eight parts, sometimes quite good, often forgettable. I think of them as fillers. Netflix seems to have hundreds of thousands of them. I sometimes wonder if this is catering to reduced attention spans, or just a quick way to keep churning out new content.
Even proper series on streaming are rarely like the days of old, when there were 22 episodes a season. Long story arcs are becoming truncated, when compared with old traditional television. There's no need to settle in for the long haul anymore, everything is becoming more bite sized.