Writing chaptered fic

[kate]

So, I have this story that I'm posting in chapters.

It's not my usual way of posting, and in fact, I am sort of adamantly against posting in chapters. I know why people do it, but it's not my thing, and I'll tell you why. Well, I'll give you a history of my (accidental) experience and then the pros and cons, for me (which add up to why - along with the fact that as a reader I hate hate HATE WIPs).

History of my accidental serial fic: clavally gave me a prompt which I sat down and wrote about 4500 words for. I posted it, and then asked her to prompt me again. She did. I wrote another 1300 words and posted that as a chapter 2, because I'd worked out the rest of the story and it had an easy four part structure. EASY. Ha ha ha ha, oh, no.

Then Kevin died and I wanted to post something to make myself feel better (and also it'd been a while since I posted), so I cut out and posted a part of Chapter 3 and decided to throw the rest into Chapter 4.

I continued writing Chapter 4 and realized, when it hit about 7k, that it was kind of unreasonable to post it all at once - it'd grown a huge plot and Dean was being recalcitrant, so I threw up about half of it and extended the story to 5 chapters.

Then I was about to get kripked and I realized that the story was just going to be huge, so I needed to reorganize. I shifted things and made it into a 12 chapter thing, re-organizing Chapters 1-4 into Chapters 1-6 and posting two more. Ever since then I've been posting a chapter here and there, every two weeks to a month, mostly before another section of the story got jossed or kripked by canon (this happened six or seven times in the story, which is only fair since it became something of an alt!S9, (on complete accident, I swear!)).

So now I've posted 11/12 chapters and It's been an interesting experience, these last few chapters.

There's a certain awesomeness to being able to write and post almost immediately. I just do a quick readthrough for typos and other little errors, and then put it up. Also awesome has been the hit count and the bookmarks. People keep coming back to it as I post, and that's pretty neat.

Less awesome: If I write myself into a corner, I'm stuck with it. Since I've published the chapter, I have to live with whatever I put in there, so trying to re-write Dean to be less recalcitrant or skip Cas's stupid farewell presents is now impossible because the damn thing's out there already. Probably no one would care but me, but I feel like it's sort of the challenge of writing a serial - you have to live with what came before, even if it was stupid. I suppose it's a little like writing on a TV series, heh.

Awesome side benefit to that: you realllllllly have to think around corners when you do something stupid to yourself. This has been great practice in forcing myself to write creatively to solve problems I would probably have edited out if I was writing straight through.

Other awesome benefits: posting relatively regularly is a nice high and keeps the story fun and fresh and it doesn't have the slogging middle that all my long stories do.

Less awesome: The finished product isn't going to be that good. There's a lot of stuff that I short-cutted because of time and space that really... just isn't very good. Corollary to this less awesome: this is likely to be one of my highest hit count stories ever and it's not particularly good. Considering when I post the epic fics I'm currently working on, it'll take years to get to the hit count I've achieved in six months, that's a bit discouraging.

So yeah, I don't think I'll post any more chaptered fics, but I'm glad I did it - it was an excellent experience. I might try it one more time, purposefully, to see if I can do a better job of it.

Comments

[clavally]

<333333333

I do like hearing about how this experience was. You make a lot of valid points about why posting in chapters maybe isn't the best thing. That already kills me that I can't go back and change things I don't like. Having to write around them would be awful!

As for hit counts, well, your other long things will already be written, but there's nothing keeping you from posting it as chaptered fic. Although, I personally think it's evil to have something written and beta'd and not just post the whole thing, which I assume you agree with me on. <333333

[kate]

<333333

I get that people get a high from posting in chapters (I think most people get more comments because you can only kudos once - I have not gotten that many, though, so maybe I was doing it wrong?), and I don't begrudge them that, there was certainly a lightness to writing and posting this story that I haven't felt in a long time.

I think, for me, though, I'll stick to writing epics the standard way and post shorts and one shots for that hit. I want my long stories to be well thought out and not have logic holes or bad characterization choices because I was in a hurry. When I've put as much time into something as I have WMTDI or the Wincestiel romcom, I don't want the end result to be shabby, you know?

I think chaptered fic tends to use shortcuts, too, in a bad way. It's easier to just throw a paragraph of exposition in so you can get to the emotional content, and that's just... not good.

I don't think it's necessarily evil to not post the whole thing, but it means I won't read it. I don't do WIPs and by the time it's fully posted, I will have forgotten about it. I just... I understand the impulse, I just think it's not the best one out there. Then again, I'm not really that popular and don't get huge hit counts, so I'm probably shooting myself in the foot, sticking with that philosophy. *shrug*

[clavally]

Eh, you know me, I'm fully behind you with the whole posting all at once thing. <3333333

Hmmm, interesting that my impression has always been that you are a popular writer. I mean, I know you don't have the hugest hit count out there, but I think people appreciate that you post a lot and that it's always well written? *shrug*

<33333

[kate]

I do! And it will always be the right choice for me, I think. But I can see why other people choose the other way. It just frustrates me as a reader. (And it's interesting how many of my writing/posting choices come out of how I read, opposed to how I write).

Really? I... I mean, I guess you'd have to ask fandom, but I never really thought I was terribly popular, at least in SGA, and in SPN nobody knows who I am. I guess I'm familiar to The Losers folks, but that's more because of ante_up than my writing, I think. There are some really gifted authors in that fandom that knock my socks off.

<33333

[recessional]

I'll admit, I'm quite tempted to post your blue-eyed boys chapter by chapter (once the editing is done), but it'd be more like one a day than anything longer.

Partially that's because of straight up desire for the hit of attention (not gonna lie), but part of it is also . . . the reason kudos are only really a half-measure for me is because I want to know what affected an audience? And the longer a fic is in the all-at-once sense, the less I get to have that, because even people sweet enough to leave comments are (by the fourteenth chapter) not remembering or keeping notes on the previous thirteen parts they've read. So I get an overall impression instead of specific reactions.

Whereas I know from some of my serials (which I only write in fanfic, as it happens) that I get much more of that particular kind of specific reaction if things are posted in digestible chunks with some time between them.

I'm probably not going to do it, but the temptation is there.

[kate]

I can see the appeal! The extra hits and bookmarks are nice, definitely, and you make an excellent point about specific feedback. I guess I never get that much specific feedback, so I hadn't even thought about it. I love comments (and those with specific details) as much as the next person, but I'm sort of... resigned? to the kudos culture now, and just assume I won't get much more than "wow" in a comment anyway. (This is reminding me to take the time to really feedback things I liked. I slip in and out of this habit depending on how much I'm reading at the time, how much energy I have when I'm done, and how much I like the story.)

[sholio]

This is really interesting for me to read and think about, because I started out posting all my long fic as serial, write-as-you-go WiPs -- it was basically how I learned to write long-form stories, and I think it was (for me) a good way to learn, because of the ongoing real-time feedback from readers. (Though it helps that I also really enjoy WiPs as a reader -- I think I enjoy it in much the same way as watching a TV show every week. As frustrating as it is to be left hanging, sometimes forever, there's more time to savor each plot development and anticipate what's coming. Mileage varies, obviously.)

But over time, as I got better at plotting and started to learn to do more complex things with emotional arcs, I gradually lost the ability to do that, because I can never really get where I want to be on the first draft; the revisions are necessary to the whole. I've posted only one long fic in WiP form in the last few years, and I ended up being really unhappy with it because there were things I really wanted to rework in the early chapters, and couldn't. I've thought about someday going back and revising the whole thing and posting an updated version to fix all the inconsistencies and make the character arcs stronger.

But that's a really good point about the way that serial writing/posting forces you to be more clever and creative in working around obstacles. And there's also the instant high and gratification of rapid posting and feedback. I'd like to try another one, if only to apply lessons I've learned over the years and see if I can still do it in realtime.

[kate]

Huh. That's just never something I did. I wrote really short things for a long time, and then I was in SGA before I wrote anything longer than 5k, and SGA just never was a fandom for serials. Most people posted once, when they were finished, and as a reader, I was in heaven.

I'm a sporadic reader, so I don't like works that require me to keep checking back - besides the possibility that I won't have time the next time they post, I almost always have to re-read what came before because stuff like fic (and TV even!) doesn't stick with me - I don't have the brain space to remember plots and definitely not details of serial works. So then I'm re-reading everything every single time, and just... no. That's more time than I have. (The Harry Potter books, ugh, by the time the 7th one came out I was dreading it.) And then, as you point out, there's the possibility of being left hanging forever, which is one of my hugest pet peeves. I have plenty of works that I've abandoned (I've even posted them!) but never in the middle when anyone was expecting more. Everything I post is at least complete.

Wow, sorry about that - apparently I have a lot of feels about WIPs.

Anyway - agreed about the way longfic evolves and how that affects the story. I won't say that I do it in draft form like you do, but I do always keep an eye on things like that as I'm writing it, and if I need to go back and rewrite something, I do, right then. I do revisions during the beta/editing process, too, but I'm sort of always streamlining the fic as I'm writing so hopefully it doesn't require a lot of revision when I finish.

ANYWAY! Yes - the character arcs are definitely all over the place with this fic, and there's so much more going on that I feel like the focus is fuzzy. I think it loses its impact. I've noticed this while reading - when I read complete stories that were posted in chapter, the reading experience is choppy. Some chapters are better than others, some are out of focus of the overall plot (I would've said "delete" if I was a beta), and the characterization is not consistent across the whole work. All in all I appreciate serialization as a writer, but much less so as a reader. I think it makes for less cohesive and interesting stories.

ETA: And yes! I think I might want to try again, but purposefully. I want to see if I can do it better. And probably only once.

[sholio]

Ha, no, there is nothing wrong with having feels about WiPs. <3 I think that for me, I kinda grew up with an addiction to serialized media (comics, soap operas, long fantasy novel series) and just kind of ... never got past that; I latched onto the serialization possibilities of the Internet with absolute delight. That said, I truly understand the "wait 'til it's finished" urge, and I've been burned enough times on WiPs that either never finished or took a sudden 180 turn to WTF in the middle that I often withhold kudos/comments until it's far enough along that I have a pretty good idea I'm not gonna regret having my name associated with it. XD

It is a very interesting thing to deal with as a writer, isn't it? The other thing I do is webcomics, which are even more that way -- well, unless you're organized enough to write a complete script at the beginning, which I ... am not. A webcomic artist friend of mine described it as street theatre, and I think that's actually one of the things I really like about it -- webcomics and serial WiPs both: that sense of immediacy and instant feedback/response to an audience. It's raw and rough and I really enjoy that. But, again, I completely get wanting the polished, complete version.

[kate]

<3

I get serialization in general - I did soap operas in my youth and remember when the only way to watch a show was to be home, in front of the TV for it, but I didn't hold on to it the way you did, apparently. As soon as I could tape it and watch later, I was doing that - I had a chunk of X-Files on VHS tapes as well as most of Buffy's later seasons. I buy DVD sets of everything I watch now, because it's just easier (and I torrent or DVR all my regular shows and often mainline three or four eps at a time (or whole seasons, with things like Hannibal)). Apparently I just prefer having more to hang onto, or maybe it's that I find it easier to make connections from ep to ep when I'm watching them one after the next?

I do understand about the immediacy, though, and I definitely would like to capture that if I try it again, but I'd like to be really on top of things and do it right - I feel like there has to be a certain measure of dedication on my part to get the quality I'm looking for. We'll see. I won't have time for it anytime soon, so I guess I'll see if and when things conspire to let me try again. :D

[jenna_thorn]

A friend writes and posts in chapters for exactly that, for the rush that hits and comments give, because it gives her the oomph to revise and finish the next chapter.

All I know is that for me, the one time I tried posting serially, I couldn't go back and tweak details of the earlier chapters into place, so there are slight discrepancies that no one else cares about, but bug me.

I don't know that it's objectively a better or worse story; I'm not a judge of quality in my own writing, and won't pretend to be. But I know that story has a disproportionate number of hits/comments/bookmarks and I don't feel they are earned. It's give the little voice in my head that tells me I cheated a foothold. So I won't be doing it again for that reason, more than the little discrepancies. I don't need to hand over ammunition to my imposter syndrome.

[kate]

I totally understand, as a writer, that having hits and comments gives you a high that makes you want to continue. I've always wanted more hits and comments (I've bemoaned this in public more than once before).

At some point, though, I stopped being as concerned about that and became more concerned with the quality of the fic. I'm glad I did this serial thing, because it was an excellent experience as a writer, but I can tell you that just generally, serials tend to be of worse quality than works written straight through (because of all the reasons I've posted above), and I can see the kinds of mistakes I've made that definitely make this one worse than my straight-through stories. There are things I would never have let myself get away with if I wasn't trying to desperately write and post before the next episode aired.

I completely agree about not being able to fix things after a chapter has posted - I will fix small things (and even medium-sized things) after the fact, but I can't go back and reshape a character's reactions or delete something I put in unthinkingly that is going to be a pain in my ass later.

I also totally understand about the hits/comments/bookmarks, it's bothersome to me, too. I don't have imposter's syndome about writing (and I know how fucking lucky I am, there), but I totally understand. It's always going to bug me that this fic will be among the highest hit/kudosed/bookmarked of everything I've ever posted, because it's just not that good - as a whole. Some of the chapters are actually lovely short fics! But the whole story is only mediocre, not cohesive or particularly interesting, I think.

[havocthecat]

For me, I can't write and post a chapter at a time. I do too much where I have to go back and fill in the blanks later as the story develops. But I really liked reading your musings on it.

[kate]

Ah - I have a few stories that are like that. I'm a linear writer, generally, so serial is an option for me. I know plenty of people who aren't, though, and that's another reason I don't really like serials. It means people who don't write them will always have lower hit/comment/kudos/bookmark counts than those who write them.

It's been an interesting experience, that's for sure. I might like to try it again at some point, more purposefully, but not for a while, I think.

ETA: And actually, this explains why some of the worst stories have huge hit counts, too - if they were written serially, they're going to have 10 times the hit count, even if they're not that good. (And probably a lot of kudos, too, because if the first couple chapters are good, they'll get a lot - even if they become crappy later.)

[nagasvoice]

Having been through a few too many computer hard drive destructions (before the option of storing it unseen on the cloud became a serious option) I tend to want to throw something up as soon as it's even reasonably in order. Not for the hit count, because I'm too new at this to have made that mental connection yet. It's about making sure I get that stuff out to folks before I somehow lose track of that one bit of work.
Also, I may have ideas of where the next bit ought to go, but I've no guarantees it's going to cooperate and cough up something acceptable for the next bit. (Yeah, the worst kind of WIP writer for some readers, I understand.) I'm big on revisions to catch stuff even when I've had great beta readers.
I've consistently edited (after posting) for typos and small-scale bits of clarity when I notice a problem, and nobody seems to object to that.
What I'm wondering: If you give a warning note for it, would it be okay with the community to fix larger problems?
Is anybody going to hate it if you edit earlier chapters when you've run into snags that need changing?
It's much more work for you to go back and rethink things and figure out how to tweak it, but nobody seems to have a problem with the idea of second or third edition edits in print, just with the actual bowdlerization or hack jobs that sometimes get done.
And yeah, you may notice I've even edited this post several times to extend ideas and catch typos...

[kate]

Yeah, I've lost fic a few times (I was super paranoid about it, so I had it at least two places at all times, though I wasn't careful with versioning so then it because a pain in the ass because I didn't know where my most recent copy was), so I can see the appeal of that.

I just... for me, the quality of a story suffers if I'm not writing it with a throughline, with a thought about the overall structure, plot, pacing, and characterization. Those things are all weak in the piece I've been posting, and if I'd done it as I normally write, I would have tweaked a lot of things to make it better.

I don't honestly know if it would be okay to tweak a posted chapter, whether or not you put a note on it. Because I hate reading WIPs, I don't read serials. I imagine people who do would be miffed about it, though, because they know the story so far, and if you write a chapter that doesn't jive with what they know, they're going to be confused about it - though I suppose if you added a note on the beginning of the chapter, that might take care of it.

I don't have a problem fixing typos or other things of that nature in posted fic - no one's going to miss a typo if it's not there. But making big changes (a character's motive or a gift not given) would mess things up, I think. For me, at least, if not for the reader.

As for comments, I do edit sometimes, but I try not to more than once, and it's usually for an ETA rather than typos (I try to re-read before posting to get rid of those). Just generally, I don't think typos matter that much in a format like journaling, and I know that every time I edit, the person I was responding to gets another email - and I don't want to flood anyone's inbox.

[nagasvoice]

I agree, writing and posting in chunks does cause issues with a strong, clear, fast-driving through line. I end up with zigzag stories and odd slants on t hings sometimes. Also, there can be a sort of weird out-of sight out-of-mind challenge there--if I posted it, it's done, right? I don't need to look at it again. Makes it too easy to forget bits and pieces I meant to deal with. I tend to obsessively go back and reread bits to get back in the groove, which helps a lot to solve that problem, but then committing to working on the next bit takes digging back into that older material and dealing with possible comments on it.
When I edit comments I give on blogs etc., I tend to forget that it will send repeated emails--wrestling the idea I'm working on into shape, making sure it won't be misunderstood etc., seems too important at the time.

[kate]

Yeah, that's one of my biggest pet peeves of writing serials. So hard to keep a strong throughline. The kidns of things you're describing - I think I'd make them separate stories in a series, personally. Related stories but not the same.

I definitely have the out of sight out of mind thing, too, and I reread for the same reason. I do that whether I'm writing straight through or serially - but when I'm writing straight through I have the opportunity to streamline if I see things that I can't work with. No such luck with serials.

I guess I write comments like I write fic - if there's any content to them, I let them sit and muse on it for a while, make sure I've said what I want to say in a way I want to say it. Not always, sometimes I'm too excited for that, and if someone is responding to me in real time, that can work out, because we create a thread of conversation. But if people aren't around and we're having a discussion extended over days, I'll take the extra time to check my comments over and streamline before I post. I've worked on a comment for an hour or more sometimes. Sometimes I leave it sit open in a tab and go do stuff elsewhere for a while and come back to it, so I can reread with fresh eyes, make sure I'm saying what I want to say and that I haven't missed responding to some important point.

Contrarily, if it's a throwaway comment, just one or two lines, I don't go back and reread after it's posted. I try not to commit typos, but I also try not to edit comments much. It's a balancing act.

[nagasvoice]

In a sort of tangential reply here, friend of mine posted a link to this program, which plays with an idea we've been thinking about for a long time, a sharing/document/online content structure that can be nonlinear.
I haven't played with it yet, but I can see some intriguing possibilities...
http://twinery.org/

[silverflight8]

Maybe a compromise would be to write it first, and then post it serially? You kind of lose the momentum of feedback (if that encourages you) but it does let you keep editing :) And the fear of writing myself in a corner is why I don't do WIPs either. I read them though!

[kate]

Yeah, that's... well, there are a number of reasons that's not for me. For one, as a reader, that is the thing I hate the most. If I see that someone's finished a story but is posting it serially, I won't read it. I might, if I get recced after it's complete or something, but chances are I will totally ignore it and not even remember it once it's complete.

For another, the serial writing experience is all about doing it a little bit at a time - and having to work around the roadblocks you build yourself. That's the whole challenge.

And the last thing is that I don't write in chapters. When I write massive fics, they're just massive fics, I don't organize them into chapters, and to do that after I was done with the fic would annoy me.

So yeah, probably not for me, though there are certainly plenty of people in fandom who do it.

I mostly live in fear that I won't finish WIPs, so that's why I don't write them. It's bad enough to have a writing folder full of fics I won't finish - having an AO3 account full of fics that are 24/? would be horrible.

[silverflight8]

How do you know someone has written it all and is posting serialized? (Other than them telling you.) I mean, I guess I would notice if they updated one day apart or had an amazing schedule they stuck to for 50 chapters but I follow a lot of WIPs by email (I've been burned by eternal-unfinished WIPs but I've also read a lot of awesome ones, so I keep doing it) and there's no way I could tell.

In your case, since you do like many aspects of serialized writing, I agree: that compromise wouldn't work for you.

[kate]

I only know if they say. It's common for people who post like that to say "this is done, I'm just posting it one chapter a day/couple of days/week" so people who worry that a WIP will be abandoned don't need to worry and can read. Also possibly to garner readers like me, who don't read incomplete WIPs.

There are other ways to tell, and you've nailed one of them there. If they're posting on a very strict schedule, that's sometimes a hint. Other times, the chapters are already outlined - WIPs usually are 1/?, 2/? etc. If it's 1/13, 2/13, etc., I think most people presume the story is already written and just being posted serially for whatever reason.