kate | (Reply)

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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.