Writing chaptered fic
5/21/14 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kateSo, 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.
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.
For easy organization later:
no subject
on 5/22/14 04:23 am (UTC)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*
no subject
on 5/22/14 04:43 am (UTC)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
no subject
on 5/22/14 02:48 pm (UTC)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