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 03:03 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
on 5/24/14 09:42 am (UTC)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.
no subject
on 5/25/14 04:01 am (UTC)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