Serials | The Future of Storytelling?

If Charles Dickens can do it, why can’t we?

Before such a loaded question can be answered, I think it's best to define "serial" as it's not a common term that many are familiar with. Even I'll admit, I only just learned about what it was a few years ago but I've been fascinated by the concept ever since.

Serialized Fiction: Sequential installments of a larger piece of work. Typically fictional in content and can continue infinitely (or many years).

Back in the day, before there was the internet, serials would be printed in newspapers and magazines. The first serial was Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers. Written in 1837, this piece of fiction was a little over 300k words! In those days, that’s a lot, which, if published in one book, would amount to a lot of paper and would be much too costly even for a middle-class citizen to purchase. Hence, the idea of publishing one chapter every week in a newspaper that was in wider circulation to all classes of citizens was born. And you thought serials were a new idea?

Fast-forward to the age of technology combined with the age of "give it all to me now" because of things like Netflix dropping entire series in one day, it's no wonder the concept of a serial is coming back and steadily growing. Don't get me wrong, the idea of having an entire series of my favorite tv show drop in one day seemed very cool to me back then, but now...I really miss the days of waiting an entire seven days before the next "new" episode. And even though many shows on network television still adhere to that model, one thing has changed there as well: seasons just aren't as long as they used to be. Networks just don't want to invest money into a full 24 episode season as they did back in the 90's with shows like 90210 or Alley McBeal. TV shows are lucky if they get thirteen episodes and they consider that a full "season" now?!

This brings me back to the idea of serialized fiction. True, it's not images on a screen, but the nostalgia is still there for many of us. And, in order to understand the full breadth of what serialized fiction has morphed into since the days of Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, we must go to the source. Now, many of you might disagree with me and say it was someone else who did this long before Wildbow's WORM, and you may be right, but I'm going to start there because it really did become a bit of an overnight success depending on the social circles you frequented back in the early 2000s. 

Just to kind of put it into perspective:

Pickwick Papers = ~300k words

WORM (+Twig)  = 1.6m words!!

You read that right! But let me further explain what a serial looks like today. It's much different than yesteryears when I'm sure Charles Dickens had loads of time to write his tome.

The serial writers of today are releasing "episodes" at least twice a week. Each episode might be as short as 5k words or as long as 20k words depending on who you're reading! And many of these well-known serial writers have been keeping up this level of consistency for years! Now, that's a dedication from both writer and reader.

Here is a list of just a few serials I've looked into. But the number of episodes they already have out is just too vast for me to ever hope of playing catch up. Do you recognize or are you currently reading any of them:

Pirateaba - The Wandering Inn

Wildbow - Pale

IS IT TOO LATE TO GET IN ON THE SERIALIZED FICTION GAME?

Ask Amazon who started Vella recently for the sole purpose of entering the serialized market themselves? I’m sure they would not have put so much time and effort into it if they didn’t think it was worth it. Granted, Amazon is not known for starting and sticking with something if it doesn’t stick for a long period of time, so it’s likely that Vella won’t last. But while it does, and if you’re looking for an in to the serial game, that might be a good place to start. And many people use Wattpad or RoyalRoad as the vessel for containing and sharing their serial.

For old-school serial story writers, they typically will use a FREE WordPress(dot)com URL and house it all there. I would only recommend that once you find you’re getting traction through a service like Vella or Wattpad or RoyalRoad and then you can give an audience a place they can go to find other works you’ve written or a way to easily read your serial in totality and easily.

I will caution that you MUST read the TOS (Terms of Service) for any program you choose to use. Especially, Vella, which may not allow you to post your work on other mediums and on their site. You don’t want to be taken down for TOS violation before you’ve even started!

As for if it’s too late because you notice hundreds or even thousands? I give the answer I give to all people who feel this way about whatever they want to start doing but don’t because “someone else is doing it.” It’s good to have what you might consider “competition” because that means you already have a built-in audience! think about it, when you find something you like, let’s use an author and book series that you’re reading. What do you do when you’ve read all the books in the series and you know you have a full year before the next one is going to release? Do you sit around and wait or do you search the bookstore for an author in the same genre to tide you over till that release you’ve been waiting for comes out? The latter? I thought so. 

Think of serials in much the same way. If your competition has thousands of readers and they only release a story once or twice a week, that means the other five or six days a week that reader is likely looking for someone else to read. That someone else could potentially be you! And in this day and age where we all are just binging books and television shows, it’s not unreasonable to think that readers of serials are able to and willing to read multiple serials from different writers (if the story is good) on any given day.

So, no it’s not too late. If anything, you’re right on time. Cause the audience is there. All you have to do is dive right in with your amazing story idea and go the distance!