I seem to get strange cravings when I work on Wednesday nights...
Many books and short stories used to come out in serialized form in journals. Sweeney Todd was originally published that way, and I have an aunt who published her first horor novel that way back in the 70's (and got a lot of money for it, too). The anticipation of each part must have been like a print soap opera or hit TV drama. There are probably some magazines that still do this, though their popularity is obviously questionable.
It seems to me that there must be some good creative writers out there using blogs to serialize stories. I really want to find one, but can't think of any good keywords. It seems like a blog would be a good place to share stories with the world, though difficult to find. I'm sure plenty of fan fic writers do this, but I'm not too interested in that...
Though I think this all stems from having just finished the last Twilight book and being disappointed in the silly ending. Actually, the whole last book was incredibly silly, even in comparison with the first three. I wanted a happy ending, but expected something to happen first. Maybe online fan fiction is just what I need, someone must have written a better ending somewhere.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Mary,
I don't know off-hand of any blogs used to serialize stories (but you're right-- there must be some!). At one point I had decided that it would be fun to use Twitter as a vehicle for sudden fiction, but lacking any good ideas of my own I attempted to "serialize" a short story that I had already written. It was a tedious exercise and I gave up after half a dozen tweets. I'm still convinced there's some potential there, but maybe not for me!
One medium that is absolutely suited to story serialization is podcasts. I've become a great fan of podcaster/writer Mur Lafferty's "podiobooks"-- stories or novels told in weekly installments, reminiscent of old time radio stories. She has two complete podiobooks (one of which, Playing For Keeps, was just published as a print novel) and a serialized audio drama called the Take Over which is in progress. I especially love her work because it is all Creative Commons licensed.
You can also check out http://www.podiobooks.com/ for more serialized audio books. They tend to lean sci-fi & fantasy, though. Maybe podcasts are a natural draw for that genre?
This is awesome, thank you so much! I'm definitely going to check out the names you gave me, I love audio books. I do like some sci-fi and fantasy, as long as it doesn't remind me of my My Little Pony days!
We've started a blog for what I am calling a web serial (werial?).
It is an experiment to see if we can attract enough interest.
The intention is to put up two short chapters a week.
My wife tells me I am writing a 'chick' book.
Hmmm.
You have to like a story that begins with:
"He was snoring and wearing a loincloth," was how Michele Martin described the way she had first encountered Don Breeley.
Post a Comment