Today’s #AtoZChallenge: Serial Fiction

A to Z Challenge asks bloggers to post every day except Sundays during the month of April on a thematic topic–nothing else. This year, I’ll be covering writing genres.

Today’s genre:

Serial Fiction

Definition

a serial story will be divided into short sections released at regular intervals, like once a week or once a month.

Tips

1. The first three chapters are the anchor for your story. Develop them carefully.
2. Have an overarching plot, characters, and setting that tie all the installments together. Have well-considered chapters and/or section breaks that build the drama and crises.
3. Each installment should resolve an issue while setting up for the next (so readers come back).
4. Serial fiction is light on subtlety. It gets lost during the roll-out.
5. You can write serial fiction in groups as long as your co-authors understand the framework.
6. A lot of serial fiction writers prepare thorough outlines first so they can see the long game on their series.
7. Be prepared to publish weekly–monthly at the slowest.
8. Don’t simply break a novel into sections and call that serialized. A novel has a beginning, middle and end. A serial has elements which motivate readers to keep reading.
9. You might treat your serial fiction like vignettes–separate stories wrapped around central characters, setting–or comics or a space opera.
10. Serial fiction is well-delivered as podcasts, not just ebooks.

Popular Books

1. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
2. Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
3. Whitehall by Liz Duffy Adams, Delia Sherman, Barbara Samuel, Mary Robinette Kowal, Madeleine Robins, and Sarah Smith
4. Bookshots by James Patterson
5. Bookburners by Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Philip K. Dick, Brian Francis Slattery, and Mur Lafferty
6. Belgravia by Julian Fellowes
7. The Innkeeper Chronicles by Ilona Andrews
8. Indexing by Seanan McGuire
9. The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray

More S Genres:

• Steampunk
• Science fiction

Click for complete list of genres

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy, and the thriller, To Hunt a Sub. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer,  a columnist for TeachHUB, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her books at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning. The sequel to To Hunt a Sub, Twenty-four Days, is scheduled for May 2017. Click to follow its progress.