Serialization is apparently in vogue now, though I haven't been following the trends that much, since by the time my own project is ready for release things could be completely different. That being said, this particular trend interests me for more than one reason, to the point where it seems worth commenting on here.
As I've mentioned, the book I'm working on is long and multithreaded, and to try to cram it into a typical 300-page genre format just wouldn't work for the material. You would think I could just break it into 2-3 shorter works, but for story reasons I don't think that would work very well. The primary reason is that the major characters don't come together until relatively late in the story. This is a no-no for formula fiction, but it's necessary for the story, and while there are mitigating elements such as tenuous connections earlier on, I accepted early on that this was simply a condition of the project.
It's also a condition that may make it impossible to get it traditionally published, but I've accepted that all along as well. Of course, there are longer works that make it in the market, and nothing's impossible. One of the reasons long books don't get published often is that paper is expensive and a thousand-page book costs twice as much to produce as a 300-page book. That means it has to cost more, which supposedly limits the buying audience. I assume publishers know their business, so I have no reason to doubt this being true.
Anyway, with ebooks it's obviously not a problem. I mean, on one hand I'm spending three times as long writing something I really can't charge any more for, but on the other hand, I don't mind as long as I like the end result (and ideally someone else does too). It's kind of like grinding through a two-year degree in writing fiction, minus the tuition and guidance. Regardless, here we are.
I've always intended this book to be the first in a series, though if no one likes the first one there'll be no point in continuing the line. But it's a bit of a chunk to digest at once. Cutting it in half or thirds is problematic: for the reasons above, I worry that the shorter books wouldn't be complete stories and would thus leave readers confused and/or pissed off. So I started looking at serialization as a medium for breaking up the page count wherein chunks that weren't complete stories could possibly be acceptable.
In reading some serials myself, I've noticed that most seem to not work that way. That is, each serial installment is a complete story, though later installments will tend to follow the same characters or at least the same setting and premise. The well-known Wool is a good example, without getting into any spoiler detail. I've noticed the same pattern in a number of books sold as novels that really are not, notably the Night Watch series. Each of those books contains three interrelated (or at least related) short story/novella-length stories.
And while I love all the stories mentioned above--Wool included--to be honest, I don't really like the format.
Like a lot of hardcore genre readers, I have the patience for long works. I've mentioned before that I like to stick with a story world and its characters for a long time. So breaking things up into little stories is kind of...well, off-putting for me. On the other hand, for the writer and publisher it's loaded with benefits. The story arcs are clear and well-defined: self-contained. They make it possible to sell a piece at a time, or compile several of them and sell them together. Being on that side of the fence now, I'm faced with a dilemma...or rather, I was at the beginning; it's far too late now. The dilemma: do it the way I want to, and that I think the material calls for? Or design the project as a series of smaller chunks that would make my life easier?
Well, the answer there was obvious. I decided to bite the bullet and go the route of the protracted arc. Taking the short-arc route would mean choosing a completely different project, and I knew what project I wanted to do. If I wasn't writing the book I wanted to be writing, it would just be a job, and since the odds are against me getting paid for it in either case, I decided to heap on the risk. Maybe next time I'll go the other route. It really depends on the material.
I'm hoping, though, that serialization proves to be the solution. Serial installments are different from separate books in a series because they are thought of as a single work in parts. While I haven't come across any myself, I'm told that there really are works out there that are long stories broken into serialized chunks rather than separate shorter stories that get bound into an omnibus at the end of the process.
So the question becomes, how self-contained do the segments need to be, before readers will get to the end of a segment and find themselves feeling unsatisfied?
Well, obviously I don't know the answer. But I've studied enough fiction theory lately to have a theory of my own. As with fractals, stories are built in layers that resemble each other at different scales. Wheels within wheels. To simplify down to the common three-stage model of beginning, middle and end, you can look at a book that "works" and see these stages at the paragraph, scene, chapter, subplot, part, book, and overall series levels. This is just the way it is (though sometimes three is five or more if you prefer to look at the middle in more detail). And it's certainly what works for drama, and what readers expect, mostly without consciously realizing it.
What does this mean for serializing a monolithic work? I'm thinking it means that the serial installments have to capitalize on the natural tendency (or really, author-contrived tendency, through massive work) of a longer work's part-level segments to have a certain amount of self-containment. If the parts of my book take the protagonist through the right amount of change, that could be enough to make not-totally-self-contained parts of a larger story work as serial installments.
There's another dynamic at work, though, which interestingly conflicts almost directly with the idea that it's desirable for smaller segments to be complete. I refer to the cliffhanger device, where the reader feels like things are coming to a head, then finds the tension being built up to a head, e.g. the hero apparently being killed, and then bam! a chapter or part break. Prolonging tension is key to a reader's enjoyment of a novel, and the cliffhanger is a major component of that. And yet, you can't both finish the story in a given segment and carry the tension over the border of that segment.
Let's look at chapters specifically rather than segments of various sizes in general. Obviously within a book, you can have some chapters which end in cliffhangers and others that serve to end a subplot/mini-arc. Generally this is how it's done in most books, and therefore you could say, of course it makes sense to have each serial installment end in resolution. On the other hand, I've found that the page-turningest page-turners seem to never resolve the tension until the very, very end, if even then. Some of the most avant-garde sci-fi seems to build things up to crazy levels and then just end, with a certain amount of tension relief (like popping a balloon rather than letting the air out more moderately) but without really explaining what happened. And I've found that, despite that being something of an annoyance, a lot of my favorite sci-fi has been like that.
So, does a serial installment absolutely have to end with the end of a smaller story, or not? I don't know. But my plan right now is this: I'm going to do my best to shape the elements of my story into discrete parts that will be enjoyable to begin, continue, and finish reading. But there will be cliffhangers after each one, because I believe in and enjoy that, and as a reader, it keeps me coming back for more. And the main threads of the larger story will be ongoing, with tenuous connections at best in the meantime, until they slam into each other in the penultimate or even ultimate installments. And all of that put together will be a book, which hopefully will be the first book in a series.
Because at the end of the book, there's a cliffhanger, too.
Or maybe I'll come to my senses and magically see another answer. Time will tell. Or you can, if you have one. Share your thoughts!
No comments:
Post a Comment