I woke up today thinking about the history of publishing as I am sure each one of you did as well. In the hay day of British novels, it was customary to publish the novel in serial installments. For example, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations was published in weekly serial editions for 36 weeks! Given this information, I wondered if one could write a full length novel online by publishing it in serial editions. The limited web search that I performed courtesy of Google search and Guinnessworldrecords.com seems to indicate that only a few brave, previously well published souls have succeeded. (Please note: There are many amateur writers that have blogs and websites on which they publish serial installments of stories.)
So, I thought I would try publishing my own story in serial installments but with a twist!
What is the twist you ask? Well, I will tell you....
While I do not plan on posting anything nearly as long as the first installment of Great Expectations, I will post the start of a story, and I will add to it as inspiration strikes (a write-as-you-publish approach!). If the anvil of inspiration happens to strike you, my dear blog followers, please leave a comment containing plot suggestions, character suggestions or any criticism/critique that you have! I will then incorporate these ideas into the story as it unfolds. I hope this interactive storytelling will be a rewarding experience for all!!!
And now, let the narrating commence!
This sounds amazing! Can't wait to read it!
ReplyDeleteActually, serial novels are pretty common online. Check out MeiLin Miranda's "An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom" or Alexandra Erin's "Tales of MU"--they've been running almost 4 years, IIRC. I think MeiLin also runs a collective site for online serial novelists' web-hosting. Her book was crowdfunded and is quite excellent. Worth checking out.
ReplyDeleteReg Sarianna's comment - Yes, I agree that there are several authors publishing novels in serial installments on the internet, what I don't think they are doing is initiating an interactive conversation with their readers. I don't think I was very clear in my intro paragraph above (so I have edited the content to clarify) but I am not just publishing parts that I will write or have previously written with a specific plot in mind, but rather with an intent to incorporate story suggestions from my blog followers as the story develops online. If this is what these sites did, then I missed it when I was going through their website and I apologize ;).
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment and I look forward to more!!!