Guest Blog: Arachne Jericho

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As it turns out, Arachne Jericho is more than just a really awesome name. She’s a writer of serial fiction and I’m excited for her to explain a medium about which I know nothing!

Sounds fun, though, and maybe I’ll try it soon. Who knows?

Thanks for coming, Arachne!

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There are times when I regret, really really regret, starting Crime and Violins. It’s a serial.

In many ways a serial runs counter to the best interests of the writer: quality writing from the very start, need for an extra-strong grip on the story from the beginning, more danger of losing the reader when the plot starts to flag.

In other words, serials are wicked hard.

On the other hand, learning to ride its dynamic nature, and ride it well, is a challenge that teaches you to make everything count. And that’s everything from scenes to characters, from words to time spent in front of the keyboard. If there’s a preventative for debilitating writer’s block, it’s a serial on a schedule.

And in the end, the lessons of the serial form carry over well to books. Because it’s nice to get books a) confidently written, b) done, and c) imbued with a story that never lets readers go.

Here are four of the most important lessons I’ve learned so far.

The Four Lessons of Serials

Lesson 1: Every character matters.

I’m going to talk about plot, actually. And the first thing about plot is that every character matters. Odd, but bear with me.

Serials thrive on a story that constantly moves forwards, which means that plot can never stagnate and thus must be of decent quality. However, there are two important points to keep in mind about serials:

• Writers aren’t perfect. Fully pre-constructed plots run into snags, and in a serial you must either never run into a snag (hah!) or figure out how to incorporate the snag naturally.
• Readers aren’t perfect. They may forget the finer details of what was going on, but they rarely forget strong characters or the events surrounding them.

Most of the events in a story are ultimately the result of character interactions. If you have characters who are “alive”—i.e., you are sensitive to how they react to situations and other characters—then when the plot snags or even stops completely, you can generate plot on the fly by simply having characters interact with each other and make decisions—decisions which will move your plot again, albeit not necessarily in the direction you originally planned.

Now a well-rounded plot contains not only the results of events that your main characters initiate or participate in, but also the results of events that your other characters create and meddle with. This means that generating a well-rounded plot on the fly means thinking of every character—secondary, antagonist, even some walk-ons—as if they were the main character, working out what they want and what they would do.

People remember characters best, but no serial can survive without an interesting plot.

Lesson 2: Grow your plots.

Starting writers tend to think in straight lines. Plots are straightforward, single-threaded without a subplot, and there are few twists (or perhaps one twist, all the way at the end, where a twist belongs the least). And as tempting as such plots are, they suffer from two main deficits:

• They run out too quickly. Well, duh; there’s nothing impeding the flow, no turns or forks or anything.
• They’re less interesting. Yes, there’s the lack of turns and forks; but there’s also a lack of interaction with other plot threads (as there are none), and few plot lines are exciting all the time.

Serials require plots that branch and grow, throwing up obstacles and wrong turns and tempting lines of investigation like nobody’s business. They require subplots that can pick up the slack when the real plot is resting, because slack is a great way to lose reader interest—and for a serial, that’s usually a lost of the reader entirely.

At the same time, keeping a handle on the main plot is important. It’s one thing to create a complicated weave of plots and subplots; it’s quite another to try to present a tangle to your reader. You need to keep moving forwards over your story’s tributaries, not get lost down them.

Plots moving forwards: that’s pretty much the definition of a serial right there. And of a compelling story.

Lesson 3: Start every installment strongly.

Remember the hook? That’s the thing that pulls people into the beginning of your novel. Essential.

You need to do it for every installment in a serial. Every time you step onto the stage, you must intrigue and beguile your audience, remind them that it won’t be a waste of their time to read this new segment, because it will have been some time since last they saw you.

The principle for a great start to a book is the same for a great start to an installment: begin at the point where things are different. When I end one installment with a police inspector dialing up the bomb squad to bring some evidence upstairs, the next installment does not start with the bomb squad walking up the stairs. Instead, it starts with the bomb casing pieces on the table, being examined by the main character—with the first thing that changes the status quo from the last installment.

You can think of this as scissoring out the boring parts. In fact, the fun thing about serials is that installments are great excuses to break what would be a long scene in a book into two, and skip boring stuff with more panache than mysterious skips of time without a scene break.

Now, imagine if you did this for every scene in your book. Suddenly things are not only in motion but stay in motion—and that’s the key to enthrallment.

Lesson 4: Juggle your story questions skillfully.

Pacing is as important a part of storytelling in serials as it is for non-serials. The problem with serials is that scenes that require a slower pacing, like two friends discussing something quietly in the rain, can easily lead to an installment that peters out at the end, leaving the reader with no strong motivation to come back. And since the next installment isn’t going to be here for a week, this is a bad place to leave your story. Even scenes that raise blood pressures and heart rates can peter out an installment if you’re not careful.

The key to the dilemma is to keep an eye on your story questions. From your very first installment, there was at least one important story question that people wanted to know the answer to. It’s not necessarily the question of the story, but whatever it is, it’s at least a little intriguing and not so obviously answered. Story questions vary in size and importance, but what they don’t vary in is presenting motivation to the reader to keep going.

So in every installment, bring a story question to the forefront—it’s not enough to let it idle at the back, remember, it’s weeks between your first installment and your current one—and then either let it ride out unanswered past the end, or let it develop in importance or raise another, more important question. Whether your installment’s paced fast, slow, or in between, that alone will pique your readers’ interest.

If you’re handier at juggling your story questions, you could bring more than one up in a serial, answer some, let the others fall back at different points, while still leaving at least one question to ride out at the end.

Do this throughout your book, too. That’s how you grab the reader and never let them go.

More on Serials

Maybe it’s unfortunate, but a serial fits into how I work: small installments at a time, feeling my way forwards a few thousand words at a time. I’m not great at following outlines, I’ve found, although I still use them to structure my thoughts, and I still use notes. But when it comes to writing, I can only see ahead a little at a time—well, that and the great big ending. I do see that one quite clearly.

(It tickles me because this seems to be the way Neil Gaiman works. Not that I’m anywhere near as good as he is.)

If you want to find out more about serials, the best way is to read some good serials—especially if they’re finished, so you can see how a serial works from beginning to end. I suggest the following collected serials:

• The Electric Church, by Jeff Somers. One of the most entertaining science fiction thrillers out there, and one of the most recent and best example of the serial form. Even my non-SF fan friends like it.
  Jeff also talks about serials at Ficlet’s The Big Idea: Jeff Somers.
• David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. Basically, Dickens is the Mozart of the serial form. Any serial by him is a learning experience.
• The Green Mile, by Stephen King. One of the first “modern” experiments to revive the serial form, this was an astounding success. All installments now are available in normal bookstores everywhere, and Amazon.com, but the Subterranean Press has a dolled-up special edition available.

Arachne Jericho’s main blog is Spontaneous Derivation, where she discusses the unholy marriage of writing and blogging. Her fiction and her Sherlock Holmes screeds are kept elsewhere. In her not very copious spare time, she continues writing Crime and Violins: The Well-Tempered Clavier.

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Tags: Charles Dickens, Crime and Violins, David Copperfield, Ficlet's The Big Idea, guest blog, Jeff Somers, Neil Gaiman, plot, serial fiction, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes screeds, Spontaneous Derivation, Stephen King, The Electric Church, The Green Mile, writing