Serials

Or to stay positive: 1a) The right to use unread books for spanking.

But don't use your kindle!

I write a lot of serials. This for my own pleasure as I usually think up an idea, but if I really get into it and the characters develop, then it just grows on me. This has just happened again. What was meant to be a light-hearted shorter (>2k words) has really come to life and will probably end up at about three or four short chapters.

If a reader enjoys part 1 then surely they will carry on reading it.
Sometimes I haven't paid much attention to a serial but then read a really good chapter and then read it all properly.

Another reader's right is to speed read the gist and if you like it go back and read it properly.

I'm afraid that reading papers and appalling documents in my professional life have made me do just that, which is why I've read so many stories, but only concentrated on a small proportion of those.

I agree and it has puzzled me. Being a slow thinker I like time for my story line to develop and reading parts 7 and 6 before 3 and 2 (and in something of that order as my stats have shown!) I'm sure is robbing the reader of essential value. The reading technique I adopt is to look at some of the comments first and if all seems to my taste and interest then I'll start at Part 1 and if all is well carry on from there. If it is a particularly long serial, I might just delve into a middle section to try for the feel of it, then if seeming good it's straight back to Part 1 and on with the show.

Perhaps we should take a tip from the old cinema if, as I believe, some readers look simply for a juicy piece of spanking, and grade the serials by degrees of violence. Remember the old 'U' 'A' and 'X' certification?

How about three levels of severity: considerate/playful, punishment/severe, brutal/judicial.

Then there is the pace: slow/psychological, spanking trot, hot gallop.

Yeah I know, pity the poor validator but I think there is a genuine problem here which I for one find quite galling.

What problem exactly do you mean?

I surely don't need a validator who is spoon-feeding the stories to me. I like to think myself.

The problem being how to persuade the reader to start at Part 1 instead of skipping all over the place and to my mind debasing the full impact of the story that the author intended. I too like to think for myself but I much prefer to have the twist and turns of the original set out in correct order.

I don't think that more detailed validation would solve that problem. If anything, its likely to make the pickier readers even more discriminating in which parts they choose to read.

Ah Patxi, if only we had the time to read and index over 18,500 stories! At the moment, if something is exeptionally severe (though that in itself is highly subjective) it would most likely be noted in the synopsis. And as for those really extreme stories that involve beating someone to a bloodied pulp, you won't find them on this site.

I fully agree with you though in hoping that the reader starts at part 1 of a serial and works through it sequentially. They will miss out big time if they don't!

But I prefer to go back and for in stories, skip parts and to know in advance how the story ends. What makes you happy must not automatically make me happy and what I see in a story must not automatically be what an author intended. Stories- like children - tend to live their own life once they are released. That must not be a bad thing which we have to get under control.

I sometimes wonder if people get a tad obsessed with stuff.

Someone gets some nice comments... they want more and more. Then the person is in such a rush to post their next story - to get more nice comments - they rush to send in story after story and in doing so make all sorts of mistakes for others to sort out... Then they start to question why more people don't comment, why they don't read all of their work, will they get more reads if they change orientation or age and then they want to control how people read the work and in what order. They want the contests to be done differently...

Tis all a bit bonkers to me, where does it go from here?

Personally I think readers should be allowed to read as and how they like, whether it conforms the the conceived norm or not...

Sometimes I think they more people get the more they want...

Well, one of the few current television programs I watch is called "Once Upon a Time," and each episode features present-time events in the modern world (a strange, isolated town called Storybrook) intermingled with past events (featuring parallel characters) in the fairty-tale Enchanted Forest. While the modern-day events are shown chronologically, the past events are shown more or less as 'flashbacks' and therefore aren't necessarily chronological.

One has to pay attention and keep especially close track of things that happened at various times in the magical world--it's probably how the Tralfamadorians in Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s novel, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, looked at existence with their non-linear perception of time... --C.K.