Serials

As a relatively new author I may not yet have earned my right to comment, however I shall, with the thought that others may share my views.
Over the last few weeks I have noticed a proliferation of multipart serials, batch loaded, each episode of which is relatively short. This must put a tremendous strain on the site validators who categorise and provide a synopsis for each item. It also means the casual browser is faced with a listing page which may seem to contain little variety. And as we all know with Google, search items have to appear on the top page or they risk getting ignored.
Certainly no one wishes to discourage contributions of all sorts. I have written serials myself and have another in process, but try to do so in the style of TV soaps or Dickens magazine installments. Each episode is a story, complete in its own right, with the next due in a week or two. Even Dickens made readers wait a month to discover whether Oliver Twist would get 'seconds' or the cane. (for the record, he got the cane.)
I wonder whether there would be support for and it would be possible to load batch submissions of this kind under an overall heading carrying a classification and synopsis, reducing the workload on validators but still allowing readers to read the individual items within a folder.
Just a thought...

First off you always had the right to comment, (especially on my stories...LOL), and you didn't even need to be a author.

If you check things out there are different ways to submit a story rather then a series. We can have a series, a "ordered" or "unorder" sets of stories etc etc etc. Every one of us write differently and if one wants to do a story one way or the other, so be it.

I have found submitting a lot of stories at once almost guarantees the number of views and comments on successive stories will drop like a rock, versus spacing a serial over a month or two, but to each their own choice.

I don't know about "batching" things together like you suggest, it could be done I suppose but I like this place exactly as it is.

Cheers

LOL - Like your subtle comment CS. Sorry, I just can't work out how to do a quote thingy as per your comment.

What you do is highlight the text you want to quote e.g. "opb is the most fantastic writer on the site" and then click the word "quote" which appears in the top left of the original comment you wish to quote from. Then by some clever Febrosity the text appears in the reply box.

Of course you can comment rnr.

I understand what you are saying but I suspect that the extra level of complexity involved in programming such a change might be greater than the time saved by it.

I think it's up to authors to section off their long stories into proper chapters, as you said, with each chapter serving a purpose in advancing the overall story.

Back on topic now. Multipart serials. I have an opinion on that that I've formed after having published a few of those here. I've done it both ways, all at once and spread out over time. I think the best way is to publish one part at a time separated by 48-72 hours between parts. The parts should be at least 1500 words and no greater than 5000 words. This may mean you have to aggregate some chapters if you use short chapters. I've noticed that 1500-5000 words is the best range for length, especially in a serial.

The reason for this is that the half life of a story here is roughly 48-72 hours. Once a story hits the board interest in it will be at its peak during this period. After 72 hours it begins to decline. So using this timing strategy you keep reader interest high. Load all of it at once and readers are overwhelmed. Load it in parts too far apart and they forget about it. (note that this is for "serials" not "series". Serials have a continuous story arc. Series are stand alone stories with common characters and settings. Think "24" vs. "Cheers").

Timing is tricky because the story gets published when the validators are done with it. But if you submit a part then wait until it publishes, submit the next a few hours or a day later because it takes about 48 hours from the time you submit until you see it pop up on the board.

I did this last Summer with my "summer blockbuster movie", MENACE FROM MONGO, and it worked pretty well. People who started to follow the serial maintained interest as each part rolled out every few days. They got intrigued and wanted to see what happened. I've done the same with shorter serials that I've published since then.

This means, however, that you have to write the whole thing before you publish even one part. Make sure you've got it exactly like you want it and then pull the trigger.

I have similar observations to yours with regard to the site dynamics and tend to agree with your conclusions. I have only been aiming to publish every 7-10 days and have been quite gratified to see a number of readers then going through all the parts sequentially. Its a pity however that these readers, who obviously enjoy the story, so rarely comment.
Like you I have composed the entire story before publishing even the first episode. Some on paper, the rest in my head.
I still however feel that authors who submit a long batch of relatively short items, should try to find a way of grouping them, both to reduce the load on validation and also to avoid 'clogging up' the listings.

I wouldn't make a rule about that but I do think it falls into the area of "best practices". I'd encourage authors to group relatively short chapters so that you don't have ten parts of a serial taking up the entire front page.

As for commenting on parts, once again most comments are lodged early when a story is new. The more active commentators here tend to jump on new material (not a bad thing, they've already commented on the older stuff). After that it fades to a trickle and the NCR's (Non Commenting Readers) take over. That is who I see sloughing through old serials and stories downloading dozens at a time.

Some of the serials on my author's page weren't written as serials but as long stories. Due to the library's structure it can be hard so someone to read part of a story then come back to it, and every time I've asked on the forums about long vs multiple part stories, readers reply that they prefer the story broken up into chunks. Christmas Across the County Line and Arizona Vacation were were both broken into serials and I'm working on a couple of others that will also be broken into pieces.

Since the entire "serial" is written before I post and it's really one long story, I send in all the parts at once.

Goodgulf

I tend to write one-part serials, which are published all at once.

Part of me wishes I had done that with the serial I'm working on now. Not sure I would have made any sweeping changes to the earlier chapters, but I'm sure I would have tweaked them a bit here and there. Maybe next time...

I imagine there are some readers who won't even give a serial a chance unless they know its already complete. Posting the chapters at regular and frequent intervals as Rollin suggests would probably help assure them that, yes, if you start reading this, you will get a chance to read the whole thing.