About serials

This is what I find rather irksome about serials:
1) Unfinished serials which appear by instalments.
2) Serials which do not state clearly THE END after the last line.
I suggest that authors only sent their serials when they are finished, so that we could enjoy them at a reading.
I have two examples: Dr Keate's Postman Pat And The Fire and Imogen Hart's Deep Cover: I keep going back to them but there's nothing new and I feel frustrated.
What do you think?

I'm one who has started putting only finished serials up for loading. I agree. Some are so good we can't wait for another part. I guess some authors stop at one point to try to figure out what's next. However, some serials are quite long in parts; an ongoing set of events for one or more characters. The bottom line is that you either want to follow along with them or you don't.

I have serial which I just never got to finish off.....I left it hanging. I will come back to close it off, but I know that two years later, apart from me, simply no one will care.

I just don't write enough to be able to hold off until a whole serial or collection is complete before posting. If I used that release strategy, I would only have published a handful of stories on lsf and might as well revert to publishing only on my blog.

As an author, I would be delighted to know someone was waiting on another episode....and would happily put that reader on a notify list and send them a popup when it was posted.

Hmmm....now how do I get my writing skills to a level where someone is eagerly waiting for my next steamy episode?

There are probably two things at work here. Serial as opposed to series. I recently put up a series called Back to School. Basically it was one big story broken into 7 parts. That's complete. I wouldn't post something like that unless it was. On the other hand I do two serials: The Spank Shop (currently at 33 parts) and Phi Gamma Beta (at 7 parts). I'll continue to post parts of that as inspiration strikes me, the difference between those and something like Back to School is that each story is self contained and can be read singly or in order.

Unless we write down which serial is unfinished and keep harking back to it. Which I do.


How about giving us its name? Impossible to guess which is which in the LSF list of blogs.


I'm sure people are!


You're right, that's quite different! It means another subdivision is needed: serials AND series.

Exactly. For "series," think of it like a TV series, that continues episode by episode until it is canceled (rather than until it reaches a narrative conclusion). A serial is simply a longer story broken into parts for easier digesting by the reader.

If I were writing a true serial (and I've only one one, a short one), I would finish it (or at least everything before the final edits on the later sections) before posting the first installment. It's one story, after all, and may require revisions to early sections in order to make later sections work properly. But that's just me. And as for a series, I'd just never do one - it's one sequel after another.

Serials!!? I used to like the sugary crunchy ones best but now I watch what I eat which has lead to a trimmer figure and less frequent visits to the dentist.

Lots of people don't seem to realise that the LSF classification system ALREADY distiguishes between serials and series. What's more, there are two types of series: ordered and non-ordered. It's brilliant!

I hadn't really grasped the serial/series distinction. So far as I know, everything I write that's more than a couple of episodes is a serial ie it will at some point have a conclusion & a resolution. I'm afraid I have a grasshopper mind, which means that I start writing one serial & I get bored, or I think of some erotic fancy that I just HAVE to get down on paper RIGHT AWAY, and I leave something hanging in the air. Also the Brotherhood stories are in several interconnected strands of serials; I'm about to post over the next few weeks both Community Corrections and Correction Committee stories, which have been hanging in the air for months. Sorry, but I have to go to work as well!
But if people are fed up with this, ask me. For instance, I feel I have been nudged to get back to Postman Pat.
And I did forget to write THE END at the end of Mrs Stephens, and if I should do that again a sore bottom might be in order...maybe I should combine that with a trip to France?
And I too am keenly awaiting Imogen Hart taking up the pen again.