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May 19, 2003
Reviving the Serial Novel
Last week I ruminated publicly (which is basically what one does in a weblog, duh) about writing fiction in public, as opposed to just ruminatin' .
The idea's been knocking around in my head ever since. Tonight I got around to doing a Google search for "blog novel serial." Lo and behold, there's a growing number of serialized novels presented via blogs. Just a few:
I haven't done more than peruse the table of contents of these, so I can't attest to the quality of these attempts. But it has my gears turning -- weblogs seem like an excellent medium for the serialization of a novel.
Hey, it worked for Dickens. :-)
Posted May 19, 2003 10:24 PM
Comments
To clarify: Agent to the Stars isn't actually a novel I serialized; I just put the whole thing up. However, I did serialize another novel on my Web site last year -- Old Man's War -- and the results of that were pretty nice: I sold the book to Tor, which will be publishing it in hardback in 2004.
Comments by John Scalzi . Posted May 21, 2003 02:26 PM
For people who have a tendency to write draft after draft but never actually send anything to a publisher, serialization is a remarkable experience. Those daily deadlines really change the way you think.
And building a fan base, however small, was stunning. Sure, I hoped to attract readers but it wasn't until those first emails started to arrive that I realized I could get to know the fans personally, read and sometimes use their plot ideas, and even find them proofing my work for me.
Weblog serialization has a lot going for it.
Hugh
American Invisible
Comments by Hugh Madison . Posted May 22, 2003 10:30 PM