Why it's hard to make a long serial

Filed: Blog @ 6:37am on April 23, 2011 No comments yet! :(   Word Count: 431

I have discovered that there are multiple “plateau” when writing a serial of independent sexual encounters.

The first few chapters are difficult if your characters and the settings aren’t clear enough in your mind and in your notes. This is what happened with Olivia: I had long term notes for what would occur past chapter 10 and a brief description of what was supposed to happen in the first 10 chapters.

As it turned out, I had just enough material for perhaps 5 or 6 chapters and the following ones were a nightmare to write because I was missing what was suppose to happen at that moment in the story.

Once you get past that initial setup however, you enter the second phase during which the characters are known and the story can move forward. With Pets and Suzy+Jill, it went like a piece of cake.

In both cases, the characters were exploring their new relationship and I knew each of these 6 characters well enough to fuel chapters one by one.

For Cathy and Lindsey however, the initial settings blocked me. I had both girls have various sexual encounters with different types of clients and find myself in need of repeating myself to write new chapters.

In both cases, there isn’t a second phase or a second step. Just random sexual encounters. I thought it would be easy to do, but in reality, this means I need to either vary a lot in what happens or up the ante on every repetition, like I did more or less with Suzy+Jill: each new sexual encounter tries to bring someone new in bed.

I suspect the third block is when a limited duration serial is about to close and the writer is excited to move forward, but still has something to say. This will soon be the case with Susanna.

Susanna, with Dorothy, is in it’s penultimate section. Only the finale and the epilogue (both written in 2001) are remaining to be written, but once I publish them, will the story still be interesting? Will there still be something to be said about Susanna and the other characters?

Let’s say Susanna dies in the finale, would following Dorothy and Simon be interesting enough as a serial ?

I don’t know yet the challenges tied to this problem other than a brief exposure with Sylvana, but I am getting close with Susanna and I will reach it with Lucy roughly at the same time, perhaps helping me prepare Helen’s future.

I started this project to improve my writing skills, and I am learning already a lot. I can’t wait to face my next challenges!

Leave a Reply

FireStats icon Powered by FireStats