What Makes a Serial?

On the form, function, and framework of serials as a unique narrative form

Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author and a podcaster who is also a librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!

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What is a serial? How do you write one? Do serials have an underlying structure, such as beats? Why isn’t it the same as a serialized novel?

Wait, what? A serial is not a novel?

It’s not, and that is probably the biggest insight I had when I started toying with the idea of serializing. The reason I had that insight, though, is what led me to writing Become an Unstoppable Storyteller: no one could tell me how to structure a long running serialized story.

There was (and is) a lot of advice on serializing in general, such as why it can be great for authors and platforms that are good for serializing, but past that, the “instructions” were similar to writing a novel, with the usual guidance on genre, style, tone, and structure.

In fact, they were exactly the same.

And I realized, as I read all of that advice, that I did not want to write a novel.

So where did that leave me?

This journey started in 2019, when I was working on a series of novellas that I planned to publish serially on KU. It was not something that a lot of authors were doing, but the idea resonated with me strongly as both an author and a fangirl.

I figured at a reasonable ten to fifteen novellas of 30k words each, the final story would be a substantial 300k to 450k words long…longer than a typical novel, and just as long as some novel trilogies. Not quite in GRRM territory, but considerable nonetheless.

Yet, given the super-structure I wanted for it (ten to fifteen medium-length stories building up to a very long story), I knew that most of the advice on how to organize a novel would not work.

I talked with authors I knew who were doing serialized stories on Vella and studied other long running stories (including webcomics, manga, literature, and television/web shows) to come up with some kind of beat structure I could follow. Yes, I’m very much a pantser (aka “discovery writer”), but I like to have beats to write to, just to keep me on target.

I looked around for guidance, but found nothing useful. Most of it was in the form of advice on writing trilogies or even a long-running series of novels, but nothing about writing a big, long story that would be shared/sold/posted in shorter installments over an extended period of time.

There are quite a few long-running graphic/comic stories that fit that description, especially in the realm of Japanese manga. But even then, a lot of the advice for starting a webcomic was focused on drawing and storyboarding and associated tech.

I googled “beats for long running stories” and “how to outline a long-running serialized story” but there was simply nothing out there. I could not believe it, honestly, until I finally realized the nature of the actual problem I had run into, which was that no one had clearly identified and defined those kinds of stories as their own, independent story form.

So I did.

Pretty ostentatious of me, to be honest, but I’m definitely the “where angels fear to tread” kind of writer when it comes to things like this.

Me: I don’t see what I need!!!! Time to write it! *rolls up sleeves*

Everyone around me: [Pikachu.gif]

I found that once you parse out “serial” as an independent story form, unique in and of itself, it opens the way for thinking about how to structure the narrative without being tied to limitations of production, that is, the size and shape of a “book.”

Furthermore, serials have different problems from novels (or novel series). There is overlap, and yes, many well known beat structures work for both, but as with any literary form, knowing what you are dealing with helps you decide what you are going to create.

My original spreadsheet on serial beats helped me a lot in pulling the threads of my nascent idea together by applying beat structures to the ideas I have. Serials, I decided, are usually over 100,000 words, shared in installments over time, and features overlapping long-running story arcs. I call them “generative” stories because they often build on themselves in ways not really possible in even really long novels. (Well, I mean, there is War and Peace. No rule is 100%!)

So, my book Become an Unstoppable Storyteller is an early attempt to try to identify what serials are in a way that authors can use the information to plan, develop, write, and publish their own long running stories online. Honestly, I hope other writers jump on this concept and write their own interpretations of “serial as a narrative form.” The more the merrier!

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