Writing for the Long Haul
The secret to getting into the mindset for writing an ongoing serial!
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!
In a recent podcast interview, I was asked, “What does a person need in order to prepare themselves mentally for writing a long-running serial?”
To be honest, it made me pause for a second, because while I'm sure the best answer to that question is “it depends on the writer,” I believe there are aspects which are (probably) universal because it is about mindset, as opposed to practical advice.
Practical advice is helpful, of course. I even wrote a book about it! Become an Unstoppable Storyteller explains how to use story beats to construct multiple, nested story arcs for very long-running stories.
But that’s just one book. Over the past year or so, there has been much more focus on how to write serials, and its sister topic, how to effectively serialize a novel. This includes my own book, as well as blogs and books by
, , and others. There is also the invaluable Subscriptions for Authors Facebook group, a resource I recommend all the time to people who are interested in serialization, whether or not they're interested in subscriptions (although admittedly they go well together).Yet, one aspect that tends to be overlooked a lot is the mindset of writing a long running serial.
Which is why I was caught off guard by the question posed by my interviewer.
I had not thought about it as a topic to address because writing long-running serials is a natural instinct for me. It’s what I always want to do when I start a story!
For instance, my novel that should have been a serial is Wolves of Harmony Heights. It took me almost two years to write. For many authors, that's just how long a novel takes, so there was nothing unusual about that. But I did not work on the story consistently, and the process was very haphazard, with me going back and fourth over plot elements…mostly because I was trying to figure out how to hell to end it.
Every ending felt forced. I didn't understand that I was writing a serial and not a novel; that is, it was not a story that was supposed to end any time soon. I knew I could write twice as much and still not be near a conclusive, final-for-true ending, so I spent a lot of time at war with my own creative urges.
“Serial Writing Mindset,” for me, looked more like “accept the inevitable” than “dig to find the inspiration.”
The interviewer’s question, though, made me realize that for a lot of writers, looking down the barrel of writing a 500,000+ word story is intimidating, especially if it will be serialized over the course of several years. Years! That’s a looooong time!
I fumbled through an answer, but it haunted me because even though my advice was pretty good (I hope!), it did not get at the core issue. It was very much “do this because it works” without explaining why it works.
I’ve figured that out, now.
It works because love is always the answer!
Okay, so first let me explain the answer I gave on that podcast*: The two most important things to keep in mind if you're considering writing a long-running serial is your emotional investment in the characters and your intellectual investment in the world building.
To break that down:
First, by “emotional investment,” I mean: fall in love with your characters.
Second, by “intellectual investment,” I mean fall in love with your story’s world.
LOVE IS LOVE, BABY!
Okay, okay, I’ll break that down a bit more in order to explain why love is the answer.
Fall in love with your characters, because you're going to be with them for a very long time.
You might be with them for a year or ten. Longer, even! Some of the longer running serials out there have been going for several decades or more. You don’t have to aim that high! (…unless?!?!??!)
I'm not saying you have to like your characters, because some of them might be villains or just basic jerks. But remember that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
If you are indifferent about your characters, your serial will fail.
Hate them if you have to, but be in love with hating them. You have to feel some kind of passion about those characters to carry you through writing about them over and over and over for years, through whatever adventures, trials, and tribulations you can put them into.
Fall in love with your world, because you're going to be living there for a very long time.
When I say “your world,” people assume I mean “fantasy world building,” or maybe “science fiction world building,” and proceed to tune out if those aren’t their chosen genres. But world building can apply to any kind of story setting.
My friend
is a literary historical fiction author and her work requires an astounding amount of research in the form of, you guessed it, world building. Her fiction is set mostly in the U.S.A. of mid 20th century, which we are all familiar with from movies and books and (for some of us!) lived experience. Her world building is more like reconstruction, as she's recreating a world that once existed but doesn't exist anymore. But despite having a bit of a lead in that she was alive for some of it, she still has to spend a lot of time putting all the historical facts together into a believable way. She’s constantly walking the edge of writing something that simply does not belong, such as characters watching a show that perhaps did not actually start airing on television until a year or two later than the scene is set.In short: she's world building. Whatever genre you write in, you are creating a world for your characters, and if you don't love that world—if you aren't fascinated by that world—then you will never successfully write a long running series about it.
Fall in Love or Fall Flat
My next serial-not-a-novel, Dragon’s Grail, was originally sketched out in 2017 (right after I finished Wolves of Harmony Heights, and that should have told me something, but I can be a very slow learner sometimes). World building wasn't a problem, then or now. I absolutely love the world I created for it, which I call Under the Compass of Heaven, a classic “second world” fantasy setting that is genuinely sprawling in scope, set on a continent that is larger than the Eurasia land mass on Earth. I really enjoyed creating it and still enjoy breathing life into it!
But the characters fell flat.
Which was why it was a story that I did not feel committed to, despite writing over 100,000 words. The characters were amalgams of popular trends at the time, a result of my attempt to chase the popular vote (so to speak). I created them, and I thought they were pretty neat, but I failed to fall in love with them.
I put the story on pause in late 2018, and there it sat for a long time. I knew better than to try to continue it. Until I fell in love with the Astra, Traz, and Xavai, I wouldn't be able to write the story.
It wasn't until late 2023 that I discovered the character's motivations and personalities, mostly by accident. I was watching an old movie and realized that the dynamics of the leads were a great template for the characters I created—not a 1:1 match, I was not planning to turn it into fanfiction (not that there is anything wrong with that), but enough of an inspiration that I finally, finally, started to fall in love.
Only then was I able to look at that story and say yes, this is a serial I can commit to for as long as it takes!
You’ll note that the story is now being serialized on my Ream platform. 😁
Obviously, the advice to focus on your emotional investment in the characters and your intellectual investment in the world building is true for people writing novels as much as it is for people writing serials, but if you plan to write a very long running story it is vitally important for you to not hold back.
You need to fall completely in love with your characters and their world!
There are, of course, plenty of other elements you need to consider when planning out your serial, but your mindset needs to be a priority, not an afterthought. It doesn't matter what the trends are, or how clever your idea is, or what your fans are clamoring for: If you just aren't interested in it, if you aren’t madly in love with it, then don’t bother.
Either fall in love with them, or, in my case, cultivate their friendships and tolerate their eccentricities.
This is VERY true. I'm always nervous for the first month-or-two of embarking on a new serial, because it takes me about that much time to fall in love with the characters and world. No matter how much prep I do, it's only once I've written my way into the story that I really know if it's what I want to do.
And then, by the end, saying good bye to them all is difficult. There's a grieving process. Occasionally I find myself thinking of writing sequels to my earlier books, just so I'd have an excuse to hang out with them some more.
I've been hanging out with the Triverse cast of characters for two and a half years now. Writing them is a joy. They're good company. Except Holland. Holland is an arsehole.