Serial Fiction
Originally posted at Uncreated Conscience.
Charles Dickens, Awesome Writer
If there’s something Charles Dickens got right, it was capitalising on the popularity of serially published fiction. Dickens, unlike many of my other favourite authors, had something writers would love to achieve: commercial and critical success within his lifetime.
Now, I like Dickens-he has a real gift for creating iconic characters-but I think the secret to his success was audience participation. In some ways, Dickens operated like modern-day fanfiction writer: writing novels one installment at a time rather than all at once, perhaps even modifying stories according to popular opinion, and ending each installment with a small cliffhanger/teaser to entice the reader to find out happens next. On the day the last installment of The Old Curiosity Shoppe was to arrive in America, mobs swarmed the piers of New York asking the sailors aboard ships, “Is Little Nell alive????” The more obvious comparison to make is comparing Dickens to a TV show, but I want to focus on the writing aspect.
Sarah Rees Brennan, also an Awesome Writer
Those who read my blog know of my enormous girl-crush on Sarah Rees Brennan and her fabulous book THE DEMON’S LEXICON. One thing at which Rees Brennan has always excelled was getting her audience to participate. When she wrote fanfiction, she would first post the stories on her blog, prompting us fangirls to put her on our readers so that we may metaphorically know if Little Nell was still alive. I miss the serial nature of her writing now that she is a published author (I have to wait an entire year for the next installment!), but thankfully she is posting stories on her blog again.
They are short pieces set in the world of THE DEMON’S LEXICON which she has written both to thank her readers and to celebrate hitting a number of sales each week. Rees Brennan calls it her Big Idea. It’s also enormous incentive for her fans to create more buzz about her books so that we might be able to read the next part of the story.
The story she posted this week is a little backstory blurb about Gerald (who is my favourite of supporting characters), so I beg you all, go out and buy a copy of THE DEMON’S LEXICON so I might be able to read the next bit!
Here, have a teaser:
Sorcerer and Stones: Part I
He wondered about it for a long time, and asked his mother once. They were walking back home, hands full of groceries, past the town hall. Tourists who came to Athy always came there first, and a woman he could tell was American - she was wearing very American shorts - stepped out holding her baby as they went by.
The American woman had lifted the baby over her head, and she was looking up into his face as if he was a revelation.
Gerald turned to his mother and asked: “Were you happy to have me?”
Mum considered this. ”Yes,” she said at last, slowly, as if she was trying to remember something someone had told her once and not her own life. “We thought it was wonderful, having twins. A boy and girl. A ready-made family. We took a picture, as soon as we left the hospital, of our new family. Your father was holding Ashling, and I was - I was holding you.”
He hadn’t expected an answer like that. He hefted the shopping bags so he could hurry forward a little, tin cans banging against his legs, and catch up with her. So they were walking side by side.
He was eleven and too old for make-believe, but he told himself that if they weren’t holding shopping bags she would have held his hand.
Read the rest of the story here.