A Chapter system

[disasterifickaz]

Title
A Chapter system

Short, concise description of the idea
Fan Fiction authors are in desperate need of a system capable of linking chapters in the same story.

Full description of the ideaHopefully you're aware of the number of writers and Fan Fiction writers in particular who make use of your site. It would be exceptionally helpful if you would

Comments

[boredinsomniac]

Thank you for your suggestion! I can see that a way of linking chapters would be useful, but I've never used FanFiction.net and I'm wondering about the details. Would you mind commenting here with a brief description of the chapter system you'd like to see on LiveJournal?

Regards,
Maura
Suggestions moderator

[disasterifickaz]

I would love to see a system that allows us to connect chapters in a single system. Something along the lines of: when we create a post or edit a post, we have the option to 'add new entry/chapter'. LJ would then, upon publishing, link the entries together allowing a reader to read through a multi-chapter story/entry without having to resort to a master list (which I'm using now and is a serious pain in the butt) or searching back through twenty pages of journal entries to find the next chapter/entry in the series

[pauamma]

Wouldn't tags work for that?

[trixieleitz]

From a reader's point of view, tag navigation isn't always ideal, especially if there are tens of chapters. If you click the tag link, you end up at the last page of chapters and have to fiddle around to get back to somewhere you can start reading.

Yes, a reader could maybe create a style that reversed the entry order and configure it to display all of the tagged entries on one page (unless there is some upper limit I'm not aware of), and that would get you a chronological list of chapters, but that's still non-intuitive and fiddling around.

[siderea]

I also have a use case for this feature, and am not a fanfiction writer. Every two years, I write a massive guide to a week-long local music festival; I divide the posts up by days of the festival, for usability, but that means I have to hand-code an internal navigation system, which, NNGGGGGG!

Also, I do read a lot of serialized fiction on LJ. As a reader, I'd really like to be able to navigate through sections of a serialized story. Tags don't cut it. A friend of mine wrote a massive 100+ chapter novel, and I only went back and started reading it when he announced it was almost done. Using the story's tag, each time, I was brought to... the last ten chapters. And I had to navigate back through the tag results to where I was (which involved remembering which chapter number I was on -- chapters were unnamed). Man, that sucked.

I don't know what FF.net does. But I'd propose implementing this as a new asset type, "Series" which organizes serials1) Under the "Journal" menu item, add "Series

[snakeling]

In that case, it would also be great to be able to display a tag page with posts listed chronologically, so that Part 1 would be at the top.

[mokie]

You're asking for a better way to display/navigate a specific series of related LJ posts, such as a story, vacation posts, concert series, etc.,within the posts themselves, rather than at the /tag/ page, correct?

(As noted by other users, you might get better reception for this if you could phrase it in a way that made it applicable to all LJ users, not just fanfic writers.)

[charliemc]

This sounds like a great idea -- and not just for fanfics.

+1

[cczy]

I think Chapter System is a nice idea, especially who write long stories.