Basically the thread title is the question.

I have a novel I've been slaving over for many years now, that I want to try to serialize, but I'm really unsure of how to go about it. How do you create an acceptable beginning, middle, and end of each installment? I don't want to just break it up into X-number of chapters for each installment, as it seems that would annoy readers, getting to the end of one part and having to wait weeks or more for the next part. 

So do you turn each one into a proper short story? Or do you just chop it up into chapters where each on their own would not be a complete story? Outside of comics, I've never really read serialized fiction (and I don't really read comics). 

Advice?

I'd end each installemt with a cliff-hanger or an incompleted action, so as to make people anxiously await the next installment.
 

Do you know of any examples where that's been successful for you? Or someone else? Cause I was kind of thinking about going that route, but from what I've read in various reviews it seems like readers really hate that and look at the authors who do it as being greedy. 

I thought maybe trying to write it like episodes of a tv series, since most episodes seem to have one storyline that runs from beginning to end in one episode, with several other on-going subplots mixed in with other characters. 

I don't know. It all gets confusing. 

Yeah, that idea (self-contained stories, linked together with the continuing subplot) is probably a better idea than the cliffhanger idea.  I've never published my fiction, so I can't tell you from experience what works and what doesn't.

I think the cliff-hanger and main thread works best. Several independant threads running together always with the main theme in mind. This lets you cut your work into nice chunks for the reader.

However, I would finish the whole thing first and THEN serialise. You then avoid the danger of drying up or getting bogged down.

I noticed on Amazon/KDP many readers get upset when they find that episodes are too short because an author is releasing one chapter at a time. I would make the episodes long enough so that the reader has finished reading just before the next episode.

On the subject of 'slaving away' I respectfully wonder what your problem is. I have managed to write a small piece of my next novel every day. I can't concentrate for too long but if I can write 200 words its been a good day. The important thing is to write EVERYDAY. Then even if the rest of the day is spent revising or polishing you have at least done something, or even if you just work on the appencises or TOC - do something! ;)

Thanks for your input Bryster. 

My problem with the "slaving away" is that this is much more than just one novel. I have well over a thousand pages of notes and outlines and details (typed) over the last 20 years or so. Could be two thousand really, maybe more than that, since I haven't actually taken the time to count all the pages. They're just categorized by date and subject, going back to around 98 when I first started taking notes on it once the story had become so involved. There's several hundred thousand years worth of history, with more than that in the bits of backstory that get revealed through the course of it. At this point, I probably have 5 or 6 books outlined, and enough material in my notes to outline another 5 or 6 books at least. That doesn't include off-shoots of interesting characters whose stories could be their own books if I wanted, but that aren't that important to the main storyline.

I started writing it in 93/94 (on a word processor cause I didn't own a computer at the time), and in the course of about a year had produced a rough draft manuscript of one of the books, (roughly 300 pages at that point), which was originally intended to be the first book. But I wasn't happy with how it was all progressing since at the time I was just writing it as it came to me. Around 96 to 98 I decided that it would make more sense to start the story in a more modern-day setting, and then work back through time as the story unfolded. 

Of course it hasn't been a full 20 years of working on it every day. There have been many periods where I wasn't able to work on it at all for several months at a time, either due to writers block, not being able to figure out how to connect different elements in a way that suited me, or simply not having time to work on it due to life and work and such. 

Then there is all the research that I've had to put into it, as much of the plot centers around religion and mythology and many historical events that I need to make sure are at least acurate enough to be plausible. Some of that research has forced me to change or rearange some of the plot details.

The original manuscript has been torn down, chunks of it dropped or moved to a different point in the timeline, etc. Many of the notes I've taken worked as a sort of brainstorming. Some ideas I liked at first but made more sense moving or replacing with something better as more research went into it. 

Currently I have about 20 - 30,000 words that will be contained in the first book, but even with that they are not sequential. They are scenes that take place but aren't currently linked. I can't write anything straight from beginning to end (not even forum posts a lot of the time if they are lengthy). My brain just doesn't work that way. So I sketch out an outline, something like writing a journal, as though I'm talking to someone and telling them the story. Then I go back through and flesh out details of various scenes, dialogues, etc. Then I take that information and start writing the actual story from it. 

It probably sounds like a rather round-about way of doing it, maybe even somewhat self-defeating, but with a story this complex that involves so many characters, twists, etc, and covers such a vast period of time, I need a map of where I'm going so I don't get lost or sound like I'm just making crap up as I go along to fill in space or make some seemingly new idea fit better. It's pretty obvious when writers do that as I've seen examples of it from my own favorites. 

I've also thought maybe it's just too big of a project to ever finish and I should just work on writing something else that's smaller and simpler. I'm always coming up with new ideas for other stories, but the problem with that is I can't focus on writing anything else until this beast is done. I've tried and it just doesn't work. These characters are banging on the walls of my brain wanting out and aren't going to rest until they get what they've come for. 

But on the plus side, I've finally reached a point with all the plotting and outlining that I can focus on telling the first part of the story that takes place in modern day. But with that of course comes its own issues, as I'm still not sure exactly where to begin. I have 3 central characters to begin with, each with their own histories and lives who are intimately entwined. One can't exist without the other. I've struggled with whether to tell it from 1st person or 3rd and experimented with various methods of doing both, giving each of them a sort of journal to write on their own. I don't really like the 1st person approach, even though that is what I tend to gravitate towards when I'm writing an actual scene. But first person leaves out too many other details that that character can't really know, so the only way I could see 1st person working with this is if I wrote 3 initial books, telling the same story from 3 different perspectives. I think that would get redundant for the reader. So I've settled on 3rd omniscient but even with that I'm not so crazy about as it loses a bit of something in the process.

I do intend on publishing through Kindle. I've pretty much always been set on self-publishing at least at first, as I suspect the subject matter might be too strange for most traditional publishers to want to touch without editing out or changing major plot points. It's not uncommon for publishers or editors to want to change characters and their interactions, simply because they think the audience would like this to happen instead of that. Was just reading an article recently about a woman who wrote a very popular and lengthy series of books and then was replaced by another author because she didn't take the books in the direction her publisher wanted them to go, and were unyielding even when the fanbase complained and refused to support the new author's direction. Self publishing allows me to tell the story the way I need to tell it. If it ever gathers an audience then I might consider changing some points based on feedback from the readers but it would have to be pretty compelling reasons for me to want to do so, as most of these characters have created themselves. 

I guess a lot of this probably sounds like I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and that is partially true. I do know the story. It's in my head every minute of the day. Just trying to figure out the best way to tell it is my problem, hence the slaving. 

Thanks for reading this wall of text.

You 'wall of text' is very interesting, and I understand where you are coming from. Having started back in 1984 - I think it was - with a very clear story in mind, I found it got out of control, leading to a sequal that I never finished.

My problems were that I started out with pencil and paper - I kid you not - then typing, then word processing - remember Amstrads? When I finally got a PC and Word, getting my manuscript converted to Word was and still is a nightmare.

I was given a Kindle last Chrsitmas and discovered KDP. I then realised that I could take a whole section of my would-be 2nd novel and publish it as a standalone. Job Done! But now I'm working on the sequal and I find it so easy now.

However, talking of notes, I did come across a problem. I really wanted some way of making stickys I could read as I write in Word. This isn't possible, so I now make do with typing my ideas, reminders and other plot elements on the same Word page, but these are always just below the passage of the story I am writing. I skim through these every day and use them as needed, before deleting them.

So, I have a whole page - probably more - of half baked ideas and notes that are easily accessable, I only need to scroll down to see them.

While the above may not be helpful to you, Ambient, it might help others reading here. In the end though, we all have our own way of working, borne of necessity I suppose.

Good luck with your opus magnus;) I look forward to seeing it on Amazon.

Thanks for the words of encouragement Bryster

(Shane here, btw)

I once wrote a whole book in a double sized spiral notbook with an ink pen. Filled the whole thing. That was back in high school tho and I lost it years ago. Which I'm quite alright with, as it would be embarassing now to even read it myself these days. I remember the basic story, and enough of the cheese sauce dripping from it that I'd rather not revisit it. lol.

Have you ever heard of yWriter5? It's a free novel writing software that a writer created. It's a basic word processor that has many features that help with organizing notes, chapters, scenes, timelines, characters, etc. Can put in pictures for character, location or item reference. Even has a storyboard feature that lets you drag and drop and rearange post-it note icons that represent each of your scenes. 

Here's a link for the free download:

http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

And here is a demo video of how it all works: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti5HNVVIV1w

But it's only PC-based. For Mac users there is Scrivener, but that's not free. But it does have more features. 

I write in MSWord, but then copy it all over into yWriter to organize everything. Been working on transferring all my scads of notes and partial scenes bits at a time since January when I discovered it. 

Shane,

Thanks for the links!!  I'll give it a shot and see how it works.

I do enjoy using Word, took a while to train it to do what I wanted.;-) I particularly like the 'Look up..' features and research options. I'm forever using the Thesaurus, but that is because I have to fight the effects of the strokes I had and can't always think of the words I want.

I've also been able to take advantage of the very many places on the internet that explain the finer points of grammar and punctuation - I posted some of them here on Rendo in this forum.

Have a good one!!

BTW - if you do publish on Amazon beware!

I was contacted by XLIBRIS INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING who claimed that I had contacted them. They wanted me to sign a publishing deal and even assigned me a Publishing Consultant - one Debbie Ramos.

It wasn't until I looked over their website that I realised it was a self-publishing outfit that wanted hundreds of dollars from me for the privilage of putting my work into print.

When I respectfully declined, this person got quite shirty, listing all the disadvantages I was facing in getting my work published, despite the fact the she knew I had already published on Amazon and I'm doing quite all right thankyou very much.

Amazon/KDP however, is simply brilliant, the only really tough thing I had to do was phone the US Internal Revenue people for an EIN number....well that and actually wrting a book - :lol:

Welcome. Hope you find yWriter useful as I have.

Ah yes, I'm familiar with XLIBRIS. I wasn't aware they were still in business tho. I looked into them and a few other "Vanity" publishers years ago, but all the horror stories I've heard turned me off from that end of the publishing pool party. 

Until I discovered Kindle I figured I would just go through a POD publisher that only charges a percentage based on each book that's ordered. There are a few out there. Cafe Press, one called LuLu I think, and a few others do that, so the up-front costs are minimal, but the cost of the book for the reader is often considerably higher than what they would pay for a traditionally published book, making it much harder to market successfully. 

What is your book about? Is it related to the link in your signature? And how do you handle or go about your advertising on amazon/kindle, or have you just been letting it find its own audience? Some indie writers do that and have gotten lucky.

I got interested in Kindle publishing a few years ago when I first discovered it pretty much by accident. I knew about the Kindle but didn't know you could publish for free on it until I read this article about an author  who made millions practically over night from selling her young adult urban fantasy books on Amazon. So that was pretty much all I needed to hear to decide to go with Kindle, but I'm set on making sure it's the best work I can do before I release it.

I can't afford an editor either, so I'm just going to do the best I can and try to build up a beta reader group to use as my editors and make improvements based on that feedback. 

I don't have hundreds of facebook friends tho. In fact I only have 10, lol, and I only talk to maybe 2 of them on a semi-consistent basis, which really isn't consistent at all. 

My intention is to take this beyond just a series of novels. I want to eventually turn it into a graphic novel series as well, and possibly even animation from there. I'll likely go to kickstarter for that, once I've built up a reader following, if I get that far. This series is actually what turned me on to using Poser and got me interested in 3D graphics.

This forum is too quiet. Surely there are more writers here than represented in the posts. I guess they're all busy writing. 

Shane,

You can find my book on Amazon - All The Woes of a World by Jonathon Icknield. The book description says it all I think. LOL I hope!!!

Advertising your work is pretty much up to you. Amazon gives you keyword search options and will highlight the top 100 or so either paid or unpaid...relates to if you are selling or giving your book away. But the rest is up to you and blind luck. So, FB and word of mouth, or you can try a 'countdown' deal promotion on Amazon which lets you offer the book for a reduced price for a limited time. Letting readers 'borrow' your book is another way of earning money, but Amazon helps you a lot with this.

Other tricks include having a great cover illustration. I was lucky to get Henning Losite right here in Rendo to make mine with Vue and Poser as a commission.

And don't forget Amazon gives you up to 70% royalties!

Who can afford an editor? I may not write much in any one day, but I do spend a lot of time going over and over what I write to ensure it's perfect. This works for me because if I only write 200 words in a day I can easily go over it repeatedly and make it right.

My secret to editing, if I can call it a secret, is to be sure that every sentence 'flows'. If when I read back, I get stalled and have to re-read then I know the sentance doesn't work and needs to be re-written.

One note about the Kindle. Be sure and download the Kindle Previewer. It is very important to make sure your formating is Kindle-Friendly. KDP has lots of information about how to do this.

As for this thread being quiet, I think everybody is taking a polite interest and are not inclined to get in the way - not that I'd mind.

Chris

My god.  You two make me SO glad I'm a poet!  LOL! 

Fascinating to read your back-and-forth, though.  :)

Funny you should mention poetry, Auntie. After the book I'm working on, I'll be struggling to finish an epic poem I've been writing for years.......:lol:

Heehee!  "Epic" is not part of my style.  :P  My goal is always to say what I want to say, get it all in, and keep it to a minimum of words.  Funny thing, because I have an almost endless attention span for detail, otherwise.  I worked as a bookkeeper for many years, I'm a hand quilter, do needlepoint ... you get the idea.  I guess those traits have never spilled over into my writing! 

I'm happy there are people like you and Shane out there, writing epic this-and-that.  Wolf, too.  If you haven't read his stuff in the writer's gallery, you should take a look.  Talk about epic!  And it's pretty much serialized too, now that I think of it.  :)

I used to write poetry auntietk. But I can only do that when I'm in really deeply dark moods. kind of like therapy for myself. Positive moods don't inspire it for me.

I need to dig back through my older ones to see if i can find some that fit with the novel I'm working on now and include them here and there. One of my characters is a singer, and I don't have any good lyrics for her yet. I could dredge up some of my old memories and use that for inspiration but then I'll be depressed for a few weeks and just sleep all the time, lol. 

@Bryster: I remember the Poser thread about the book cover. Very nice. I pulled it up on amazon and read the excerpt. Its an interesting story so far, I liked it. I did notice some editorial mistakes tho. Mostly spelling or punctuation. Which brings up another question I have about publishing to kindle: If you edit the book after you've published it, does it reset your reviews or any stats you've acquired, as though you're uploading a new book, or does it just update the print and leave everything else, (like reviews, etc) intact? And does it update for people who've already downloaded the book?

I was able to get another 1500 words out last night for another scene I've been working on. I had jury duty today so I had to get to bed early or it may have gone as much as twice that. I went to bed with it all playing out in my head and couldn't sleep but had to try forcing myself to. (I'm mostly a night owl so having to be up early is not fun for me). I'm hoping I can keep a 1500 words per day average going for the next few weeks. If I can manage that then maybe this beast will finally start taking some real shape. But I have commission work to do as well so that will hinder the writing a bit. I'm hoping to have my first draft finished by Halloween. I think it's possible if this creative spark continues burning as it has been the last couple weeks.

I know exactly what you mean, Shane.  I write loads of poetry when I'm not happy!  A rich, full life doesn't exactly inspire me to write.  Having Jeff (wheatpenny) come up with a topic every month at least keeps me writing.  Given a challenge topic and a limited amount of time, I can almost always write SOMEthing.  Being happily married and happily retired isn't good for my poetry!  :P It's hard to write happy poetry without sounding all pollyanna and sicky-sweet, and there's no way I can write that kind of stuff.  It's just not in me.  Life is good, but I'm not a tripping-through-the-butterflies kind of girl, and I haven't been able to figure out how to write happy stuff without sounding like an idiot.  Ah well.  As long as Jeff is willing to come up with a topic every month, I'm good to go.  Bless him.

Tara

Shane, as far as I'm aware, if you re-upload your book on KDP nothing changes re: stats etc. However, I dont think that people who have already bought it get the updated version, but I could be wrong.

I do need to correct those errors, the ones I'm sure I didn't make but found too late to do anything about! I'll be doing that after I publish the one I'm working on.

1500 words in one day!!!!! If I'm lucky I can get 200 a day. :lol:

Auntie, the book I published on Amazon has a short poem in the 'Look Inside' feature - a 10% preview all books provide - if you're interested.

(All the Woes of a World - Jonathon Icknield available for the Kindle E-Reader)

Quote - 1500 words in one day!!!!! If I'm lucky I can get 200 a day.

When I was in film school one of the first courses I had to take was creative writing for games and film. It was a two-month course, 8 hours a day 4 days a week. The first 4 hours was lecture, where we discussed various aspects of creative writing like plot, character development, point of view, etc. Joseph Campell's book Hero with A Thousand Faces was a big part of that course. If you're familiar with his work. He's the father of the monomyth concept and the Hero's Journey. It's practically a bible for many screen writers these days - especially in fantasy and sci-fi.

Anyway, each day we were given a topic to write on and a style or theme to write it in. and the 2nd 4-hr block was when we actually did the writing. The assignments were always required to be 500 to 750 words. Sometimes we'd watch a movie and then have to write an alternate ending. Then we had a partner to swap our writing with and read over it, with a critique form to fill out. We couldn't use the same partner from one day to the next. 

It was a good way to learn how to brainstorm and write fast. Some of the topics or themes were a lot more difficult to come up with 500 to 750 words on, so you could waste a good bit of that 4 hours sitting there staring at a blank screen. I didn't always meet the word limit but usually came pretty close. But I think that was one of the best classes I've ever had to take, cause you learn a lot of techniques and it loosens up the creative brain. 

One of the most difficult assignments I can remember was writing a scene about two people communicating without speaking. For the example on that one, we watched an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer called Hush, where the story was about these demons that stole everyone's voice and Buffy had to go get them all back. Sounds silly I guess but that episode was nominated for an emmy. 

We also had a final project with a word count min of 1250 and max of 1500 and it had to be a complete story with beginning middle and end. Through drafting and revision I managed to get exactly 1500. Every word over that we would lose points. 

So now, writing 1500 words in one session isn't too much of a problem for me usually. I can often do a lot more than that if I can get into the mood of the scene I'm writing and have a good road map to follow. That's usually that road block I run into. That or not being able to link all the parts together easily.

Anyway, good to know about the kindle revisions part not being detrimental. I couldn't find a clear answer on that on amazon.

I can see how your story is "Epic," Chris, even in reading only the poem and a little of the beginning of the book.  You have a well-measured, beautifully formal style, perfectly suited to a classic tale.  Congratulations on completing your book and getting it on Kindle!

Tara

Shane,

I have heard about various techniques to enable a writer to get 1500 an hour, but being a stroke victim these things have been impossible for me. After my second stroke I could hardly speak or hold a pen. Four years on and I consider myself lucky to be able to write at all, even though my word count can be dismal. I can't get to flow as I used to.

Tara,

OHH!! Make me blush!!!

Thank you so much for your kind words!  They are very much appreciated.

  You're welcome!  You earned every one of those words.

Sorry to hear that Chris. I can imagine that can be a tough obstacle to deal with. I'm a couple weeks shy of 40, and my health isn't what it used to be either. Some days are much better than others. Trying to reverse that so more days are better. 

And sorry I missed your post the other day. I don't get e-mail notifications like I'm supposed to for some reason, even with being subscribed to various forums. Sometimes there are a dozen threads in the Poser forum (the forum I moderate) that I was never notified about, so I have to constantly keep checking it.  

Is your new novel a sequel to this current one?

Tara, what kind of poetry do you write?

Mostly free-form verse, although occasionally I get inspired to do something in meter.  If you do a search on my gallery and filter for only the Writer's Gallery you'll find pretty much everything I've written in the last eight years or so!  (There are a few things scattered throughout my photography gallery, but for the most part I try to keep them separate.)

Theres' a multi-part sci-fi story called "Shadows" that I wrote with Craig (faroutsider), and there are a couple of short prose pieces and a few surveys, but the rest is poetry.  Everything from 2011 and newer is in response to a challenge, but the older stuff is "pure Tara," if that makes sense.  :P

At 1500 words a day I doubt you'll have much time to peruse my gallery, but ... thanks for asking!  :)

Tara

I don't know what meter means in the context of poetry, but I will definitely take the time to read through your gallery. 

I didn't mention the 1500 words for bragging rights or anything. Was just trying to give some background on ways I've learned to write more and faster. For what it's worth I've only written another 800 words on it since the other day and have hit another lull. But when I'm on a roll, I can do that much in a couple hours. Unfortunately the rolls always come in short bursts. 

The NaNoWriMo challenge writers that I've listened to before usually suggest 500 words every day. I've never attempted the challenge. It's also always been really difficult for me to come up with anything for topic challenges. If I'm allowed to write about anything I want then that's where my strengths usually are. 

I didn't take it that you were bragging about the 1500 words at all!   :)  Just figured if you're on a writing roll like that, you weren't going to have a lot of time to fiddle around in the galleries.  But if you're in a lull and need something to do ... I ALWAYS like it when people read my stuff!  :D

Great topic!  I love talking about writing or writing about writing, almost as much as I enjoy writing.  As for serializing, well, that's eaiser said than done, but it's pretty easy to do.  Ray Bradbury made a career out of it, and many of the most famous, classic novels in the SF genere were actually serialized.  I've seen old, old, crumbling pages of some SF magazine I can't remember, with Dune serialized.  It was serialized before it was published as a single, coherent novel that gave rise to the whole Dune mythos, now shamelessly raped by Frank Herbert's son and that other writer whose name I refuse to mention.  (Ah, but most Dune readers consider the non-Frank Herbert chapters of the Dune continuation, and prequels, to be little more than cheap fan fiction.)

Anyway, the whole point of serializing is to present a long story in short chunks, and the only real way to do that is to make sure that each section you write has an inherent beginning and middle, but an open end leading into the next chapter or next few chapters.  I look at chapters and serialized sections of larger works as self-contained pieces in that they function like short stories.  They focus on one thing, and one thing only: one particular plot-moving action, one particular character development, one particular nodule of story-ness, but when they end, they do so in a way that leads directly into the next piece, even if that next piece doesn't immediately follow what's been written.  A good study in serilalization is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, or the re-imaginded Battlestar Galactica.  Though those are television shows, they form a distinct narrative arc and then spend their entire run mapping out that arc...sometimes in a linear fashion, and sometimes with apparent jumps in action, but the final episodes bring everything together in interesting, not-so-neat ways.  You can tell that the people who wrote those shows spent a lot of time reading, because they're like um...well...telenovelas.

Also, if you're really interested, Renderosity's direct competition has a positively enormous community of writers, and whole galleries dedicated to serialized works in just about every genre you can imagine.  They even have a section called "Series Unknown" which is essentially serialized work by writers who aren't really that "famous" on the site; the stuff they present is generally pretty good and occasionally knock-your-socks-off brilliant.

Shane, yes.

To be clear, and for those who are following this thread, I wrote All the Woes of a World and published it on Amazon for the Kindle e-reader. My new novel is a sequel called All the Woes of a Sphere, but both are stand alone tales.

I'm celebrating - well sort of - I hit 40,000 words yesterday!!!! I'm hoping to be finished early in the new year.

Oh wow, there's a thread in writers forum. This is so cool. I had completely given up even looking in here. Well, you all are awesome. Here's my two cents on the original question.

(and you just know the thread will die now that I showed up... pfft..)

Orson Scott Card ends his Formic series with an abrupt, 'I'm done,' kind of thing. It doesn't even make sense where he stops, he just stops. I love his writing style but the way he ends a book is just irrating. Now, Ann Macaffery, (God rest her beautiful soul), has the wonderful Pern series, but each book is self-contained and still maintains a wonderful continuity throughout. I love the way her series worked. And her son, Todd? I think his name is... anyway, he is continuing the series and doing the same thing with each book being self-contained.

Oh, and Xlibris Publishing. I get random spam from them too. Everyone I know says to stay as far away from them as possible.

Let's see... oh yea. On how many words to write. I tend to think you shouldn't goal yourself per day. I know, I read what all the self-help books say. But 1500 words of crap is 1500 words of crap. What's the point of writing junk just to meet goal. There are days I don't write a single thing. But then there are days the muse hits me on the head and I don't stop writing until the muse says, "okay, take a break," and that might be at a stupid amount of words, like a gazillion words or something. Anyway, I don't goal a thing and I still post a story every two or three days. (on the average).

Yep, well, that's my two-cents. And you shouldn't take a thing I say seriously. What do Wolf's know about anything... We just like to howl at the moon.

Woof.

Nice to see others coming in here.

I did have a random thought/question about how people go about visualizing their tales before or during putting the words on the page.

I used to find elements of my stories in daydreams, telling myself my own story as if I was listening to someone read it aloud to me. These days I find myself watching my story develop as if I am watching a movie (in my head). This is interesting because I can imagine which actors would take on the various charactors...not that I have nailed anyone famous for any specific part. I don't imagine Tom Cruise as the head honcho for example, but it's an interesting excersise.

As a one-time semi-pro musician, I often listen to music while I'm writing. Lately, it's been the ambient-going no where - variety, which helps because it doesn't distract me and masks sounds from outside my comfort-zone, the place where I sit at my PC.

There are times though, when I am really deep inside my story, that I find myself wondering what music I would like to hear as the score to my story should it ever be turned into a movie. It seems to me that the fashion over the last couple of decades of movies is for a really great theme song to roll with the end credits. AVATAR comes to mind here. Leona Lewis sings 'I See You'. And of course the James Bond title songs are pretty famous too.

A really good music score takes a movie and of course the story, to a whole different level, and a good theme song at the end can make you feel all warm and fuzzy!!! with that satisfaction of time well spent.

The question is, what music, if any, do you guys listen too while writing?

Have a good one!!

I would imagine that it is very different and unique how each writer goes about writing. I usually mind-map the entire story with elaborate scenes and sub-sections (basically a draft outline). This might take a day or two. Then I begin to write and the mind-map gets ignored completely and I honestly have no idea what the next word, sentence, or paragraph will be. It all just happens. I sometimes get impatient and have to take a break because I want to know what is going to happen but I have to wait until it happens to find out.

One thing I do know is my environment affects the story. I can not stand to write in quiet little corners and do not even attempt that anymore. I seek out busy, noisy, active, places to write. I have even adjusted my writing tools to fit the way I like to write. I now use a Microsoft Surface RT (It comes with Word, Onenote, and Onedrive) to write. It really is a tablet that replaces a laptop. And oh how I love Onenote and Onedrive. I write on my Microsoft Surface, but I do my editing in my little office. When I pull in the driveway, my Surface auto-connects to my wifi and updates my Onedrive. By the time I sit down at my office computer, the story has been sync'd and is on my stationary computer ready for editing.

Now, back to environment. I feel that is the most important thing. For example, the story I posted the other day of The Jack of Diamonds sitting in a mud puddle with his dirty wet socks flopping over and him feeling sorry for himself is a direct result of my environment.

I had stopped to wash my car and used the spray wand to clean a particular bad spill I had in the car. As a result of washing my car, my shoes, and socks were very wet. And when I sat down in the drivers seat-my butt got very wet as if I were sitting in a mud puddle. I found a little spot to pull over and whipped out my Microsoft Surface and wrote that part of the story.

Such things happen like this all the time. I'm getting a cup of coffee at a famous place known for coffee and I see a strikingly unique person and I write. I'm in the grocery store and watch a scene unfold between the butcher and a patron... and I run over to the little sit down deli and write.

I am retired now and this is what I do all day. I write. Omgosh why didn't I discover writing thirty years ago. But it's all about environment. Write in a dark little silent corner with no distractions, and that is exactly what you get.

No--Take your notebook, tablet, laptop, pencil, chisel and hammer... whatever. And go out into the world and write what you see.

I can't listen to a thing while I write.  I get too into the music, and I totally suck at multi-tasking!  Background music, which to my mind isn't really worth listening to, becomes annoying to me REALLY fast.  Stuff I want to listen to grabs my attention too much.  Synchopation, chord changes, well-turned phrases ... I get distracted.  I can listen to music while I'm looking at art and making comments, but as far as actually doing anything creative ... nope.  Chip listens to music while he writes, I think.  Mostly those movie scores you were talking about. 

Right now the only sounds in the room are my keyboard, Bill's keyboard, and the dog snoring.  :P

I need silence too. I can have ambiant sounds but not music or talking or anything like that. The tv was out of commision all summer. I got the first draft to 3 books done.

Hey Jeff ... looks like the above is a spam ...

Got it.

Speaking of serialization.  One of the things I did was read Frank Herbert's original Dune...in it's novelized form.  I found out, later, that it had been serialized as well.  So, what I did was dig up references to the serialized version (which is the actual novel version with a few bits missing) and then I read the novel itself and tried to predict when a serial portion was coming to an end, without having actually read the complete serialization.  What I discovered was "rising action" with a prominent cliffhanger that wasn't really the cliff hanger I was expecting.  If you've got a loose thread or two, then you have an automatic cliff hanger, because you can "play it close to the vest" and simply resolve ONE cliff hanger in the next section.  There are so many ways of doing it though, and I guess the only real way to go about it is to be aware of your own story and the way you want to tell it; that right there is going to tell you how to serialize it.  Or you could to the Ray Bradbury "zip novel" format and simply compose a single serial novel out of only-vaguely-related self-contained short stories.  His greats, The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles are the best examples.  They're basically anthologies, but with the Illustrated Man, there is filler in between each individual story, threading them together.  In The Martian Chronicles, the whole "Epic Idea" of human life on Mars is the defining element.  For more coherent pieces, I'd maybe try the Frank Herbert approach or the Armisted Maupin "Tales of the City" approach--each chapter is a short story--or a combination of those two and/or any others you'd want.  The main thing, though, is just do it in a way that feels natural to both you and the story you're telling, because no matter what anybody says, you're actually the main authority. 

And by the way, Wolfenshire brings up and illustrates a really good point too.  He basically wrote a whole story in the comment above this one, and it can be serialized.  I had a distinct image and full story of him washing his car and getting squishy socks.  Writing Jack of Diamonds is the story arc, but the post-car-wash-squishy Wolfenshire was it's own distinct little tidbit, it's own distinct "Episode."