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Currently, most of the fiction I'm reading is online serial gay romance fiction. This genre evolved from old textfile stroke stories. There's a bit of ontogenty recapitulating phylogeny in there, or something. The first stories were very short, punchy, and a little bit the same except for the ones that were just really too strange for words. Then some of them were three-parters (sometimes two-parters) and some of them were picaresques, series involving a character meeting a bunch of guys with an overarching theme or the development of a particular relationship. These often were kind of like early science fiction series (such as we were talking about in rasfc last week or the week before), where each installment had to sort of top the story before and you'd end up with five-ways in a penthouse with sex toys the size of sports cars and dog knows what all else -- and they would usually fade off kind of instead of concluding in any coherent way.
Over time, there's been a definite shift to stories which are erotic in the philosophical sense of eros if I understand that correctly -- romantic in usual speech. Relationships begin, have rocky middles sometimes connected to plotty adventures, and climax into long-term domesticity. Like regular romance novels. But maybe not exactly. I also like to read gay comic romances in the bookstore, and there is a difference, which I think is from the online ones being serials and the books being, well, books. It affects the structure of the chapters, and it affects how the first chapter starts out, and it affects what the conclusion looks like. I haven't sussed out all of these differences -- mostly I just sense them -- but I do know some differences.
Books start cute. They have to grab the attention of a book editor right off, and they have to have a hook in them (we've ben talking about this in rasfc too) -- usually right on the first page or soon thereafter. Online serial fiction can't actually start like that -- there's something confusing and false about the in medias res beginning when you read it in that context, so the online serial fiction writers usually start out with a more deliberate introduction more like a classical 19th century life story novel. DIckens. Bronte. Elliot. Gaskell. A little scene-setting, a more or less thorough introduction of the narrator, protagonist, or the love object (who frequently can start out as the enemy). There are exceptions, but they're harder to handle and only the most skilful of online serial fiction writers make the in medias res work for them.
In an online serial, most chapters have a miniature novel form, with incluing matter at the beginning of the chapter, a complicating and then climaxing plot, and the climax of the chapter a couple-few hundred words before the really most often cliffhanger ending.
There's some tremendously good work being done in this form these days. The writers who are doing it are mostly young, literate but not literary, maybe one-third young women (I'm not sure of this proportiom), and they are developing the form in conversations in yahoo groups, online bulletin boards, journals, blogs, and backchannel critiques and beta comments. Some writers solicit input as to the direction the story will take -- that is, they have only a loose plan and they take reader's suggestions for how to flesh out the plan or even alter it. Some writers say they start serials sometimes with only a beginning situation and not even an upshot they're aiming at ("situation and upshot" being, I think, the most primitive form of plot -- even a New Yorker style story usually has that much). I have to believe them when they say they do this but some of the ones who say it produce quite coherent, sensical stories, so I just have to wonder how they do it without some greater or lesser degree of lameness.
The Donor was not written in this genre: it was written as a regular book a while back. It was in need of transcription because of multiple backup failures and I decided to use it to learn some of what I will need to write Bella and Chain. It's sort of cheating to post it as a serial, since it's already writen, but really, substantial changes are taking place in it because I'm a much better writer than I was when I wrote it. And those changes I think are making it more similar to the online serial fiction genre than whatever dogforsaken genre it belonged to in the first place.
Bella and CHain won't be like this. It will partake of it, but -- to give you an idea of how different it will be -- it will incorporate four livejournals: one for each of two characters, one for a bookstore community, and one for the "anonymous omniscient observer" who is the narrator. The nice fellow suggested perhaps the anonymous omniscient observer is the spirit of the city in which they live but I am not at all certain of that. And besides the four livejournals, there will be an index page which presents links to the livejournal entries in conventional narrative order (while each livejounral will be in conventional reverse chronological order), and will mix up the livejournals as necessary to do this.
Hmm. I wonder what kind of programming the sites use that offer various ways of presenting materrial? ("sort by date, sender, subject line, ratings") Is it a search engine? If so, I wonder how you set it up on a site?
Oh, and it will have links in it too. At least one new one per entry.
Bed bed bed. I promised I'd go to bet at a reasonable hour and here it is almost midnight.
Last thing: for years I've been vaguely pissed about this lack of preparation thing in hurrican country. Every damned year there's devastation because there's no enforced building code special for the wind, at kleast as far as I can see, and there's no solid routine for the storms. How often do we get a killer earthquake? Not nearly so often. ANd yet, we have laws dictating eartthquake safety in our buildings, and there's plans six ways from Sunday for public reaction in and after the earthquake. This is not because we're smart in California and hey're dumb on the Gulf. This is squeaky wheels getting the grease and poor folks getting the shaft. Twenty years ago I read about subsidence and flooding in New Orleans. THis was forseen, and could have been ameliorated a lot.
Over time, there's been a definite shift to stories which are erotic in the philosophical sense of eros if I understand that correctly -- romantic in usual speech. Relationships begin, have rocky middles sometimes connected to plotty adventures, and climax into long-term domesticity. Like regular romance novels. But maybe not exactly. I also like to read gay comic romances in the bookstore, and there is a difference, which I think is from the online ones being serials and the books being, well, books. It affects the structure of the chapters, and it affects how the first chapter starts out, and it affects what the conclusion looks like. I haven't sussed out all of these differences -- mostly I just sense them -- but I do know some differences.
Books start cute. They have to grab the attention of a book editor right off, and they have to have a hook in them (we've ben talking about this in rasfc too) -- usually right on the first page or soon thereafter. Online serial fiction can't actually start like that -- there's something confusing and false about the in medias res beginning when you read it in that context, so the online serial fiction writers usually start out with a more deliberate introduction more like a classical 19th century life story novel. DIckens. Bronte. Elliot. Gaskell. A little scene-setting, a more or less thorough introduction of the narrator, protagonist, or the love object (who frequently can start out as the enemy). There are exceptions, but they're harder to handle and only the most skilful of online serial fiction writers make the in medias res work for them.
In an online serial, most chapters have a miniature novel form, with incluing matter at the beginning of the chapter, a complicating and then climaxing plot, and the climax of the chapter a couple-few hundred words before the really most often cliffhanger ending.
There's some tremendously good work being done in this form these days. The writers who are doing it are mostly young, literate but not literary, maybe one-third young women (I'm not sure of this proportiom), and they are developing the form in conversations in yahoo groups, online bulletin boards, journals, blogs, and backchannel critiques and beta comments. Some writers solicit input as to the direction the story will take -- that is, they have only a loose plan and they take reader's suggestions for how to flesh out the plan or even alter it. Some writers say they start serials sometimes with only a beginning situation and not even an upshot they're aiming at ("situation and upshot" being, I think, the most primitive form of plot -- even a New Yorker style story usually has that much). I have to believe them when they say they do this but some of the ones who say it produce quite coherent, sensical stories, so I just have to wonder how they do it without some greater or lesser degree of lameness.
The Donor was not written in this genre: it was written as a regular book a while back. It was in need of transcription because of multiple backup failures and I decided to use it to learn some of what I will need to write Bella and Chain. It's sort of cheating to post it as a serial, since it's already writen, but really, substantial changes are taking place in it because I'm a much better writer than I was when I wrote it. And those changes I think are making it more similar to the online serial fiction genre than whatever dogforsaken genre it belonged to in the first place.
Bella and CHain won't be like this. It will partake of it, but -- to give you an idea of how different it will be -- it will incorporate four livejournals: one for each of two characters, one for a bookstore community, and one for the "anonymous omniscient observer" who is the narrator. The nice fellow suggested perhaps the anonymous omniscient observer is the spirit of the city in which they live but I am not at all certain of that. And besides the four livejournals, there will be an index page which presents links to the livejournal entries in conventional narrative order (while each livejounral will be in conventional reverse chronological order), and will mix up the livejournals as necessary to do this.
Hmm. I wonder what kind of programming the sites use that offer various ways of presenting materrial? ("sort by date, sender, subject line, ratings") Is it a search engine? If so, I wonder how you set it up on a site?
Oh, and it will have links in it too. At least one new one per entry.
Bed bed bed. I promised I'd go to bet at a reasonable hour and here it is almost midnight.
Last thing: for years I've been vaguely pissed about this lack of preparation thing in hurrican country. Every damned year there's devastation because there's no enforced building code special for the wind, at kleast as far as I can see, and there's no solid routine for the storms. How often do we get a killer earthquake? Not nearly so often. ANd yet, we have laws dictating eartthquake safety in our buildings, and there's plans six ways from Sunday for public reaction in and after the earthquake. This is not because we're smart in California and hey're dumb on the Gulf. This is squeaky wheels getting the grease and poor folks getting the shaft. Twenty years ago I read about subsidence and flooding in New Orleans. THis was forseen, and could have been ameliorated a lot.
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