Secrets of Writing: Serialized Stories

ACT STRUCTURE IN SERIALIZED FICTION

This is a very difficult thing to pull off well, but it’s also extremely important to understand if you have to do it.

Just as each story needs to build toward a climax, so does each act. And a serialized comic book story, for example, in multiple parts, can be viewed from this same perspective. Each issue should have a structure, building toward a crisis or climax. At the end of the story is a turning point which throws the momentum of that issue toward the next. This should be done in a compelling enough manner to make us want to read the next one. Make us want it BAD!

The concept of story polarity becomes extremely useful when we deal with serialized fiction. We need to start positive, end negative or visa versa, and with a vengeance! The end of each story must make us really want more. To do that you have to show a build in story energy toward that climax.

The ebb and flow between the Hero and the Villain should become more and more frenzied in each issue. The first issue’s tensions build toward a climax that’s level 2 in strength. The next issue needs to build to level 3. The following issue needs to build even higher until it can’t go any further. Then, that’s when you end it.

But the audience doesn’t want story arcs longer than five or six issues anymore. It’s really hard to sustain their interest that long. Even then, you’re pushing it. Long, drawn out epics will earn you a plethora of ill will if you aren’t careful. And then it’s hard to woo the readers back to the book.

Keep those story arcs short and sweet. Three issues is plenty in most cases. It’s hard to sustain story energy over too many acts. You start to experience diminishing returns. The audience has a hard time remembering plot details from month to month. You can’t expect them to do that. Especially if they read a lot of titles. 

Your set ups shouldn’t be paid off three issues later. People are confused easily these days. The Audience has developed a taste for instant gratification, so you have to get to the point. Therefore, it’s advisable to make your stories tight. Get those points across quickly and succinctly and build toward a story climax soon.

Personally, I think the industry should return to a standard of one issue stories, with multi-part stories being reserved for truly important epics. It becomes far too easy for writers to pad out their plots over multiple issues while they try to figure out what the next story arc is going to be. Single issue stories tend to be a lot more satisfying for the readers. They get a complete package for the price of their comic. They get a fix on who each character is and what they’re about. When you come into the middle of some multi-part epic, it’s really confusing. All those brain addled books of the early to mid-90s have done a lot to drive our audience away. We need to win them back.

With the price of comics being what they are these days, it’s suicide to expect people to fork out the money for a multi-part story unless it’s one of the coolest things they’ve read in a long while. Single issue stories are more satisfying. They tend to be what sells a new reader on a book. Alan Moore established himself well on SWAMP THING with “Anatomy Lessons” and other one issue tales. Grant Morrison sold new readers on ANIMAL MAN with one issue stories like “Coyote Gospel” and “Death of the Red Mask”. Neil Gaiman probably sold more readers with his one issue stories in SANDMAN because, again, they are complete reads for the price of a single comic. Nothing shows the merit of a writer’s talent better than a single issue story. To date, my most financially successful comics were LEX LUTHOR: THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY and HARDCASE #1...both single issue stories.

Also, when you have to pay more money to read the rest of a story it seems like a rip off. Especially when the story wasn’t that great to begin with. The industry has expected people to just keep buying these half-assed titles and readers have been voting with their pocketbooks. They’re voting NO!

The Audience wants a pay off. They want consequences in their stories, not just fight scenes they’ve seen a million times already. They aren’t shelling out two bucks or more for nothing. If nothing is what they get, nothing is what your readership is going to be. Sooner than you think.

It’s a rare story that can sustain readership over a long haul. WATCHMEN did it, but it was also a limited series. The readers knew they would only have to buy 12 issues to get the whole story. And it kept most of them interested enough to keep reading.

The two or three issue arc is the safest bet for most continued stories. If you really need more than three issues, you’d better make it worth the while of the Audience. There must be truly original surprises and pay offs in each issue. There must be a sense of great momentum. Failure to achieve that will result in huge drop offs in readership.

When you continue a story, make sure the turning point at the end is a major surprise. The villain standing over the apparently dead or unconscious form of the hero is not a surprising ending. It’s an ending that has been flogged to death since the 1970s. Nowadays, you need a turning point that has major implications for the character. It raises an urgent question in the mind of the reader: “Oh, god! How the hell are they going to straighten THIS out!?”

The old, Villain standing over the unconscious Hero scene does not raise that question. Because everyone thinks: “Oh, he’s just going to wake up, the villain is going to spill his plans, and then the hero will beat him.” They’ve seen it a zillion times already. Even if you plan a different scene in the next issue, it doesn’t matter. The audience has already decided what will happen and thirty days later they may not be interested in buying your story to continue.

You must give them a real reason to come back. It must be so compelling they are quaking like junkies experiencing withdrawal until that next issue comes out. This can be done with a major reversal using story values, a subject we delve into shortly.

And if you can’t pull off a great cliffhanger, write a one issue story, dammit!

REMEMBER: Keep those story arcs short and sweet. One issue stories are best.

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