Question / Discussion for series writers

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

I suppose this is less of a "question" thing and more just an invitation for discussion among other series writers about how you keep your series fresh, how to retain / grow readers, and your general experiences with them.

I recently did a soft relaunch/rebrand of the I/T series I’ve had going for some time now. Mainly, I’d realised I’m much better at writing more compact arcs (I also realised I had a tendency to evade 'getting to the point,' which definitely saw some of my stories suffer). So, I switched to episodes instead of books/parts and decided to make them more self-contained. It also helps by allowing me to publish more regularly since the episodes are short and self-contained.

That said... I also hoped to get a little boost to reader numbers by changing up the format/name because watching the numbers go down did get a little... Deflating? However, I don’t mind the drop-off in views as much since I appreciate regular contact with a group of regular readers a lot more.

My plan to draw new people in worked, somewhat. My problem with writing 'episode 2' of the new format is that I wanted it to be 21k words and follow a set of general rules (e.g., no interludes where the POV changes). Yet, as sensible as that seems, I find myself outlining something much more extensive and complicated that’ll also take a lot longer to write and present to readers.

I guess I’m still learning self-discipline!

 

[Jay142]

it is natural that readership dwindles with each chapter in fact it’s virtually impossible for chapter 10 to have more readers than chapter 1.

If readership is severely dropping that is sending you a message. It means That your readers are losing interest at some point and your story is losing steam and interest.

Are your chapters too long?

I think I tend to write longer stories than more chapters but that's what I prefer.

 

[FifthEstate]

it is natural that readership dwindles with each chapter in fact it’s virtually impossible for chapter 10 to have more readers than chapter 1.

If readership is severely dropping that is sending you a message. It means That your readers are losing interest at some point and your story is losing steam and interest.

This doesn’t have to be the case. Quality matters. Chapter 1 of my story series “Warden’s Wife Pays His Debt” published in May of 2019, it has 190k views. I published chapter 7 in October of 2022. It’s been met with a lot of love and will soon be the 2nd most viewed chapter after only 6 mos. In contrast, readers didn’t “love” chapter 5, it has half the views and is 3 years old. You shouldn’t automatically assume readership will wane the further your series progresses. Good storytelling and giving your readers what they want is still the key. I’m excited to publish the final chapter of this saga in the next month.

 

[Euphony]

This doesn’t have to be the case. Quality matters. Chapter 1 of my story series “Warden’s Wife Pays His Debt” published in May of 2019, it has 190k views. I published chapter 7 in October of 2022. It’s been met with a lot of love and will soon be the 2nd most viewed chapter after only 6 mos. In contrast, readers didn’t “love” chapter 5, it has half the views and is 3 years old. You shouldn’t automatically assume readership will wane the further your series progresses. Good storytelling and giving your readers what they want is still the key. I’m excited to publish the final chapter of this saga in the next month.

We speak in generalities to set expectations.

There are certainly examples of deviation from the norm (yours included) but, in general, numbers tend to wane as chapters grow in number.

"Quality" in relation to score is also problematic causation.

Researching the scores, opening chapters tend to have higher scores (and almost always higher engagement) b/c of reader effort to payoff ratio. You've got new and different on your side. People are more willing to take a chance than commit midstream. Engagement begets more engagement, etc.

Chpt 1s are also highly subject to variance. *Many* authors use it as an on ramp to their narrative, not narrative itself and can take a ding or two for it, even from those generally on board with the author's concepts/themes. And, of course, they get wacked by the "not my thing" downvoters who usually won't chase down and kill your later chapter scores. Plenty of garbage in the dataset.

This is all to say, the scoring system is imperfect at best and there's so little room within the common range, it's hard to draw concrete conclusions from the digits. .10 up or down is easily chalked up to getting a favorable/unfavorable release window.

We are all better served to write what we are compelled to write (authenticity tends to shine through) and get our input from vetted peer readers and the rare illuminating commenter.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Most of my stories are about people being brought together by circumstance, sparks flying, etc. So far at least, it has not led to me coming up with long storylines.

 

[Duleigh]

Most of my stories are about people being brought together by circumstance, sparks flying, etc. So far at least, it has not led to me coming up with long storylines.

Mine are the same, with the exception being that I have a hard time keeping them down to one chapter. Once the sparks have flown I like to see a relationship build, then an idea will pop into my head and I'll start to piece ideas together and something says "This will be perfect for Josh and Veronica" however if they need to be further out west it will work for Don and Lanh, and another chapter is born.

 

[tenyari]

A year and four months later, I just published chapter 25. (26 if you count the prequel chapter.)

...

I suppose this is less of a "question" thing and more just an invitation for discussion among other series writers about how you keep your series fresh, how to retain / grow readers, and your general experiences with them.

When I see a 'part 25' I actually do tend to have a much higher chance of clicking in. I take a brief look then skip to part 1 if that brief look was promising, then I'll start reading.

I don't like the shorter stories. Both as a reader and writer. I think I'm against the grain on that one. I gather most of whats on Lit is 'Stroke Fiction' - short erotic scene stories like the 'letters to the porn magazine' of the pre-Internet era. Those do nothing for me, and I suck at writing them.

So when I see "My epic novel where I ramble on at length about all kinds of things, Chapter 3,721" I'm lured in.

I'm always writing with the goal that my stories will go on and on and on. The only counter to that would be my first story - which I purposefully refused to ever do a follow-up to. And a short I wrote 20 years ago for a 200 word contest that was very poorly received.

I set up my new thing, my 'Alien Girls' setting - to be episodic long stories in a general setting featuring a common cast. It's a bridge between the long series concept and the isolated story concept to see if I can handle that and to make it easier for people to jump in at any random point. HOWEVER... I just finished publishing something in it that I'm calling a chapter 1 - because one character in that setting is going to get her own series as I am... incapable of resisting.

...

As a reader, seeing those long stories appeals to me because it usually means that I will get to enjoy a lot more of the story and characters (assuming it's good), and I won't have to suffer searching for something to read for a while. I hate the search process here and on other erotica sites. Not because they're bad, but because they cater to people looking for stroke material and I'm looking for novels. But the kinks I'm into also tend to be poorly organized... So everytime my reading list runs out I'm stuck for a few weeks until I can find something new that hits on my interests. The longer someone's story is, the less often I'm stuck like that.

 

[tenyari]

We speak in generalities to set expectations.

There are certainly examples of deviation from the norm (yours included) but, in general, numbers tend to wane as chapters grow in number.

"Quality" in relation to score is also problematic causation.

Researching the scores, opening chapters tend to have higher scores (and almost always higher engagement) b/c of reader effort to payoff ratio. You've got new and different on your side. People are more willing to take a chance than commit midstream. Engagement begets more engagement, etc.

What I found some 20 years ago when I did my last major episodic piece, back on ASSTR, was that readership went up as I went along. However each time I posted a chapter, readership in my older chapters got a spike again. So the older chapters still show higher readership.

I was after all, hitting my stride, and the story was coming together. Characters got more depth, the plot got more complex, and so on. And readers needed to go back and fill in what they'd missed by not seeing it when it first came out.

Later chapters were better received, but readership did show drop off.

I have one abandoned story up here that has 3 chapters up. Chapter 3 has more reads than 2, but 1 has the most. That seems a common trend here that the most recent chapter will have more reads than some of the ones before it. That difference must have happened 20 years ago when it was posted, as there's no reason now why readers would click into any one chapter over another. I used to have 5 chapters of it on ASSTR, but that's offline now, or I could get my stats from it and see how it did there (I have no idea why those last 2 chapters were never posted here, 20 years ago I must have had some reason).

As a reader, as I noted in my last post, if I see a long multi-chapter story, I'm more inclined to go back and start it. I have more reason to suspect the author has something good going on, and I will tend to suspect that early flaws get sorted later on. Maybe that's an unusual opinion, but it seems to me like some of the very long stories here get more and more popular as time goes on.


ASSTR had the 'stroke' tag that was very useful for splitting ling and short erotica apart so you could hopefully avoid the click ins from readers looking for a 'handy' fix. However it's logic was backwards. It's not 'stroke' that needs to be called out on erotica, but 'long form' - because us long-form readers and writers are the exception here.

One of the other sites I post to has that as a tag. I'd say it should be a flag you check yes/no to for your stories - or conversely work count on stories should be shown on the search listing. Show it for that 'part' and if it's in a series, something like (chapter count 'of' series count). That way readers know before they click in if they're clicking into a novel or a stroke scene.

 

[Djmac1031]

As a reader, as I noted in my last post, if I see a long multi-chapter story, I'm more inclined to go back and start it.

I do still, from time to time, pick up new readers to my series. Especially after I've posted something new, but sometimes just randomly.

 

[Djmac1031]

. I have more reason to suspect the author has something good going on, and I will tend to suspect that early flaws get sorted later on

Sounds a LOT like my series lol. The first few chapters were indeed my earliest writings. And I had no real game plan.

But as it went on I did start to find a direction I wanted it to go and planned ahead a little more lol

 

[Duleigh]

if I see a long multi-chapter story, I'm more inclined to go back and start it.

I wish I saw that more often. My We're A Wonderful Wife has 14 chapters and Chapter 1 has had 11,308 views, Chapter 2 has 5,217, Chapter 3 has 3,696 and so on. This is also an experiment in the Series function because I enjoy writing short side stories that illuminate the 25,000 word chapters so when I kick out a side story that occurs between Chapter 4 and 5 I'll use the series function to place it there. I'm not sure how that is affecting readership, I'll see folks going down the chapters as they vote, but some of the side stories get so much more views and other get so few, it's going to take a while to see how this function plays out.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I wouldn’t say I write long series with ATDAH at 5 parts and HAF at 8 (4 published) but I think I incline towards writing parts rather than getting the entire thing down in one.

I like the cliffhanger type ending you can have with a chapter, a build of anticipation for next time, leaving the reader wanting more so to speak.

My next story will be a mini one-off then I have a virus story to write that takes place at an elite sports training facility. There’s no way I can craft that many characters and do that as a one-off, but I will get the guts of it down first.

 

[Duleigh]

I've had my greatest luck attracting readers to multiple chapter stories by not making them chapters. Each chapter becomes it's own story meaning that it has all parts that make up a story: exposition (Introducing the characters), rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. The plus is that a reader can start anywhere they want, and you can legitimately enter each one in any contest you want because they're not chapters, they're individual stories. I had great luck with Stormwatch.

The downside is that you have to reintroduce your characters every time, you have to come up with a conflict/resolution every time while staying with the overall story arc, and you have to come up with a semi-unique story name every time while keeping it within 35 spaces and characters. It's what well crafted TV shows do, there's nothing that says we can't do it here.

 

[tenyari]

I wish I saw that more often.

Maybe some categories are more suited to it than others.

I suspect readers of the nonhuman and sci-fi categories often expect to be handed novels. But readers in others might expect shorts.

I've had my greatest luck attracting readers to multiple chapter stories by not making them chapters. Each chapter becomes it's own story . . . The plus is that a reader can start anywhere they want . . .

The downside is that you have to reintroduce your characters every time

I'm more or less trying this with my current semi-series. They're in mostly order, but not needing to be read in order. I've put them into a series rather than as chapters, but Lit displays that the same way it does chapters - so I've been thinking about moving them out of the series format.

 

[Duleigh]

I'm more or less trying this with my current semi-series. They're in mostly order, but not needing to be read in order. I've put them into a series rather than as chapters, but Lit displays that the same way it does chapters - so I've been thinking about moving them out of the series format.

You have a choice, you can title your chapters alphabetically OR in your works page you can click on Series (Beta) then click on + New Story Series and make a new series. You can even put together a "cover" for your series (which is fun to do but it really doesn't serve much of a function after that)

Your stories will appear in any order you want them to appear on your profile page under the stories/poems page. You can see my Wonderful Wife series I have chapters and Stand Alone stories combined into one series and this is the order I chose to list them in.

 

[FifthEstate]

Good to know for the future Mr. Duleigh. Thanks.