Story authors

ILuvChubbyChix:
Just my opinion, but... post the entire thing in one go, or don't post it at all. Don't add chapters over time. You might be thinking.. why? Don't TV shows release new episodes once a week?

TV shows do release once a week, but often times the story and plot line of every episode may very well be determined before the season premier. Then it's a question of the actors and set staying on script.

Alternatively, you could write the entire story in one go and post new chapters over time like a TV show, but not everyone is able to release new chapters reliably, like clockwork. Life happens, there's schedule problems, some folks are just too busy, technical problems, or you just forget about it. I don't know if you'd be able to post new chapters on a schedule reliably, or not.

TV shows are different, since that's the entire point of the company. They will release the next episode, so you know it's coming for a fact.

There's also the risk of writer's block, which is why I'd recommend against writing the story as you go. There's a very creative aspect, and I don't believe this can be rushed under pressure.

Why do I say this? I don't read the stories very often, but if there's anything I really, really dislike and leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, it's an unfinished story that the author forgot about, and it's been weeks or months. It's about 100 times worse if there's a serious cliffhanger at the end that never gets resolved. A cliffhanger at the end of a TV episode, particularly a multi-part extra long TV episode, I don't mind because I know the conclusion will come.

I don't know if you've ever played the game Half-Life 2, but if you have, you'd know exactly what I'm talking about, and the very bad feeling that was caused. Eventually, it got so bad one of the story writers basically posted the plot of what would have been the third episode (with changed names to dodge copyright laws) just to give fans some sort of closure, since it was obvious Valve had no intention of releasing another game to complete the story line. It's probably a good thing Valve Software basically doesn't make games anymore, and only really administers the Steam platform, since I'm pretty sure they burned any good will they might have had. It's really too bad. Whenever they did release something, it was a very high quality product by the standards of the time.

I'd recommend using each experience, and any feedback you might get, as advice on what the next story might be like. I know one thing I like, is when an author writes multiple stories in the same universe, particularly when any one of those stories can stand on their own. You don't necessarily have to read the others to understand it. I think this would provide a lot of engagement.

I'm asking you to consider an approach similar to what most large YouTube channels use. Each uploaded video includes the entire video, and the author builds upon the feedback he gets and takes it into consideration for the next video, and so on.

LoraDayton:
Hiccupx has it right. The way the platform is built means you have to kind of experiment with strategy, and adjust that strategy as you build an audience. I don't have many stories here, this just has to do with my creative output in general recently, but I am going to be ramping it up this year considerably. However the strategy in which I publish differs based on which platform.

There are some stories I personally will probably be making exclusive and premium here, but not all of my mine are going to fit the format of this platform so it has to be written for it because it has limitations.


Your question really depends on the type of story, your format, knowing the platform, knowing the audience, and as others have said knowing that the audience changes based on which platform you're on. "Going wide" which means having your work available in multiple places is really going to be key overall.

If you have a very long story, as you said If you're looking at a 60,000 word novel, I'm not even sure I would post that here at all because of the way the platform is built. It's really just not meant for long-form stories and I tend to not read them because it's just not easy to consume it. There are some whose stories I did decide to give a shot in a fell into it and so I'll read when there's an update, but I just don't click with reading long form ones here. DeviantArt and AO3 are waaaaay better for that.

LoraDayton:
Hiccupx has it right. The way the platform is built means you have to kind of experiment with strategy, and adjust that strategy as you build an audience. I don't have many stories here, this just has to do with my creative output in general recently, but I am going to be ramping it up this year considerably. However the strategy in which I publish differs based on which platform.

There are some stories I personally will probably be making exclusive and premium here, but not all of my mine are going to fit the format of this platform so it has to be written for it because it has limitations.


Your question really depends on the type of story, your format, knowing the platform, knowing the audience, and as others have said knowing that the audience changes based on which platform you're on. "Going wide" which means having your work available in multiple places is really going to be key overall.

If you have a very long story, as you said If you're looking at a 60,000 word novel, I'm not even sure I would post that here at all because of the way the platform is built. It's really just not meant for long-form stories and I tend to not read them because it's just not easy to consume it. There are some whose stories I did decide to give a shot in a fell into it and so I'll read when there's an update, but I just don't click with reading long form ones here. DeviantArt and AO3 are waaaaay better for that.

FatAdvocateFA:
You never know. The idea of doing an ARG has never occurred to me, but it sounds like an impressive idea. Who knows if it would work -- but perhaps it's worth a shot.

Feeder862:
This is a very interesting question and one that I had posted to the forum a couple of years ago. The consensus back then appeared to be that people preferred a serialised posting schedule.

Having written many, many stories for FF, I can say that I have always taken the approach of completing the story in its entirity before I even begin to post the first chapter on here. That way, I can feed things in from Chapter One and know exactly where it is going. Everyone who reads my stories and invests time in them will know that they will always be completed. Around half way through the story, I often say in the comments section exactly how many chapters there will be once it is all posted. I think readers quite appreciate this and it encourages them to persevere.

Although a lot of peole complain about the chapter formatting of fiction on FF, I can say with absolute certainty that it improves my stories, allowing me to create a focus for each chapter and avoid aimless rambling. Once the story has been written, I will start breaking it up into chapters and embellishing it with the FF chapter format in mind; adding cliffhangers as needed. I also find that this encourages more comments on the stories, as readers discuss and hypothesise on where the story is going, keeping it higher up on the story section page (a constant battle on this site).

I think the serialised format is preferred for a number of reasons, as have already been noted here. When people click on your new story, they will immediately see how many chapters are in it. A large number puts people off from starting, so beginning small is key. Then again, too few chapters and people won't be interested either. I tend to post a flurry of chapters at the start and then feed in the rest day by day.

I have mentioned it before, but I would love for FF to introduce a system whereby we could schedule story updates so that we could upload story chapters to go live at a certain time each day. As someone has already mentioned, life happens, and it's hard to come back each day to keep uploading chapters.

I hope this helps. Best of luck with posting your stories on here. Despite the often lack of engagement from the readers on here, the story section is widely read and always appreciated.