I'm Serializing!
On To The Next Experiment
Yes. After teasing it on Notes several times with different stories, I finally trust myself enough to make it official: I'm serializing! Short stories are fun, I write them voluntarily, after all, but I'm a novelist at heart. I enjoy spinning longer plots, giving characters more room, bigger challenges so they may change and grow beyond the possibilities of a short story.
At the same time, serializing a novel on Substack seems unnecessarily tedious. We still lack some functionality to comfortably enjoy a 60,000+ word tome and as other fiction writers have lamented from their own experience, you attract fewer and fewer new readers the more chapters you accumulate.
So I decided to publish not a novel, not a novella, but a serial.
In literature, a serial is a printing or publishing format by which a single larger work, often a work of narrative fiction, is published in smaller, sequential instalments.
Popular examples include The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (which, coincidentally, I adore and see as major inspiration for my own story). Needless to say, this is a great time and place for serializing fiction because writers don't have to rely on weekly papers or pulp magazines to publish them anymore.
What does this mean for me and for you, dear readers?
The Story So Far
The story I'm planning to serialize is already here: Requiem of the Moth. It is a low fantasy, high intrigue story set in an original fantasy world I've been developing for many years. Those looking for Tolkien-style elves and dwarves will be disappointed.
Instead, you can expect political intrigue with a dash of romance in an underground city as a recently appointed clan intelligence official and a moth catcher commoner have to pair up to get what they want—unlimited power for the former, protection and patronage for the latter and his family. If you imagine everything bathed in the blue-green light of glowshrooms and shimmering mineral veins in the rock, you've got the atmosphere down too.
And listen to the playlist.
Oh, how I love project-specific playlists. They're my favorite mental conditioning tool.
Of Whispers and Moths
Content warnings "Honorable Vessi, you have a visitor." Yun nods to the servant. Vy sets down her tea cup and gets up. "I'll leave you to your work, oh honorable Vessi," she says, snorting. "In a few years, you and the others will have to answer to me," he promises her. "Then you'll be sorry for your impertinence."
There will be a dedicated starting page and table of contents soon. For now, feel free to check out the first few chapters if you haven't yet! Even if you have, you might want to scroll through again as I've lightly edited them for consistency's sake this week. Here's an overview of what has changed.
tense has changed from past to present
some exposition has been added to chapter one (Of Whispers and Moths, see above link)
most notably: Yun's cousin Vy is the treasurer of their clan, a prestigious and important position, which will be significant later on
The Plan
I have no idea whether Requiem of the Moth will be the title of the overarching story or of this particular instalment. I might come up with a completely different title but for now, it is what it is.
The estimated scope for this first instalment will be 20,000 words. Whenever I've done word count estimates for novels before, the finished product ended up right around the estimate or shorter. I'm not a wordy writer, quite on the contrary, which is why I chose to try the serial format.
After finishing the first instalment, I will take a break to evaluate and reconsider my plans. Will there be a second instalment at all? If yes, what will it be about? I will lightly plot the next arc before publishing more. Pantsing is definitely not my comfort zone, I like to have at least a bit of an idea of where the journey is going before I move forward.
This is good news if you've been enjoying my short stories: I'll likely publish an unrelated short story here and there to keep the brain fresh and the ideas flowing.
So much for the plan. I reserve the right to change my opinion at any point in time etc. but I hope I will be able to get through this without writing myself into a corner. I've never gone through with publishing a story as I was writing it before. Wish me luck?
And let me know your thoughts on this experiment! Has the story sparked your interest? Have you read the first chapters or if not, do you feel like picking it up now? Any and all constructive criticism and feedback is appreciated.
I hope you will follow me on this exciting journey with my boys Yun and Usira.
Congrats on the adventure! Sounds great. Look forward to reading it!
Congratulations on taking on such an ambitious project! I just read the first chapter and I’m already curious to see how the story will continue. I love the names you chose for your characters! The pacing of the story is great with enough details to give me a glimpse about the world but not too much that it feels like exposition. Good luck with your serial!