To Serialise Or Not To Serialise?

Or, ‘On Making Rough Drafts Public’.

Originally I was going to have this Friday’s post be about The Evolution of Setting, but I couldn’t remember half the points I wanted to cover, and I decided that I should probably save most of these backward-looking posts for when I’ve actually, y’know, finished a first draft or something similarly outlandish. So instead I’m going to talk about an important consideration for any writer who wants to build up a following online: namely, how polished does my writing have to be before I post it on the Internet?

Chapter One | The Darling House | 11:47 PM

Author's Notes: I tried SO hard to get this post up on time. I really did. I sat for hours yesterday with a blank document open and couldn't think of the right words to start off. I stayed up until 1 in the morning trying to write something that didn't sound godawful. I managed a couple of paragraphs before giving up. Then today, I went to visit a friend who lives in another county. On the train journey there I opened up the Notes on my iPod and immediately knew how the next bit should go. On the way back not only did I finish the post but I started planning out character arcs and suddenly a whole load of ideas came together. I won't spend forever talking about them here, but I am super stoked. Clearly what I need to do is just write every word of my novel whilst riding around on English trains x3
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That night, Wendy lay awake for an hour after her parents had gone to bed, until she was sure that they must be asleep. She crept out into the corridor and strained her ears for the murmur of her parents’ voices, but all she could hear were the sounds of deep breathing and John’s light snores coming from the bedroom he and Michael shared. Perfect. 

Recommendation Tuesday: 'Digital: A Love Story'

It’s Tuesday! I’m posting something! Yaaaaay!

For our first ‘Recommendation Tuesday’ I wanted to flag up a Visual Novel that’s been a huge influence on this story and especially my choice of setting. If you haven’t heard of a VN before, here’s a quick primer. I always describe it as a cross between a game and a “choose your own adventure” story – except that having said that, this VN is so much more than that. It’s called ‘Digital: A Love Story’ and you can download it for free from Lemma Soft Forums right here.

A Little Too Caught Up in Research

This is a question for writers as well as for anyone who’s had to do in-depth research on an obscure topic, perhaps for work or school: Have you ever got so caught up in researching your subject that you forget most people aren’t experts on, say, global warming disaster theories or foreign policy in Tang Dynasty China? It happened to me the day before yesterday. I was with a group of friends, hanging out at someone’s house, and I got up to go to the loo. When I came back, the topic had somehow turned to the Internet in the early 90s and one girl remarked that at that time, not that many people in America used the Internet.

Pretty much all of my research for this fic has pointed towards that definitely not being the case! Certainly amongst such users that were online in the early 90s, America had the biggest demographic by far. In true online forums fashion, I chimed in on a discussion in progress having only heard the most recent comment. “But there were quite a few people on BBSes.”

Excerpt 2 | Durham University Computer Lab | 10:09 PM

Author’s Notes: This is the same excerpt of the story that was on my NaNo profile, but there’s extra context at the beginning and end so that there’s new stuff to read even for those of you who’ve already read it. I chose it for my profile excerpt because I think it’s a good representative of the story content, plot and style. There’s a mixture of narrative and online chat (and I admit, I’m not sure how accurate my descriptions of BBS chat are, but I based them on the information I have available), a bit of late 80s technology, some familiar names from the Peter Pan canon, an interesting revelation or two and hints towards the larger plot. I wanted to give people a flavour of how the characters will be depicted in this universe, and give them a sense of the setting. By and large, I used the same criteria when I picked the first excerpt to post in this blog.

On with the show!

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The building was dark, but not deserted at this time of night. There were a couple of guys sitting at terminals who looked up and nodded as Wendy came in, then went back to what they’d been doing. Wendy sat down and dialled in the number for the CompuChat BBS, which by now she knew off by heart. It felt like forever since she’d last accessed the board at home.

By now, Wendy’s reply to the secretive user ‘Tiger Lily’ had disappeared off the board, and in the week or so since she’d made the post, nothing had come of it. Wendy was relieved and disappointed in equal measure. Her search for ‘The Neverland’ had already hit a dead end and she wasn’t sure where to go from here.

At almost the exact second she thought this, her screen split in two and a chat opened up on the right-hand half of the screen, headed by the words,

TIGER LILY WANTS TO CHAT