• Music: Indoor Swimming At The Space Station : Eluvium : Copia

The serial comma is obviously awesome. Serial fiction gives me fits.

My question for you today is about serial fiction, everything from The Old Curiosity Shop to Arthur Conan Doyle to the latest 160-chapter Harry/Draco epic. It used to be more common in professional fiction than it is now. Fanfiction has a lot of it, and it's how television works routinely. What do you think about it? When does it work for you? What are its pitfalls? What are its strengths? Is it important to you that the writers know where they're going from the first moment? Can you tell if they don't?

This touches on some stuff we've talked about here earlier, when I realized that my readers knew more than I did about where I was going with one of my serials. I'm also watching a past master of the serially-told story, nwhepcat, approach the stopping point of her latest. I am thinking that there's craft to learn here.