Friday, September 07, 2012

SERIAL DRAMA

Amidst all the excitement over Amazon unveiling a new Kindle yesterday, the part that really grabbed my attention was their release of Kindle Serials, stories that will be emailed directly to readers, one chapter at a time, all following a single, $1.99 purchase.

Hmmm... sound like any particular genre we're all familiar with?  One that we've been told, over and over again, is "dead?"

I started my own romantic serial, Counterpoint: An Interactive Family Saga, based on my work for P&G's AnotherWorldToday.com.

Launched in 2009, AWT started off with one episode a week, then expanded to two in 2010, with readers getting to vote at the end of each installment regarding where they want the story to go next.

Counterpoint: An Interactive Family Saga works the same way.  I write it along with my readers.  Volumes One and Two are out now, and I am writing Three based on your feedback.

Last week, Dear Author did an entire feature on the success of serialized stories.  They quoted me as saying:

What I’ve learned from my previous soap work, especially www.AnotherWorldToday.com, is that there is no such thing as one topic on which every single reader agrees on.  Even when you think there is no way somebody could want the story to go in this direction, someone inevitably does.  I’ve had votes so close, they’ve literally been mathematically 50-50, with a singe vote making the difference.  What’s also interesting is that, since I leave the votes open indefinitely, sometimes they can flip months after the original question was posed and the scenes already written.  The whole interactive aspect is what I find so exciting about writing a serial.

Read the entire article at: http://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/the-revival-of-the-serial/?shareadraft=baba46959_503acec456a44

Check out Volumes One and Two of Counterpoint: An Interactive Family Saga below, and please let me know what you think about the idea of serialized books - I consider them soaps between the covers!











No comments: