LD mentioned...
As a side note, Secret Master has alluded to this whole AAR Forum subculture in the past, and perhaps he will get a chance to share some of his thoughts in the near future.
I've just done a bit more research into this whole "serialization" method of writing. As Rocky Horror mentioned a ways back, Dickens wrote a number of his novels first as serials in magazines. This got me wondering about some things that I bugged my faculty's 19th century expert about.
The first interesting thing about serial writing back in the "old" days was that authors like Dickens got reader feedback, and took it into consideration. Now, Dickens did not accept all of the suggestions from his readers (or even most, I think) but he was aware of what his audience was thinking and wanting, which did have some impact on his writing.
Second, when Dickens put those writings into full-blown novels for publication, he revised them before doing so. His revisions were nothing on the scale of what LD and MrT have referred to, but I will tell you why in a moment.
Third, while Dickens is a wonderful novelist, he was also one of the first and best to turn novel writing into real financial sucess. In some cases, he knew what he had to write to make audiences happy, even if it was not precisely the he would otherwise have liked. This applied more to his early work. After he was an established author, he could do more risky sorts of writing knowing that people would still buy his stuff.
How in the world does this relate to what LD was talking about? Well, I'll tell you. (At this point, I can hear Norg telling me to get on with it
) First, I will agree with LD that serialization is the best way to go, and it is precisely because of the format of this forum. The medium of writing here on the forum moves us to more concise, focused, and intense writing than does the medium of writing a novel. The medium of the forum is completely electronic and non-locally based (that is, I do not give each of my readers a script to read. I "publish" it to a website that is in Sweden, and they get it from there.) Also, this medium is radically different from other types of writing because it is nearly instant. I can post something, and in the time it takes MrT to read it, I have feedback. Not only that, but other readers can see and be influenced by said feedback (or disagree with it).
But almost all of us here on the fourm are also authors. Not only that, but we have real jobs, classes to take, and other games to play. (Yes, I play other games besides EU and EU2. LD will likely give me a 24 hour ban for such heresy...
)Those of us with significant others have to give time to them as well (I have been MIA of late for precisely this reason... ) With all of the time constraints upon all of us, more condensed writing is called for.
However, do not be confused and think this is just 19th century serialization done with Internet Exploiter. Note that our audience here is very different than the audience Dickens was writing for. Here at the forums, we have our own sub-culture, complete with rules (no Nazi propoganda), customs (never give ripping, bad comments to other writers publically in their AAR), hierarchy (LD and MrT as mods) and language (think of all the permutations of the venerable old term AAR and the "language" of smileys). What's even more interesting is that writing for this audience is writing for an audience that brings with it a host of different traditions, including very different literary traditions. Just among my readers, there are Americans, Norwegians, Portugese, Spaniards, and Canadians. I have worked on collaborative efforts with Danes, Englishmen, and any other national grouping I have left out from the current FC troupe of writers.
However, while the forum is a different kind of place to do serialization than a 19th century magazine, novels are still bound in paper and published by publishers with an eye for money. The medium of the novel is radically different than the medium of the forum. It is only natural that extensive, line by line, revisions are required to go from the one to the other. I would be very interested to know if MrT and LD think their "novels" are even the same work of literature as their completed AARs. (My guess would be no, but perhaps they see it differently.) Also, because you want your novel to reach a different audience than the sub-culture of the forum, it becomes important re-gear the work for the audience it is now directed to. If you don't see it that, I am sure publishers do.
I think that as we continue this experiment that is the AAR forum, we shall get better at writing in this particular medium. We will learn new tricks and recycle old ones to make our stories better. Perhaps one day this medium of writing will be fully acknowledged as valuable in and of its own self. Regardless, it is still good practice all around.
