Dear Readers:
I'll stretch the definition and say that a blog is a kind of a
serial narrative. It's the story, if you will, of a writer's
ideas, and the reactions of his or her audience. If it's good, it
has a kind of voice, a set of familiar characters, some action moving
forward, occasional suspense, a few recurring themes.
In 1996 I wrote a serial narrative that changed my life as a
writer. The title is "
Three Little Words," and it ran every day
for a month on the pages of the
St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. The 29-day
run was long, but the chapters were short, none longer than about 850
words. You could follow the story of a family struggling with the
death of a father from AIDS by reading about five minutes per day.
Since then, I've seen more than 100 serial narratives written in this,
or similar, form. Recent ones have been published in the
Rocky
Mountain News,
The Virginian-Pilot, and
The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press. The serial narrative is a special literary form with
special advantages and requirements. Not every writer can pull
one off. And not every good story lends itself to serial
narration. But when everything clicks, when the writer finds a
compelling story and a golden source; when cliffhangers abound; when
character is revealed through scene and action; when quotes are
replaced by dialogue -- nothing quite matches the intensity of
readership, as Mark Bowden discovered with the serialization of
"
Black Hawk Down."
Starting next Monday, Feb. 19, Poynter.org will publish something we've
never tried before, a series of essays -- a serial centerpiece, if you
will -- on the craft of the serial narrative. You may want to
taste some of the serials mentioned above to see if this kind of
storytelling interests you. If you have written such serials, or
plan to write one,
let us know and we'll share them with all our
readers. --
RPC
