Being a serial groupie

Every picture tells a multitude of stories. No two writers will create the same tale. Yet when ten writers decide to write a serial together, despite each writing a chapter of their own creation without having any outlined plot, the result is a terrific piece of work. There’s something about writing serial chapters that appeal to those who have a story to tell. I have been writing for quite a few years now and was instrumental in starting a serial group on another creative writing website that is today enjoying good membership and running four serials consistently. The most important thing to remember is that creative writing is fun. The more you take part, the better you become with grammar, story construction, description, and dialogue in many genres and different tense. I have watched many writers improve in all the various aspects of writing as they progressed from month to month. All this without a college course or personal trainer or mentor, not that I would discourage that. It has amazed me how much writers’ enthusiasm shone through their work and how they got to know one another to gel as a group, both on and socially away from the site. Five writers’ I know who started out working on serial chapters have this year published their first book.

I love writing and have four novels and a book of poetry to my credit, but always I return to what I enjoy as a diversion, honing my skills in five to seven hundred word chapters, never knowing what I am going to write until I see the previous writers work. It is fun, and it has kept me in shape creatively. Sometimes, reading a chapter that I wrote way back when, I am pleasantly surprised and ask myself, ‘Did I write that?’

Although writers’ will often say they love writing and want the world to read them, the real reason is that we write for our satisfaction first without thinking about an audience. It is not until we have finished that we are fed up with one edit after another until the final draft and publication. Until that moment, the work is all ours, and we live inside the pages with the cast until the last line. Once there, it is time to move on to the next story, and that is when we hope an audience will read the one we just finished.

This is why serial writing is so important. It is an excellent stepping stone toward a first novel or short story. It is also the way to encourage the young to become more literate. FanFiction is sweeping across the literary world right now. Short stories and latest chapters written into forums by young adults who want their favorite TV or film heroes and heroines to get involved in new escapades. Young writers are the future, and whether we hate electronic books and website reading or not, modern technology has encouraged the young writer to use the computer instead of the library. I want all age groups to discover the joy of writing and have fun doing it. Remember, your audience is worldwide, and your name is on your work.