"Cliffhangers get exhausting": The inside scoop on keeping readers engaged.
From the author who literally wrote the book on it.
When I started writing serial historical fiction on Substack over a year ago, it was purely a pragmatic decision: I needed the accountability of a regular posting schedule and an audience to get started on the novel that had been itching away for years. I know that I’m not the only one who chose serialisation, at least initially for these reasons!
I am so, so proud of Bertha’s Tale. A novel serialised exclusively on Substack, it told the story of the first Christian queen in England, living in the late sixth century AD: a woman who defied all social expectations yet whose story has been left out of the written sources. I wanted to give her voice the space it so deserves as a woman who, quietly, changed the course of an entire country.
It’s not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but I am proud because it was my first published novel. You can read it in its entirety here: BERTHA’S TALE ARCHIVE.
Earlier this month I launched my second serial historical fiction novel, Hild’s Tale. (Notice a theme? My writing is all about spotlighting powerful women using their own words) The first instalment (Chapter 1 & author’s note) is linked below - I’d love you to join us on this year-long journey!
This expert wrote the book on keeping readers hooked. Literally!
Did I interview the five amazing authors that will be contributing to this series on serial fiction purely to make my own serial better than the last one I wrote? Not entirely - but I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a major factor.
is a seriously experienced author of both serialised and non-serialised writing. She writes on Substack at KimBoo's Scriptorium ☕ House of York, hosts her own serial on , and has even written a whole book on the topic of serialisation, Become an Unstoppable Storyteller: How To Craft Compelling Serials.
Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us about serialised fiction. For those who don’t know you or haven’t come across your work before, could you share briefly who you are, what and where you write, and where we can find you on Substack.
Sure! To start, here’s my official blurb:
“KimBoo York is a GenX elder-goth whose main life goal is to provide a good life for her rescue mutt, Keely-Boo, who is perfect and beyond reproach in every way. She is also a librarian, former project manager, and a professional author who wears too many hats and crosses too many genres, including romance, fantasy, and non-fiction. She lives on coffee and hope.”
I broke into being a professional author in 2011 with romance novels published by a small indie press, but I’m leaning more into fantasy and science fiction these days. All my work can be found at my author site, HouseofYork.info, including my non-fiction. I’m the worst example for authors because I actively refuse to “niche down” into one genre, so I’ve got writing craft books, memoir, M/M romance, poly romance, fantasy, romantasy, and self-help productivity guides. Everyone can find my non-fiction essays at the Scriptorium on Substack, and my current fiction at the Bibliotheca on Substack. I also have a blog about grief and mourning which is not on Substack, but I like to let people know it exists: Patience & Fortitude.
You published your book, Become an Unstoppable Storyteller: How To Craft Compelling Serials in 2023. What’s been your journey so far with this style of fiction writing?
My journey with serialized fiction goes back to 2007, when I started writing fanfiction again after a 20 year break. Ebooks were barely a thing, but here were all these amazing writers sharing long running, “chaptered fic” online. My first novel-length work was a fanfic I wrote on the fly, chapter by chapter, over the course of several months that year. Honestly it’s not great writing, but people were reading along, encouraging me, commenting on it…a whole new world opened up for me, because that feedback and sense of community energized me as a writer like nothing else had. I would not be a professional author today if not for fanfic serialization in 2007!
Jump forward to 2020 and I had been trying to find a way to translate that experience to my original fiction for a while. I’ve told this story a lot of times…
I was not happy with the subscription platforms available to authors at that time, but I did not have the mental bandwidth to DIY something on my wordpress sites. I would be better off now if I had just done the thing, as so many other authors did, but lesson learned! *sad trombone*
Meanwhile, technology shifted—sites like Ream and Substack came on scene, and suddenly what had been a faded dream became a real-life goal. I’m still exploring exactly how I want to set up serialization and subscriptions long-term, but I’ve realized that Substack as a platform is a good place for me and my work. I serialized one novel here in 2023 and I’ve restarted a serial on my new fiction Substack, the Bibliotheca. More to come!
You’ve shared online that you didn’t want to write a novel. How does serial fiction differ from novels?
One thing to keep in mind is that these definitions are all human constructs — there is no such thing as a “naturally occurring novel”! So, there is always a bit of a dust up when people try to set absolute definitions.
That said, my working definitions are that a novel (or novella, or short story) has a single plot arc, while a serial has multiple overlapping plot arcs.
Obviously, there are a lot of trilogies and book series that can be argued are serials, and I do! To me, novels are like a clamshell: they contain the whole thing. Novels can have sub-plots and multiple character arcs, but the key is the single plot arc, be it the classic three act structure or something like the hero’s journey or Save the Cat™.
A serial has multiple plot arcs which are layered so that one begins before the first one is over. There is also often a larger plot arc, so big it might even be hard for readers to see, that the other plot arcs fit into. It’s why I used “unstoppable” in the book title, because once you master this format of storytelling, you can literally keep writing the story for decades. Long running manga are a great example of this: Berserk (1988-present), One Piece (1997-present), and so on.
Keep in mind that a novel can be serialized, but that does not make it a serial.
My romantasy novel The Queen’s Aerie is the story I serialized last year. It’s a novel, though, and has been released as one. It’s one-and-done, complete as-is.
On the other hand, my current story Dragon’s Grail: Escape from Ice Mountain is the first arc in a long-running serial. It might not end for years.
Your book, written in part out of frustration at the lack of guidance available for writing long-running serial fiction, covers the concept of ‘serial beats’ in depth. Would you be able to give us a quick overview of what a ‘serial beat’ is and how it can better engage our readers?
I can do one better! I have a google sheet that provides a visual representation of how serial beats work, and it is free! I encourage people to make their own copy so they can play around with it and customize it. It has five sheets of information, so be sure to go through the whole thing!
It can be a little overwhelming to take in at first, but remember: this is all about creating layers of plot arcs. There is the Long Arc, which is the overarching story plot; and there are Season Arcs, which are complete plot arcs within the larger arc. Think of a television season with individual episodes, where the season itself is a “Long Arc” and the individual episodes have their own plot arcs. Season arcs can overlap, but that can get dicey. I suggest relying on what I call “short arcs” which are really just shorter sub-plots that overlap with the ending and beginning of Season Arcs. You can then move on to layering up Long Arcs, if you’ve got enough inspiration to keep going!
My spreadsheet examples are just options on how it can be done. For me as a pantser, it’s more about giving me guideposts to aim for, but I know some planners who have literally filled out their own spreadsheets with their entire vision. Whatever works!
Many authors are using Substack to share their serial fiction, with some hoping to (and succeeding!) earn off-platform publishing deals. Others write their novels in full first and then publish chapters or installments on a weekly or monthly basis. What do you think makes Substack uniquely well-placed for sharing our writing in these ways?
Because it is a community. It is easy to throw up installments on Patreon, Ream, your own website, etc., and a lot of people do that successfully, but that is doing things on “hard mode” because you are posting in isolation in hopes that a rabid reader will trip over your work. I go back to my fanfiction roots to explain why Substack is such a good option right now: it’s not (just) about pulling readers in as consumers, it is about building a community of readers and authors who are excited about the stories. That’s what I love about fandom communities, and it is what makes Substack such a unique, wonderful space for authors these days.
For instance, I’m reading serials and serialized novels on Substack in genres that I would not otherwise pick up and read, simply because I like and follow the author, or someone posted a Note talking about the story and piquing my interest. It’s almost like hanging out at a busy bookstore, everyone waving around their latest reads to share!
[Substack] makes writing, publishing, and reading something we do communally. It is not a contest; we all grow, and succeed, together.
I’ve been told on Notes that Substack is great for writers of serial fiction but no one is really interested in reading it. What would you say to this?
I’d say they are likely confusing comments and restacks with readership. As writers, we crave engagement with our stories, but to be honest most readers are passive consumers. Last year I wrote a post about this, The 1% of Readers, where I went over the actual math of reader engagement. The disappointing news is that less than 1% of readers actively engage with a story; the encouraging news is that the other 99% are, at least, reading your story!
Which is to say, looks can be confusing.
I asked a popular writer about this when I first onboarded with Substack, fearing I was just posting things for other writers to ignore. He told me that he’s lucky to get ten comments on a chapter of his story, but his subscribers (paid and free) totalled over 30,000 people, with an “open” rate of 30%, give or take. So that’s almost 10,000 people who are reading his story, which is backed up by his actual book sales, which are over four figures a month. It would be easy to look at his chapters on Substack and think that his work is unpopular because only a few people comment and they have only a few dozen “hearts.” That does not represent the truth!
The key is to manage expectations; very few authors get dozens of comments on a story installment. Keep on eye on increasing your subscribers/followers instead, and building community with both readers and writers who vibe with what you are doing and support you for the long term.
Do you have any tips for keeping readers excited beyond the period of the serial’s initial launch?
The classic bit of serial advice is “always end on a cliffhanger!” It’s honestly not bad advice and has served a lot of serialized stories really well, from penny dreadfuls to Saturday matinee silent movies to modern long-running manga. Love him or hate him, Dan Brown is a master of the technique in his novels. (Can you imagine if The Da Vinci Code launched today as a serialized story on Substack? It could crash the servers!)
But also I encourage people to think first about what, exactly, constitutes a “cliffhanger.”
It doesn’t always have to be your protagonist tied to the railroad tracks. Emotional cliffhangers are just as effective, such as a character revealing a big secret then fade to black! The readers will be left wondering how the other characters reacted, what the fallout is, and so on. Heart-pounding crisis is not necessary for a cliffhanger, just an element of the story which is unresolved at the moment.
That said, cliffhangers get exhausting for both the writer and the reader when done over and over again. This is where the layered plot arcs and sub-plots come into play.
I figured this out watching my favorite show of all time, Nirvana in Fire (2015), which also just happens to be an absolute masterpiece of storytelling. However, the pacing is very different from what I was used to in Western television, but that had the unexpected benefit of helping me see the pattern more clearly: a plot point was always introduced in the middle of an episode, and then usually resolved in the middle of the next episode, and every sub-plot actually has relevance to the overall (Long) arc. There was no neat and tidy tie-up of loose ends for the subplot at the end of the episode; in fact, it was not uncommon for an episode to simply end in the middle of a rather low-key scene of people talking over tea. Yet, the sub-plot was still hanging out there and drove me to start the next episode even if it was hours past my bedtime (true story!).
In other words, think of sub-plots and secondary plot arcs as actual structural elements, not just as thematic aides or character development. If you look at my serials beats spreadsheet, you’ll see clearly what I’m talking about, where Long Arcs carry over multiple seasons and short arcs (sub-plots) carry over between seasons.
Use sub-plots, character arcs, and overlapping plot arcs to create unfinished business in your story that readers want to know about and will carry them over the hump of a season arc ending or other lulls. Leave secondary characters lost at sea for a few installments; have the important letter be simply in transit for a while; give beloved side characters a side quest that has them coming and going from the main character’s plot line.
In other words, give your readers a rope to hold onto between “set scenes” or during slow periods in the plot. If the big romantic finale is the kiss, you don’t want to distract from that in the scene itself, but if you set up a few scenes earlier that one of the exes got in their car and is on their way over to crash the party, well, then the big romantic finale is not the end of the story, is it?
What’s true for serials is true for all formats of storytelling, to be honest: the key is to create a story that gets the reader invested in “what happens next?”
We’d love to hear your own experiences of writing serial fiction - historical or otherwise!
How did
’s advice resonate or challenge what you hold to be important for keeping readers engaged? Do you read or write serial fiction on Substack? And what are your thoughts on the humble cliffhanger: overrated or essential?You don’t want to miss this! A Substack MEGASTAR is headed our way.
The next article in this series, covering the wonderful
’s advice for serial writers, will go live tomorrow, 24th November 2024. Sarah has serialised two memoirs on Substack, has over 22,000 subscribers on the platform, and is a bestseller with thousands of paying subscribers. Subscribe to make sure Sarah’s advice lands in your email or Substack inbox. | A guest post by
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That's very good advice - I am very much appreciating your series on, erm, writing series. I also found that 1% thing extremely reassuring!
I've been doing these sub plots and secondary arcs etc., and was becoming somewhat downhearted at the lack of likes and all that. And I didn't think an endless serialisation was going to work. Now, however, I am minded to change my mind...
Serious food for thought, at a time when I was doing some serious reflection on the whole thing - thank you very much!