Ah, the Web Serial Novel. The more original and (somewhat) more professional cousin to Fan Fic.
Novels that are published piece-by-piece are nothing new. In fact, SerialNovels can be traced back to the time of Charles Dickens. With the advent of the Internet and the rise of Asian web novels (and their translations), however, the serialized novel format has seen a renaissance in The New '10s.If you want to write one, don't worry, we have you covered.
Necessary Tropes:
On his blog
, web serial author Wildbow outlines attributes a web novel should have: Consistency, frequency, and quality.- Consistency: Online content creators (whether it is bloggers or YouTubers) can tell you that nothing enrages fans quite as much as missing updates. Set yourself a schedule ("every Monday and Thursday", "the 3rd of every month" etc) and stick to it. Websites like Royal Road make this easy thanks to their "scheduled release" option. Obviously, you can post whenever you want if you're still starting out and have no fanbase yet. However, if you already have readers that have followed the story until your latest update, you'll also want them to read upcoming chapters. If they have no idea when the next chapter will come out and when they should come back, they'll read something else (this isn't always a problem when you update frequently, however).
- Frequency: The sad truth is that fans can be impatient, so updating once per month is not recommended. Once a week is generally seen as the minimum, with twice per week being recommended. Of course, you can update even more often, but that's gonna be hard to salvage. If you update infrequently, however, you can still retain readers if your updates are at least consistent.
- Quality: This should go without saying, but you won't gain readers if they don't like what you write. Of course, quality is a subjective beast. You can read our Write a Story (and our other guides) for the basics. Write a Fanfic and Write a Webcomic can also help, as Web Serial Novels share a format very similar to Fan Fic and Web Comics.
- Additionally, if you are on a website like Royal Road, you'll have to take care of the summary and cover yourself. See Write a Good Summary for the former. As for the cover, better get yourself acquainted with digital art software or hire someone who is.
- The last thing you need is patience. Web serials have a smaller readership than, for example, Web Comics do, so, even if you do everything right, it can sometimes take a long time until you have even one regular reader.
Of course, as with Fan Fic, it's perfectly possible to write a serial just for yourself and your friends, in which case the above tips regarding scheduling are not so important. If your goal is to make money on Patreon, though, they absolutely are.
Choices, Choices
- Firstly, you need to select a genre to write in and what kind of audience you want. Unless you already are an established author, in which case you should just stick to your Signature Style. If you don't have an audience yet, your genre will determine what type of audience you attract. Isekai, LitRPG, Xianxia and Superhero stories will give you the largest audience, although with the existence of platforms like Wattpad, Young Adult Literature and Romance is also viable. However, at the end of the day, your only guaranteed reader is yourself, so, make sure that you write what you like to read.
- Secondly, you need to select your platform. Are you starting your own blog or are you posting your story on a website that hosts online fiction? The former has the disadvantage that you don't have an established community that can find your story. The latter has the disadvantage that certain communities have rather restricted reading tastes (e.g. Royal Road users prefer LitRPG or Xianxia while those on Wattpad primarily look for YA and NA romances). If you choose an established online fiction hosting website, what site specifically do you choose? Royal Road has a large community and good discoverability, but it can be a bit unforgiving towards newcomers. Wattpad, Scribblehub, Fictionpress, Inkitt, or Quotev make it harder to be discovered, but if you're just starting out, they might be fine.
- Thirdly, you'll have to decide on how to handle the writing process itself. Will you take the rigid approach and write the entire novel ahead of time? Or will you take the organic approach and just upload chapter one and then see how you can continue it? The rigid approach makes it easier to maintain a consistent and frequent schedule. However, it also in a way defeats the entire point of web serial writing, as the point is that you can get feedback as soon as a chapter is online and adjust your story to the audience's wishes. The organic approach has an advantage in this regard. However, it is also more prone to Schedule Slip and the author just getting stuck. Obviously, both scenarios are extremes. A compromise between the two can be to just write yourself a backlog of 4-16 chapters ahead of time so that you can still update in case real life gets in the way or you need some more time to properly plan the rest of your plot. Another compromise would be to have a strong outline beforehand so that you always know how to continue your story.
- Finally, how long do you want your chapters to be? In a normal novel, the length of chapters doesn't matter so much. In a Web Serial Novel, however, the chapters are like the episodes of a TV show. Even in the age of streaming and without the restrictions of scheduling, most producers prefer to keep their episodes in the 40-60 minute range. That's because audiences want to know roughly what to expect when they get an update. You shouldn't have your first chapter be 1,000 words long if your second chapter is 10,000 words long, for example. Longer chapters are recommended for less freqently updating stories. Mother of Learning used to update monthly, but it made up for this with chapters that were 7,000 words long or more. Shorter chapters allow for more frequent updating, but they also feel less satisfying and make it harder to insert cliffhangers. It is generally agreed that 1,000 - 3,000 words (with a mean of about 2,000 - 2,500) is a good range for web fiction.
Pitfalls:
- Grammar: This should go without saying, but, as with Fan Fic, a Web Serial Novel full of grammatical and spelling errors won't make a good impression. Use Grammarly, Google Docs, or some other software to spot errors and, if that doesn't work, proofread, proofread, proofread!
- Schedule Slip: We already covered this before. A backlog or a strong outline can help to avoid the issue.
- Dead Fic: As with Fan Fic, many Web Serial Novels fail to finish. If you are concerned with this issue, it is covered in our guide Write A Fan Fic. The risk of Dead Fic increases with the planned scope of your project. While you can never know how big your novel will be in the end, it helps to consider how much time you'll have for writing and if you can reconcile it with work, school or friends and family. Burnout is a common problem with web serial authors, so, take care of yourself.
- Arc Fatigue and Padding: Web Serial Novels can be long. Really long. Several of the longest serials are more than a million words long. As such, it can be tempting to spend several chapters on getting to know the main character, taking scenic side trips to exposit the world, or side quests that don't impact the narrative overall. However, every chapter you post has the potential to cost you readers if it bores or frustrates the audience. Here is where an outline can help. If you removed this chapter or this story arc from your outline, would anything really change?
- Slow-Paced Beginning: While this technically covered under the last point, it deserves extra mention as your first chapter will, statistically speaking, be seen by the greatest amount of people. In a regular paperback novel, readers spend money to read the whole thing, so they will stick around even if the first chapter isn't super great. With online novels, it's not money, but time which is their limiting factor. Why should they read your serial instead of the countless other serials if your opening doesn't hook them?
- Excessive Serial Escalation: That being said, it is possible to take the above advice too far in the other direction. While Worm is a popular serial overall, it has been criticized for giving its characters too little room to breathe. You'll want calmer scenes where your characters can take a break and relax here and there. If every chapter you post is maximum action all the time, it might please those who read chapter as soon as it is uploaded, but it will tire out new readers who have to binge read everything. Web Serial Novels can be as long as you want them to be, so, take your time.
Writers' Lounge
Suggested Themes, Plots, and Aesops
- As mentioned earlier, Web Serial Novel readers gravitate towards certain genres, with many popular serials being in the LitRPG or Xianxia genres. Why is that? Well, consider the format for a while. Readers of a normal paperback book can read the whole thing in a single weekend. Web-serials are different. The chapters are updated days, sometimes weeks apart. When a new chapter comes, readers will first have to remember what happened last time, making the snowballing tension of the Three-Act Structure harder to execute. Same applies to plot twists in chapter 46 that require the reader to remember what happened in chapter 11.
So, what can you do instead? Many of the popular web-serial genres fall under the umbrella of progression fantasy, a genre all about protagonists taking levels in badass. How does that help with the web-serial format? It helps by externalizing and simplifying the progress of the story. Even if readers don't remember the exact plot of the last chapters after a long hiatus, looking at the main characters' Power Level helps them remember where they are. This is also why the RPG Mechanics 'Verse setting is so popular. All these stats and tables make the power progression easier to grasp. With character-alignment sheets, even more abstract qualities, like Character Development, can be externalized. Serial Escalation also helps to keep up the tension without being restrained by the Three-Act Structure of novels.
Of course, this isn't the only way to game the format, but it's a popular one. - Many web-serial readers are nerds. You know what that means. With the young, male, and nerdy audience, it is not surprising that Speculative Fiction, Action, Adventure, and harems are as popular as they are.
- Due to the above factor, web-serials have tend to be very meta, with Genre Savvy protagonists, and Troperiffic storylines dripping with Genre Deconstruction. Worm is a Deconstructor Fleet of the Superhero genre while A Practical Guide to Evil is the Evil Overlord List in story-mode.
- Lastly, many English web-serial communities such as Royal Road originated as places for translations of Asian works. Thus, tropes found in Japanese, Chinese, or Korean works (isekai, reincarantion, etc.) abound.
Potential Subversions:
- As stated above, web-serial readers love protagonists who know how to save the world and look good doing it. However, action is by no means necessary for a web-serial to become popular. Consider The Wandering Inn. The story focuses on a young woman who finds herself Trapped in Another World in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, but instead of becoming a great adventurer, she becomes an innkeeper. She doesn't level up through killing stuff, but simply through being a good innkeeper.
- Character Development is often neglected in many web-serials, even though their great length allows character exploration to an extent that regular novels do not. Plus, as The Wandering Inn shows once again, character-focused narratives can and do find audiences.
Extra Credit
The Greats
- A Practical Guide to Evil
- Beware of Chicken
- Legion of Nothing
- Mother of Learning: The best-rated story on Royal Road Legends and for a good reason. Its unique premise, strong characterization, and lack of cheating in its magic and plot make it stand out from the crowd.
- Worm by Wildbow. The Trope Codifier for Superhero web-serials and one of the most successful online novels out there.
- The Wandering Inn
