Right about now, I am lying perfectly still in a tiny chamber, listening to muzak while being resonated with magnets. Or something. I don’t really know how it works, but my doctor ordered an MRI to check out my knee. I still can’t fully straighten or bend it, but after two weeks of RICE — rest, ice, compression, elevation — I can finally “walk” in a way that looks normal. Well, mostly normal. As long as I’m going slow.

(Yeah, I do know how pathetic that sounds. That’s why I’m getting the MRI.)

While I spend my morning bored and claustrophobic at the hospital, why don’t you enjoy these lovely links? They’ve been sitting in my Drafts folder for a while. I keep thinking I’ll write full posts about them, but then it never happens. Oops…

“Literary vs. Commercial Fiction” by S.E. Sinkhorn

Some stories are pretty clearly commercial, but still contain great character development. However, developed characters don’t make a story character-driven. Likewise, a functional plot does not necessarily make a story plot-driven. It’s all about the point of the story. Is the point to tell a tale, or learn something about a character or the human condition? Neither is superior to the other and both have their place in literature.

“Do You Know What Business You’re In?” by Rachelle Gardner

Analysts seem to agree that Kodak operated as if they perceived themselves as being in the film business, long after film had been pushed out of the way in favor of digital. … In fact, Kodak was really in the business of “moments.” The Kodak Moment. Had they embraced this larger truth, they would have been asking themselves “How can we continue to help people capture and share their Kodak moments?” But instead they were asking “How can we get people to continue printing out their photos using our products?”

Publishers, agents and authors need to start from this very important truth: We are not in the “book” business. We are in the business of storytelling.

As we figure out ways to move into the future, we will only be successful if we stay focused on remembering exactly what our business is.

“Experimenting With Serials For Fun and Profit” by Jane Friedman (via Shari)

Bring up the topic of serials in the writing community (either online or off), and it doesn’t take long for someone to invoke the success of Charles Dickens. But does a strategy that surged in popularity during the Victorian Era still have relevance to today’s writers and readers?

Both new and established authors are finding the answer is a resounding yes, and point to a growing demand for serial work, in part due to a burgeoning number of e-readers and new distribution methods for the form.

Not all serials are alike, however. While you can find many practitioners of the traditional serial that Dickens was known for — writing installments on deadline and taking audience feedback into consideration — authors are also slicing and dicing a complete work into segments as a marketing tool.

“Feedback from readers has solidified my feeling against this practice. Books as a unit or package of media work well in the long form, and readers by and large want to immerse themselves in the experience of reading long form.” Coker says this applies to full-length novels divided into chunks after completion, or works in progress.

As you may remember, I originally wrote Twenty-Somewhere as a weekly serial here on the blog. When Amazon opened up their epublishing platform, I decided to see if people would pay to read 20SW on their Kindles. They did, but they made it clear (through reviews, reader forums, and eventually sales) that they would prefer to have it all in one chunk as opposed to having to buy the episodes separately.

So while I do think serial fiction has a place, and a future, I’m not sure the correct mechanisms are in place. I would love to see someone experiment with a subscription model, where a reader pays by the episode, but is not responsible for checking back for new episodes all time. Maybe a notice is automatically delivered to their e-reader, and then they either approve or reject the download.

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