Writing Serial Narratives

This discussion on writing serial narratives started with a request from Curtis Hubbard of the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo.

The story is amazing. the writer is excited. The designer and photographer can't wait. This is going to be a must-read for our community.
Trouble is, it's also shaping up to be somewhere in the neighborhood of, prepare yourselves, 300-500 inches (it's still written out in longhand on a notebook, so I haven't even bothered to try to figure out words).
Yes, there are cuts that can be made, but this looks to me to be a perfect opportunity to deliver a serial over several days.
We're working on staying focused, on finding the classic storytelling elements within each segment and identifying the suspense points where we could leave off each day. What else should I know before moving forward with this newspaper form that's alien to our newsroom?
Great examples? Tips on what to avoid? Lemme have 'em. - Curtis Hubbard, Daily Camera

One thing, and it may sound elementary, but it has to be reckoned with: Set aside space in the beginning segment to portray and realize the main characters memorably. It doesn't matter how suspenseful the situation is -- or whether you find just the right cliffhanger for the end of Day One. If you don't have characters the readers want to know more about, you're going to lose many readers before Day 2. - John Voskuhl, Lexington Herald-leader

There are many big issues. But I think the biggest is identifying the central complication (to use Jon Franklin's term), really understanding it, and then planning, writing and revising with that as your absolute compass. If you haven't read it in awhile, revisit Chapter 4 of "Writing for Story," the one titled "Stalking the True Story." It will save you a lot of grief. - Michael Roberts, The Arizona Republic

Every serial is different, of course, but a good rule of thumb is to keep the package to five days. That's about the maximum amount of time you can expect readers to stay with you and keep in mind where they've been in the story and where they're going.
Also, each day should have not only a suspense point but a distinctive focus -- something that shows why this particular section is running on Day Three instead of being tacked on to the bottom of Day Two. - Rosalie Stemer, Newsroom Coach, Stamford, CT

While I think Rosalie's five-day rule is a good one, I would remind everyone that Roy Peter Clark produced a 30-day serial in Three Little Words and that each day's story was a thousand words--or, as I recall, enough for a reader to take in over a cup of coffee. - R. Thomas Berner, Pennsylvania State University

I'd browse some "Best Newspaper Writing" books to find some serials and read how those authors organized their work.
Daniel P. Finney did a really nice serial for our paper earlier this year that told the story of a losing girls basketball team (won one game this year, none the year before). He wrote a detailed (several pages) outline that helped guide his writing. In the outline, he identified and briefly described the conflict, theme and characters for the whole story. Then he did the same for each installment and outlined the important scenes for each part. I'll ask Daniel if I can send a copy your way, and I'll e-mail you his series.
This piece by Miriam Hill ( http://poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=10604 ) has some helpful advice from Roy Peter Clark, including, "Straight narrative is just showing without telling. The moral is in the telling."
Tom French did a workshop on sequencing last weekend at the National Writers' Workshop. He talked about sequencing as being the DNA of a narrative and talked about different ways to plot the sequence a story. Send me your snail address or fax number and I'll send you a copy of the handout. You can read French's Pulitzer-winning "Angels and Demons" series here: http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1998/feature-writing/works
Ken Fuson does an excellent job with serials. Check out his four-part "A Stage in their Lives" here:
http://www.asne.org/kiosk/writingawards/1998/98writingawards.htm#Fuson
And his eight-part (broke Rosalie's five-part rule, but I think it was compelling enough to break some rules) "Truth About Bob" here:
http://desmoinesregister.com/extras/bob/index.html
The Bob package includes an essay by Ken on how he did it, though I don't recall that it focuses much on organization and writing.
Also check out Tom Hallman's "The Boy Behind the Mask": http://www.oregonlive.com/mask/
That also has a "How We Did It," but again, I don't think it deals with writing or organization.
One of the best serials I've ever read was John Carlson's "Betrayed by Blood," about a family of hemophiliacs who died of AIDS they contracted before blood was being screened for HIV. The series was pre-Web, but they did a reprint and John may still have a stash of copies he'd be willing to share. E-mail him at jcarlson@dmreg.com.
And let us know where and when we can read the final product. - Steve Buttry, Omaha World-Herald

The questions about serials warms my heart.
Some of you may know that I wrote a 29-parter for the St. Pete Times in 1996, hosted a conference at Poynter on the subject, have collected more than a hundred serials from around the world, served as a free telephone consultant on a couple of dozen such projects, and have written a "starter kit" for those who want to try the form.
This kit is not yet available online, though it should be. Poynter has printed a "white paper" which contains the starter kit. It is called "Writing to Length." I'd be happy to send one to any interested coach or editor. You can email me personally at rclark@poynter.org. That way, we don't have to clutter up this box.
I'd also be happy to try to send this to everyone electronically through this listserv, but need advice as to whether that's a good idea.
My starter kit makes a distinction between the "breakfast serial" and the "saga." They are first cousins of the same genre. But the length of chapters and the number of days is a key issue. I agree that if the chapters are long, requiring 20 minutes or more of reading, than five or six days would be the max. But what if the chapters were half that length, as was the case, I think, in "Blackhawk Down," which ran successfully for a month? - Roy Peter Clark

Sukhwinder Singh Dhillon lied, cheated, committed bigamy -- and murdered, using an exotic, lethal poison called strychnine. He killed loved ones, perhaps as many as six people. The immigrant had gone back to find wives in his native India, and returned with them to his new home in Canada. But then, just when it seemed he might get away with it, an insurance investigator and two determined detectives brought him to justice. Five years elapsed between Dhillon's arrest in October 1997 and his final murder conviction.
Last Jan. 23 he went to prison to begin serving two life sentences.
Last Jan. 25 we began publishing Poison, a novel that one of our staff writers had done on the murders and on the killer's life story. While the long murder trial was unfolding, the writer (who did not cover the court proceedings) spent a year working on the big project. At one point he and a photographer went to India to research and record the scenes of Dhillon's life.
We ran a chapter a day for 31 consecutive publishing days - 2 full broadsheet pages each weekday, and 6 in our Saturday weekend edition (we don't publish Sundays).
We'd never tried anything like this. Inside the newsroom there was the usual murmuring and hand-wringing. Prior to its launch, our anxious circulation director said that such a massive piece would send readers fleeing in droves.
Readers went crazy over it. Even though everyone knew how it would turn out - we'd already covered the murders and the trial - people ate it up. Especially female readers, a demographic we're trying to capture.
Our Web site got thousands of hits. Newspaper sales shot up. By the end, that same circ director asked if we could string it out a little longer. A book publisher has now made overtures about it.
Besides having good real-life material to work with, the writing and photography was first-class, and the presentation very effective. You can read it here (subscription required). - Kevin Cavanagh, The Hamilton Spectator

I'd add to the good advice Curtis has already gotten from the perspective of the journalist and the reader:

Journalist

• Be organized and specific in your organization. Plot out the stories by day and drill down from there to outline what will go in each particular story or sidebar each day -- story elements, quotes, facts, details, etc. -- as well as what art you'll use, what quotes you will pull out. Know what every element of the package will be each day. If you are just writing a mainbar with no side bits it's still crucial to plot out how the stories
  will flow. Don't just talk about the cliffhanger you will use each day, chart it all out.
• Don't publish until you know where the package is going start to finish. I've been in projects where we bent the rule of not publishing part one until the last part is done, but there is much to be said for following that as closely as possible, especially with a serial.
• Keep the team pumped up about the project even as tempers flare and burn out creeps in. Give pep talks, coach your butt off to keep everyone high on the serial. Do whatever you can to get the other folks in the newsroom to be excited, too (as opposed to the sniping that can occur when writers are working on this kind of thing and the other grunts are grinding out the dailies and complaining they never get to do fun stuff).
• Tell it to Mom -- find someone outside the project who is willing to read some or all of the serial in advance and not give any of it away except to give you feedback about whether it's working. It could be an editor not working on the serial. It could be a copy editor. It could be someone who works in the office.

Reader

• As a reader, I love well-written serials. They show that the people running papers care about telling good stories. I was never fussed by how long a serial went as long as it genuinely propelled me along. I love the serials whose installments can be read while coffee is brewing and I have my first cup.
• I want art. Lots of it and run BIG with good portraits of the main characters and photos of any scenes that are key to the story. Locator maps are good too when warranted.
• I want some kind of a recap, just a graf even, to remind me where the story was yesterday and if it runs long, to remind me of more along the way.
• If there are multiple characters it helps to run little bios of them day to day with mugshots as a sidebar.

Good luck with this. It will be interesting to read the serial when you publish it! - Nancy Weil, IDG News Service