Asking for advice

[serai]

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...from those of you who read, and especially those of you who've written, chapter fics.

High Contrast really does seem to be turning into an actual chaptered, long-form fic. I'm working on putting together an archive page, so I can point people to it when I get a new piece, etc.

My question is this: how should I arrange the listing? The first bits of the story I got over a decade ago, and now this stuff is coming in. But it's not now, nor has it ever, emerged in chronological order. The pieces come in willy-nilly, all over the place. So which would be more useful, do you think - listing in order of writing, or in the chronological order of the story?

Which would you do as a writer, and which would you prefer as a reader? I'm on the fence, honestly. Opinions?

Comments

[fantasy-fan.livejournal.com]

I would say for now, list it in the chronology in the order you are posting, until it is finished. The reason I say that is, another author had a similar many chapter fic that she wrote as you are, starting with a piece that ended up roughly in the middle, and higgledy-piggeldy after that. Readers who were following along as she wrote it were happy to read it that way, and could certainly follow the unfolding of the story and the way the author's thinking evoked evolution of the characterizations, especially the main OC, along the way. When she posted a story-chronological listing later, if you read it that way it didn't quite hang together. Some of the things that were written earlier honestly needed a little tweaking to keep the characterization and continuity together. As far as I know, she never went back and fixed it, and so it remains a bit jarring.

Another long long piece written the same way was tremendous fun, and suffered from exactly the same problem. So the authors took down the whole thing, and started over again from the now-recognized beginning, changing and tweaking and reposting episodes that were sometimes significantly different now that it had all come together. But they never finished it. They lost the muse, or the friendship, or something, and now there is a 1/3 story posted, and the earlier work is gone. I still wish that someday it will be finished, but I don't hope for it.

So my thought is post it as it has come to you, enjoy the ride, and worry about chronology later. Or, use a short header at the beginning of each episode of the story to let people know roughly where it falls in the timeline.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Ah, you bring up an important point, one that I'd been worried about. There are indeed things in these fics that wouldn't be there, or at least where they are, if the story was being written step-by-step timewise. I was thinking that I'd have to go back and tweak eventually, but I don't know if I'll even want to do that. So I think I will post as I write, so to speak, and then put up a chronological list as a kind of map, so people will see what the timeline looks like even if it's not best read that way.

Thank you so much for bringing this up. It pretty much locks in my thinking. *HUGS*