Serializing fiction

WordPress has a few books and some documentation on how to serialize your book, but I have never really read it as I’ve never taken the idea seriously.  Recently though, I have begun to think otherwise, still I have commenced on nothing but I imagine that thinking is the first part.

This article from the Washington Post is all about returning to the Victorian era of serialized fiction.  They make it sound easier than it is because the key of course, like the Perils of Pauline, is know how to break things up so that they want to return each week.  Right now readers just read straught through, thoughtlessly, as though on cruise control.  Rarely do they think about reading the next piece, chapter or section, they just do.

Serialized fiction is different and of course Charles Dickens was a master of it.  It would be great, if it’s out there, to see his book in serialized form, but I’ve never run into a version replicating his feat.  I think that Conan Doyle did the same with Sherlock and that when I was young did read in serialized form, but than Doyle’s book are shorter than Dickens so the leap is not as far.