I was recently looking for a link to a post when I realized I had no idea where to find it. This is the result of having multiple story threads on multiple blogs. While it isn’t possible to change what is already up there, and even if it was, I am not in favor of wasting the time doing it, I wonder...
Going forward do you, as a reader, think it is easier to have all story arcs located on one blog? I ask this because we still have multiple blogs going. Rising Above will be ending in what I think will be one more post. I do not plan on continuing Wyatt’s story at this point. If he makes an appearance at all it will be as a secondary character to any threads we have going in the future. And I know, never say never, but it is too hard to maintain multiple threads in multiple blogs as they relate to a main story line, at least it is too overwhelming for me right now. I experienced first hand the frustration of multiple blogs when I tried to find a specific chapter.
Then we have Chameleon, the simfic50 story line about Melinda Owen. Her thread has found its way into the main story. I haven’t updated there for ages. I plan to finish her story with the prompt table which means I need to get off my butt and start writing it. With Ryan off the main story map, I should be able to keep hers separate going forward.
Let’s talk about Intermezzo, a side blog that I doubt anyone pays attention to and really only a place I wanted to use because things were happening with characters who never appear in the main story and damn it I wanted to write about them. They talk to me and it is hard to ignore. But they have no place in the main story, not really.
Again I ask this because there are more stories that can be told - Charlie and Syd and Rob, Blade and his wives, Shooter, Duff, and lord knows how many more characters that are going to come out of the woodwork in our heads. Can their stories be told on the same blog? Can they stay at Studio Time?
I think multiple blogs are great if you have multiple stories that do not overlap and intersect. I have to commend Beth for making sense out of all of it, untangling the mass of tangles that is our writing to put something up that is somewhat continuous and linear in the series guide. Going forward - telling this story from here on out - what does that look like?
I will be really interested in any feedback, if we get any.
ReplyDeleteI think the multiple blogs work for you two. Then again, one blog would also probably work. Whatever you feel more comfortable with, I guess :)
ReplyDeleteThe problem, Van, is that they really don't. I mean it is fine to have them but since the flow of the story bounces between them, and they span 4+ years, it's a hard thing to manage.
ReplyDeleteAnd as a side note I was listening to music at work and Lips of an Angel came which immediately made me think of Lonriad (and subsequently the hotness that is Severin - please make him immortal somehow so he never dies) and I wondered what would have happened if he (Lonriad) could have chosen between Laveria and Viridis (tell me I got those names right - I was drawing them from memory) would he have chosen Laveria and would he have been a different man because of it?
Too much caffeine makes me stupid and I ramble...
As a reader, I would expect anything revolving around the new band, or Cooper's family, to stay at Studio Time. That includes Charlie and Syd, and all the guys and the wives. (Possibly whichever of Coop and Beth's kids might end up getting another story, though it seems a lot of their stories have already been told.)
ReplyDeleteI thought Rayne's story worked well on its own blog, because it truly did revolve around her, and everyone else who appeared in that story was secondary to her story.
But from what I've seen of Studio Time so far, it feels like more an ensemble story, so I say it's fine to include everyone who is involved in that core group of characters.
So I think you've got it right in your last paragraph there - separate blogs for stories that stand on their own or don't intersect, and the ensemble blog for the stories that do intersect or bounce around between POV characters.
Hope this helps! I can definitely relate to unraveling several years worth of ongoing story threads, lol! :)
Multiple blogs do make it easy for the readers (like me) who go through several chapters at a time in sequence. But I completely understand how it could be a headache to maintain. If a story is meant to be told in a certain PoV I'd rather stay in that PoV for a while.
ReplyDeleteIf you do one blog, it wouldn't be difficult to seperate the story threads with tags, categories and links to individual chapters. As long as the organization is there, as a reader, I'd be okay with that.
I don't know if that was helpful, or if that's what you meant, but here's my two cents anyway.
Laura, I have considered trolling through all your posts since you have been at it for a long time just to see how you organized it.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, Studio Time is an ensemble so it seems to work when we focus on different characters. My worry is whether or not we can stay in Studio Time once this particular story arc is finished and we start a new one. I'm thinking we can.
Part of the problem was that we (Beth and I) began writing separately so we had completely different stories going that we ended up merging. So that when you look at the series guide it jumps from blog to blog, back and forth. There is no flow or continuity. And honestly when I finish Wyatt's story I'll be doing that again because the piece that will close out his blog really does belong in Studio Time but I am determined to give him a proper ending. It was always supposed to be his story and I let it slip away just a little.
But yes, I think the separate blogs for unrelated writing will have to stay. I think our readers are savvy enough to pick up and understand any references we might make to events in those side piece (ie Ezra and Randi).
Thanks so much for the input. It is much appreciated!
Mela that makes complete sense and was helpful. It is easier to read a story when the chapters flow one into the other. Bouncing from blog to blog would put a reader off I would think. And that is another reason why we encourage anyone new to the story to read the summaries and not the chapters.
ReplyDeleteETA: Thank you Mela for the feedback!
Having so many blogs is overwhelming. I have like 12 for all different things, and sometimes I just sit there and think: "Why in Hell do I have to do that? Why can't I just have ONE place to take care of? Too many mouths to feed!!!"
ReplyDeleteI mean it's much simpler to compile things onto one blog..or at least the *idea* is simple.
In the case of your stories, I think that extra blogs would do best if they were for a specific MAIN character..not characters that are kinda in the shadows.
Things like side stories can be on their on blog, or just have their own blogroll on your main blog. Does that make sense??
Christina, I think that's what we've tried/intended to do. None of the blogs were established for minor characters. In one case, a story that probably wasn't intended to ever intersect with the main story proved useful, so we intersected the characters. Some of them are old now, and we can't do anything about those except take them offline and substitute the summaries, and we've considered doing that.
ReplyDeleteSince we didn't write this as a legacy, hardly anyone has died, so we have new people but the original people are still around and we don't intend to get rid of the main original people. It may simply be impossible to manage neatly.
I still think it may be best to close off the older work, not even offer it as an option, and just provide the summaries. When we finish someone's story (Passages for Rayne, for example), just make it inaccessible. Or put it aside and label it 'finished'. I don't know. That's why we're asking for help LOL!
Oh, I don't think you should make the old stories inaccessible! :o
ReplyDeleteThough if you wanted, I could see having a "finished works" page that links to all of them, rather than have them on the main navigation bars. That could work.
I love the older stories too though! They should be cherished, not hidden! :)
Laura, I actually have a finished works widget on one of my blogs...and that is a good idea. Too bad I didn't do that on all of them.
ReplyDeleteThe main conundrum for me is that the story bounces from blog to blog so that you could not read Sessions as an example from beginning to end without bouncing over to Rayne's blog or to Wyatt's. So from where I sit it may be leave them all or close them all except Studio Time and only rely on the summaries. It isn't linear.
Blogs are very sequential, and that's the problem you're encountering - trying to shoehorn a different shaped story into it. As long as you only have one story going on it's ok. As soon as you have intersecting stories at different points it goes pear shaped.
ReplyDeleteThere's a number of ways to get around this - Beth's index works - but the problem with that is that it's hi-maintenance.
Personally, I think your stories would work well in a forum set-up.
Where the story arcs can be stored as links in it's own thread, but the stories are stored in their own blogs or forums.
Forums allow for more of a tree structure, which is easier to fit the spaghetti structure into than you currently have.
Forums are also easier to search on.
I hope that makes more sense?
Or - not sure if this is a super-crazy idea or not - you could copy/paste both Rayne and Wyatt's stories into the Sessions blog? How many chapters do they have, like 27 for Rayne and 12 for Wyatt? It might not take too long. And backdate them so they show up in the proper places for the storyline?
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, if I was worried about the bouncing around, that's probably what I would do.
Laura I do think we considered that at one point but...we would have to start with Dark December and South Beach which were independent stories that intersected. And some of the shots...are bad (at least mine are) or too small or too large. Plus it would be a tremendous amount of work - although possibly worth it in the long run. Something to think about for sure.
ReplyDeleteYes Kiri that is exactly it. Trying to fit something that isn't linear into a linear format.
ReplyDeleteI am not good with forums as in I struggle to even post anything. But essentially it would be like what Beth currently has only in a forum post/thread that links to the various blogs...is that right? And organized by story arc? The only bad thing (and it isn't really bad) would be that not everyone could access it. Although come to think of it we don't have many readers that aren't in the same forum I think...
Definitely something to think about.
You can open up a proboards forum - and set who gets to access it - you can have member only, everyone, or only people with passwords. So yeah - everyone can have access to it (similiar to the blogs now).
ReplyDeleteAlso you can set some forum sections to read-only so only you and Gayl could update it, and have others updatable by anyone.
The thought I was having is that you can link the blog post in the forum thread so you can return to the index each time, rather than re-post everything.
I would be happy to setup a quickie forum for you to give you an example of what I mean. Things often make more sense when you can see it in front of you. Also I'm happy to show you how to administer the forum - it's not that hard as long as you take it in small steps. I have my own forum, and was taught by some lovely folks on how to do things. I've actually been thinking about doing something similiar for sunrise island eventually - because I don't want everything to blend together,but I don't want different blogs either.
That's if you like?
Kiri that is definitely something I would need to talk over with Beth before I could decide. And again, the downside for me would be the maintenance end. I don't think I have the time to maintain a forum of my own. I barely visit the ones I belong to and am not that active there. But it does make sense and if you are willing, once we decide if that is how we want to go, it is beyond kind that you would help set it up. There is no way I would ask you to do something however unless I thought Beth and I could seriously manage it.
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you so much!
I think maintaining several blogs must be really time consuming but same time often it makes it easier for some readers. I only got Sessions on my feed reader and until now I never realised that you guys still write some of the other stories...somehow I assumed they were all finished parts of pre-Studio times. Shows how late I joined to follow this blog and how wrong I was with my assumptions. That makes me wonder if I would of realised it if would be all in a same blog. So I guess for me I have lot of unread stuff because I never looked further than studio times and windburn blog.
ReplyDeleteSpeechless there is no way we would expect anyone to read all that back story. We have summaries thanks to Beth. Those should be enough to get any new reader up to speed. It is a huge body of work and it literally bounces around from blog to blog. Plus a lot of the older work is rough, particularly the images.
ReplyDeleteSpeechless, that's exactly what we worry about!
ReplyDeleteRight now there are two 'open' or unfinished side stories we are still bringing to a close: Rising Above and Chameleon. Passages is finished. All of them intersect with Sessions, and the plots in Rising Above and Passages are particularly critical to the characters in Studio Time. Plus, the summaries don't include those three smaller pieces. I guess I'm most concerned with them instead of the pre-Sessions work. The older work is too long and too messy (different size shots and a lot of other things) to ever bring together in a single blog.
I see this as three groups:
Finished: Sessions and Passages (and all the old work)
Open: Rising Above, Chameleon
Current: Studio Time
There's another blog, Intermezzo, but that's where we post brief, usually off topic bits that we feel like exploring but that really don't have to be read in order to understand the main story.
It really isn't that time consuming for me to maintain them. The hard work was putting all the old pieces in order and that's already been done. What is disheartening is when someone does discover Studio Time and then takes a look at that Series Guide and freaks out because it is so long and so complicated. I don't think I'd come back, and I wouldn't blame anyone else for running away either. I'd like to make it more accessible.
Thank you for sharing your experience. That's the kind of feedback we need.
As a new hooked reader, only feedback I can offer is this: as long as the older stories stay up, I'm in favor of whatever is easier for you ladies to manage =)
ReplyDeleteLucid, we will keep the old work up for now, as bad and as rough as it is. Going forward, if we can keep everything in one place, that would be easiest. Organizing it will be the challenge perhaps. And if we do side stories, the can go on Intermezzo since they won't really affect the main threads.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your feedback!
Late to the party but I have to say that I found it easy to understand what was going on through the multiple blogs. Both of you did a good job of showing us who the story was about and the problems they had to overcome.
ReplyDeleteI do understand how frustrating it must be to maintain different blogs that rotate around a main story but it is admirable that the both of you could keep it going for so long.
Thank you for this post! I'm sitting in the sames boat and this was VERY helpful.