Friday, July 26, 2013

Serials, Continued

The serial, with its attendant cliff-hanger ending, is as old as Sheherazade. You will recall the story of the sultan's bride, who told him a tale with a cliffhanger every night to keep him from chopping her head off in the morning. In the nineteenth century, and well up into the twentieth, magazines published serial fiction, paying the writers by the column inch (in case you ever wondered why the works of Dickens were so long).

When I was little, serial dramas were acted out on the radio, not only the housewives' soap operas but comic-book style stories for kids, Little Orphan Annie, Sky King, Tennessee Jed, or Jack Armstrong (the All-American Boy). The episodes were fifteen minutes long. Can you imagine? Nowadays it takes fifteen minutes for a TV show to get through the commercials. We would sit transfixed in the big chair in front of the radio, spoiling our supper with handfuls of cookies, waiting to see whether Sky King had rescued Penny and Clipper.

Serials featuring plucky damsels in distress, such as the Perils of Pauline, pulled in many an eager moviegoer in the silent era. Later movie serials appealed to boys. The grim-jawed heroes often served in the armed forces, sometimes flying airplanes, struggling with the customary mad fiend bent on world domination, if not Hitler then Doctor Destruction. Each episode ended with the hero going over the cliff in a car, or falling out of his airplane, or being crushed in a mine explosion. The following episode would begin, "after Captain Bruce Bammer was rescued from the mine, he…"

So the technique is there to be used. Make your audience root for the hero. Involve them deeply in his life. Then do something terrible to him at the end of every episode.

Modern audiences like their serial dramas in bigger chunks than fifteen minutes; an hour or an hour and a half works well on television. And they will wait all summer for the next season of, say, Downton Abbey. But how does this translate into print media? How long should a serial episode be? How many episodes make a story? These questions are still up in the air. Some writers are capable of spinning off an infinite number of episodes of, for example, a sci-fi thriller, and others want to wind it up while the readers are still young. It seems to depend on what the traffic will bear.

How much closure do you need at the end of an episode? That's another question. Some folks are unhappy that the episodes end with cliff-hangers, and to them I say, go read a short story. It's a different form.

It may be that reader input will come to direct the way some of the serial stories will go. There are folks who are horrified by this idea. I'm not one of them. I'll consider suggestions from my friends, so why not from strangers on social media? This is the twenty-first century, after all. How many of us are solitary geniuses cranking out inviolable works of brilliance? As I always say, we'll see how it goes.

Oh, right. I almost forgot to put in a plug for BUCKER DUDLEY.

Kate Gallison

11 comments:

  1. Why, I've assumed every contributor to CWC is a solitary genius cranking out inviolable works of brilliance - daily! Is this not so????? tjstraw

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    1. Okay, that makes five solitary geniuses and me.

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    2. My favorite serial as a kid in the movies was Flash Gordon. It must have been George Lucas's and Spielberg's as well, because Star Wars was a peon to it, complete with a villain just like Ming, all in black with a huge black cape. My brother and I used to try to figure out how Flash would get out of his weekly predicaments. I don't remember anymore if the series told us. My memories are that the following week we knew, but it could have been us or them filling in the details.

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  2. I too recall those 15-minute daytime shows and the evening radio mysteries I just adored. [I ended up writing a mystery about that world -- A GOOD KNIFE'S WORK [uh, I am allowed to shamelessly tout my work on your blog, right, Kate?] And so many Saturday mornings at the movies with a serial as part of the double bill. Yes, I felt a little cheated when the next week, the hero had magically been rescued with no indication of exactly how. But I kept going and watching them.

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    1. What are we here for but to shamelessly tout our work? That and say witty things, and also enlighten our readers, of course. I liked A GOOD KNIFE'S WORK. Did you ever see a show on the American Movie Channel, back when it had original productions and no commercials, called Remember WENN? That was about radio in the forties, and a real charmer.

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    2. I do remember REMEMBER WENN. It was charming. Something of an inspiration, too, I guess. All that reality -- created only with sound.

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  3. Actually, I don't mind being called brilliant and genius, but, hey, I don't like being a solitary! I like being in a group!!! And enjoy being with you guys... tjs

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  4. Wow! Genius! I'm well read and have a good memory so can sometimes fake genius. I missed out on the radio serials, but I understand they can still be scared up. I love radio. I like creating my own pictures of what's going on.
    Let's return to our masterworks!
    Steph

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  5. I was started on radio serials when I came home from grammar school for lunch. My grandmother would be listening on a table top radio to the Romance of Helen Trent and Our Gal Sunday. Still remember the announcer's opening lines. In the evening, The Fat Man, Murder and Mr. Malone, and Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons--spoke to me. You've inspired me, Kate, to record all those heroines and lawmen of yesteryear who told me the stories that are still in my head.

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  6. The Fat Man! You're bringing back more memories! While I was doing research into the golden age of radio, I met a troupe of actors who perform old-time scripts -- The Cranston & Spade Theater Co. Ever once in a while, they invite me to perform with them, which is always such a thrill, getting to do those scripts -- Richard Diamond; Suspense; The Shadow; Broadway Is My Beat; Pat Novak, for Hire; The Lives of Harry Lime.

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