serial fiction
Story in parts
Serial fiction is narrative published in successive installments rather than as a complete work.
The format flourished in 19th-century magazines, where novels by Dickens and Dostoevsky first appeared chapter by chapter.
Today it continues in web novels, podcasts, and television: I'm following three serial fiction podcasts right now.
The form encourages cliffhangers and reader speculation between episodes.
- penny dreadfulsCheap Victorian horror serials
- soap operasSerialized melodramatic television programs
- cliffhangersUnresolved dramatic conclusions
- to be continuedPromise of future episodes
- page turnerEngrossing book or story
narrative arc · radio plays · subscription models · fan communities · pulp magazines · character development · flashbacks · Charles Dickens · foreshadowing · webcomics · recurring themes · shared universe · Wattpad · dime novels · telenovelas · light novels · binge-watching · guilty pleasure
- book seriestrilogy, duology, tetralogy, pentalogy, saga
- modern fictionnovels, novel, modern literature, debut novels, novellas
- popular fictionbestsellers, page-turners, popular novels, romance novels, mysteries
- amateur writingfanfic, creative writing, blog posts, blogging, blogs
- digital storiese-literature, digital storytelling, webnovels, hypertext, cybertext
- Novel Historynovels, novellas, historical novel, historical novels, bildungsroman
serial fictionone-shot
Occurring just once
novella · short story · graphic novel · monograph · collected edition
serial, fiction, series, serialize, serialized, serialization, serially, serials, fictions