Serials or Short Stories?

It’s no secret the Relic Worlds has its inspiration in the movies I grew up with, Indiana Jones and Star Wars, as well as a smattering of others of the time, like Buck Rogers and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  These, in turn, have their basis in serialized movies and books of earlier ages; the 50s, the 30s, and even before that.  The days of radio were huge on serialized stories, episodes only a few minutes long that took characters part way through an ongoing story to the next cliff-hanger.

Serialized stories have their roots in the 19th century, appearing first as the penny dreadful serials in England.  They were also called penny awful, penny blood, penny number, and penny horrible.  They were called penny because that’s how much they cost.  Each had a part of the story which was released that week, and you had to wait until the next week to get the next part.  They were printed on cheap pulp paper, which later gave them the name “pulp fiction.”

The difference between these and short stories, of course, is that serials continue ongoing stories and character arcs.  Storylines don’t pay off within the confines of the story, but may go throughout an entire season of episodes.

This is the dilemma I have had with creating Relic Worlds; whether to follow a serial or short stories.  The intent of the short stories is to introduce new readers to the storyline without charging them any money.  This works better in an episodic as people can jump in at any time and get a sense of what’s going on.  But a serial will continue complex and interesting story elements both for the characters and for the mystery at large.  As such, the compromise I came to was to provide individual short stories with ongoing elements that appear in all the short stories.  You put them all together, and they create storylines and mysteries that get solved and paid off throughout the various stories.  There are a few stories that go for several episodes, but I’m keeping them short so people can see the where the beginnings and ends are to go through them with ease.