Writing Serial Fiction Novels & Stories

Each song is healing. I write in the mornings. At the kitchen table with coffee and notebooks. Fiction at first. Made-up stories about made-up people. But slowly, the truth creeps in. Our truth. The bond. The trauma. The survival. "Are you writing about us?" Lucian asks one morning, reading over my shoulder. "Fictionalized. Changed names. Different setting." I bite my lip. "Is that okay?" "It's your story too. Write it however you need to."

Hmm, interesting. "Come on, I'll show you where my car is." I follow him to a black BMW and my mouth almost drops. A serial killer can't have fancy cars, right? He opens the door to the front seat for me and I blush and I get in. Serial killers also aren't gentlemen. I don't know! I don't watch serial killer documentaries on N*****x I'm a romance kind of girl, I love romance but I can't provide a nice groundbreaking romance novel to get published. Ugh! You know what, I'm not giving up I'm going to keep my head up high and I'm going to write another book one they'll love. I can't give up now, I won't give up.

****************** The next day my dad went to his office and saw Caroline sitting at his chair and she was having her coffee in one and hand and her Iphone in the other while she faced the window. My dad purposefully dropped a pen from the table so that he could grab the attention of Caroline. “How many times have I said you to knock the door before entering this...” Caroline shouted as she turned around but stood from the seat all of a sudden and dropped her phone when she saw my father standing. “Oh... I'm sorry I didn’t know it's you.” She tried to act calm while my father could easily notice that she was shivering. She kept her coffee aside and picked up her phone from the ground.

Just a sentence that arrived uninvited while I was reviewing grant proposals. Two people placed inside a design they did not choose, only to rewrite it. I closed the document in front of me and stared at that sentence in my mind. I had not written fiction in years. I had written essays, proposals, speeches, arguments sharp enough to cut glass. But fiction belonged to a younger version of me, one who believed stories could rescue people from themselves. Now I had lived one. I did not tell Dream immediately. Not because I wanted secrecy, but because I wanted clarity.

“We’ll do it in bits. Have you gone through the files at all?” “A few times.” “So you know there are phases,” he stated. She didn’t nod, but her silence was enough answer. “Once they see how well it’s going, investors will run to us. Serialized fiction is still relatively new. Well, it used to be popular in the past.”

“ I just need to sleep it off, Mav. Have fun at the bonfire.” ​I tossed the phone face down and opened my laptop. Writing was the only thing that made me feel better. I started typing, getting lost in the world I created. ​"What are you working on?" Jessie asked after about an hour. She was sitting on her bed painting her nails a bright red. ​"Just... fiction," I said, trying to sound casual. ​"Wait, like a book? Let me see!" ​"It's nothing, really," I said, but my face was already turning red. "I post on a site called StoryVerse under a fake name. I’ve never told anyone. Not even my best friend knows about it."

"Good to know the whole world is watching my life go up in flames in 4K resolution." I didn't wait for her to respond. I turned around, went back into my room, and slammed the door. I grabbed my laptop, flipping it open with enough force to nearly snap the hinges. Work, I told myself. Just write. Lose yourself in someone else's problems. I opened the file for my current series—the dark romance I’d been pouring my soul into under the name Bourbon. I stared at the blinking cursor. My characters were supposed to be having a tense standoff in a ballroom, but as I started to type, the words felt like gibberish.

I immediately went to the bookstore and saw that Sera was not there yet so I went into the bookstore first to have a look at some stands, magazines and novels. Before I loved dramas, I also loved reading, especially local novels. I'm thrilled and the plots are beautiful. I also thought before that I’ll try to make stories in my notebook but only one shot. After all, when it's a novel, I don't finish it because I'll suddenly have a mental block. It's like I just feel sorry for the characters in my story because it's either I'll just get married to them suddenly or they’ll be killed in the middle of the thrilling moments.

That would involve a lot of thinking. "So what would happen to the current story I am updating?" "You can make the story a meta fiction. You can write about your life story and about your characters at the same time. You can easily make it a two in one story." "Easily? So what do you want me to write about myself? My life isn't even all that interesting. Shall I just formulate some sappy romance story for myself involving some hot jerk of a guy? Look, this does not even look too possible." I huffed, uneasy and uncertain about everything.

I reach for my phone. I open a message to Sebastian. I type and delete twice. The first attempt is too much. The second attempt is too clever. I settle on the thing I actually mean, because I'm tired of not saying the things I actually mean: do you ever feel like you're living inside a story someone else wrote? I send it before I can think about it. I put the phone face-down on the duvet. I pick up Finn and Fiona and read three more pages without absorbing a single word.