I recently saw the trailer for the film The 5th Wave based on Rick Yancey's 2013 novel. The story is set during the 5the wave of an alien invasion; subsequent waves have been increasingly devastating. In the first wave, the invaders (called the Others), shut down our power grid. In the second wave, they use kinetic bombardment to destroy heavily populated coastal regions with tsunamis. In the third, they unleash a lethal virus.
I've seen this story before.
In 2011, the Discovery Channel series Curiosity had an episode on alien invasions hosted by Michelle Rodriguez. It featured interviews with physicists and military analysts. They believed the first strike would be an EMP to knock out our electronics. The second would be to bombard the coasts with heavy objects to generate tsunamis...
Yeah, I've seen this story before. I recognized it the instant I saw The 5th Wave's trailer. My immediate reaction was to say that Yancey was unoriginal, talentless enough to base his premise on something from TV. However, I'm not entirely innocent of this myself, something I'll tell you about another time.
I have no real reason to sneer at Yancey's story, especially because I haven't even read it. And if the premise comes from a documentary series, so what? The battle plan he follows is sound, but the story is more important.
The Battle of Stalingrad is another example. Harry Turtledove reimagined it in his World War novels with the Battle of Chicago putting Americans against invading aliens in a house-by-house fight to the death. It can be said that the opening scenes of the series Falling Skies showing human survivors desperately struggling to survive in post-invasion Boston was inspired by the same event.
My point is this: just because someone discusses a topic in a documentary series, doesn't mean it's untouchable territory. For the record, Yancey's fourth and fifth waves perpetrated by the Others has brainwashed human children hunting down survivors. Curiosity didn't have that. I know I'm starting to nitpick at it like the debate between McDonald's and McDowell's - the Big Mac versus the Big Mic, and the golden arches versus the golden arcs - but the matter comes down to what a writer can do with a particular idea and how they can spin their own blanket out of the same yarn. If Yancey and I both approach that same Curiosity episode, we'd come up with different stories set in that same predicament. If we both were asked to write an Apollo 13-like tale, again, we'd have too different stories. I definitely wouldn't write for the young adult crowd. I'd want to give the elderly nightmares.
About Mario
- Mario Piumetti
- Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mario Piumetti is a freelance writer of science fiction, horror, screenplays, and nonfiction. He has a bachelor's degree in English from California Lutheran University and an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University. An avid music lover, his work is heavily influenced by rock, punk, and metal. You can contact him at mario.piumetti.writer@gmail.com.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
The Hook
I sat down to start reading SM Stirling's The Sky People. Actually, it was my third reading. The first time I saw the novel in a bookstore, the title grabbed me. "Sky People" was a term used by the Na'vi to describe humans in the film Avatar. The green cover showed two rifle-armed astronauts in a jungle with a triceratops and a saber-toothed tiger on the periphery, and the summary on the back - an alternate history story set during the Cold War in which Venus and Mars are habitable with their own native civilizations - sounded pretty cool.
The furthest I've gotten into The Sky People was about a quarter of the way through the book. I think I got through the first couple of chapters in the first reading. But tonight? I got through chapter one, and put it down. This is not a condemnation of Stirling's novel, or of Stirling himself as a writer. I love science fiction. I love alternate history, and I love stories set in a fictionalized Solar System when many other writers choose planets light-years away.
The Sky People has a lot going for it when it comes to world-building. It realistically forces the Space Race into overdrive. Stirling shows us a lush and identifiable Venus; Mars doesn't appear until the sequel In the Courts of the Crimson Kings. We've got NATO-run Jamestown and Soviet-controlled Cosmograd. Bronze-age natives clashing with Neanderthals. Hell, there are even Encyclopedia entries describing this alternate Venus along with initial exploration decades earlier.
What The Sky People lacked - for me, at least - was a strong hook. World-building is a great creative exercise, but the first job of the writer is to entertain and tell a good story. A hook is the first step to draw in the reader. Story world isn't a hook. It's a stopper, a term I learned during a short stint as a charity fundraiser last month. Yes, I was one of those guys on the sidewalk raising donations for charity. People passed by me all day long, and a stopper is designed to do just that: stop potential donors (potential readers in this case). You next give a quick icebreaker and an introduction to the pitch - remember, folks got places to go and people to see - but then you have to give them a problem or a crisis.
This is the real hook, a central problem so jarring that readers keep with the story to find the resolution. Soviets put nukes into Cuba, and we want to know how America will dodge a nuclear war. Flesh-eating zombies surround a house, and we wonder how the occupants inside will escape. Claudius takes Hamlet's birthright, and we wonder how the prince will regain what was stolen. I believe the crisis Stirling is trying to give us is that the Soviets were smuggling guns to Venus that got into the hands of the Neanderthals. It's a good crisis with echoes of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Prime Directive of Star Trek, but unfortunately it didn't grab me as much as I would have liked.
The furthest I've gotten into The Sky People was about a quarter of the way through the book. I think I got through the first couple of chapters in the first reading. But tonight? I got through chapter one, and put it down. This is not a condemnation of Stirling's novel, or of Stirling himself as a writer. I love science fiction. I love alternate history, and I love stories set in a fictionalized Solar System when many other writers choose planets light-years away.
The Sky People has a lot going for it when it comes to world-building. It realistically forces the Space Race into overdrive. Stirling shows us a lush and identifiable Venus; Mars doesn't appear until the sequel In the Courts of the Crimson Kings. We've got NATO-run Jamestown and Soviet-controlled Cosmograd. Bronze-age natives clashing with Neanderthals. Hell, there are even Encyclopedia entries describing this alternate Venus along with initial exploration decades earlier.
What The Sky People lacked - for me, at least - was a strong hook. World-building is a great creative exercise, but the first job of the writer is to entertain and tell a good story. A hook is the first step to draw in the reader. Story world isn't a hook. It's a stopper, a term I learned during a short stint as a charity fundraiser last month. Yes, I was one of those guys on the sidewalk raising donations for charity. People passed by me all day long, and a stopper is designed to do just that: stop potential donors (potential readers in this case). You next give a quick icebreaker and an introduction to the pitch - remember, folks got places to go and people to see - but then you have to give them a problem or a crisis.
This is the real hook, a central problem so jarring that readers keep with the story to find the resolution. Soviets put nukes into Cuba, and we want to know how America will dodge a nuclear war. Flesh-eating zombies surround a house, and we wonder how the occupants inside will escape. Claudius takes Hamlet's birthright, and we wonder how the prince will regain what was stolen. I believe the crisis Stirling is trying to give us is that the Soviets were smuggling guns to Venus that got into the hands of the Neanderthals. It's a good crisis with echoes of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Prime Directive of Star Trek, but unfortunately it didn't grab me as much as I would have liked.
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Audiobooks
For my birthday, a friend of mine gave me an iTunes gift card. I used it a couple of days ago to get an audio recording of Stephen King's On Writing. I've listened to audiobooks before, but only a small handful. The first one was an abridged Seamus Heaney recording of his Beowulf translation. The small number might stem from me growing up thinking reading is a visual act (looking at words on a page) rather than an auditory one (listening to words on headphones).
Now, for the record, I do have a hard copy of On Writing. Which writer doesn't? But I also take daily walks ranging from thirty minutes to an hour or longer. I usually listen to music, but August has been a very stressful month, and I felt like I needed a different kind of company besides Marilyn Manson. Audiobooks are great in that they you can multitask to a degree while listening. Walks and drives are the best time for them, I believe. I'm also a slow reader, so listening to a book means I can fit more of them in my year. If this sounds like you, $20-30 downloading recording might be worth your while.
I'm not saying I'm abandoning printed books altogether. Some of the books on my shelf had personalized messages in them. Others are just too damn good to part ways with. If you want my cope of Harry Turtledove's Tosev novels, you'll have to pry all eight of them from my cold, dead Eye-talian hands.
Now, for the record, I do have a hard copy of On Writing. Which writer doesn't? But I also take daily walks ranging from thirty minutes to an hour or longer. I usually listen to music, but August has been a very stressful month, and I felt like I needed a different kind of company besides Marilyn Manson. Audiobooks are great in that they you can multitask to a degree while listening. Walks and drives are the best time for them, I believe. I'm also a slow reader, so listening to a book means I can fit more of them in my year. If this sounds like you, $20-30 downloading recording might be worth your while.
I'm not saying I'm abandoning printed books altogether. Some of the books on my shelf had personalized messages in them. Others are just too damn good to part ways with. If you want my cope of Harry Turtledove's Tosev novels, you'll have to pry all eight of them from my cold, dead Eye-talian hands.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Keeping Your Emails Clear
I'm technologically schizophrenic, guys. That doesn't mean I'm really schizophrenic, but I do have four email addresses. Four! And I sometimes feel like I've got to take on a different persona when I'm using them.
I call these Personal, Jobs, Writing, and Bullshit. Personal is the one I use the most. It's the one my friends have to reach out to me. Jobs is for when I'm hunting for day jobs or registering with online job boards. Writing is similar but for writing resources and when I'm submitting stories. And Bullshit, frankly, is for relatives I don't want reaching out to me, but they don't have this since I don't keep in touch with them anyways. I think I use it for miscellaneous registrations, but I'm not even sure about that. Give me a break. This was all set up before I knew about filters.
I think I'm beyond hope in consolidating these different faces out of fear that closing one might lead to unintended consequences like, "Oh, crap! I forgot to update my info with this site and now I can't log in to do so because that email address is no longer valid!"
I want to express this to writers because if I can make this mistake, others can too. Case in point: I sent the draft of a script to a friend I'd like to direct. Because it's a writing project, I used my Writing address. No worries. But then I sent the same script to an actress friend to see if she'd be interested. I sent it to her via the personal one because she has it.
It felt weird. It felt like sending classified information from your home computer instead of the government-issued one (like that would ever happen). But the "send" button had been clicked upon and there was no going back, only moving forward.
Another instance occurred when I emailed a freelance proposal to a potential client with the Jobs address. We tried setting up an initial meeting but not all of my messages got through because I would sometimes switch between Jobs and Writing. Bad move, Mario. It's never good looking like a scatterbrain to a client. At least, it wouldn't look good to me.
I do encourage writers - anyone, really - to have different email addresses depending on different, specific needs. You can sync them into one mailbox, and forwarding and filtering makes things more organized. But you have to be clear about the face you're using with each.
After tonight, my new rule goes something like this: the Writing address is for submissions and freelance proposals only. It's also attached to a Google Voice account that serves as an office number; I don't like just handing out my cell phone number.
I might sound a little anal here micromanaging little things like this, but I also believe it pays off in the long run. If you're about to hit the pavement for a job and talk to a recruiter, you're likely to hear that you need a professional-sounding email address rather than partydude666@hotmail.com. The same goes for submissions. Even if there's a rejection heading my way, it's best to put on as appropriate a face as possible.
I call these Personal, Jobs, Writing, and Bullshit. Personal is the one I use the most. It's the one my friends have to reach out to me. Jobs is for when I'm hunting for day jobs or registering with online job boards. Writing is similar but for writing resources and when I'm submitting stories. And Bullshit, frankly, is for relatives I don't want reaching out to me, but they don't have this since I don't keep in touch with them anyways. I think I use it for miscellaneous registrations, but I'm not even sure about that. Give me a break. This was all set up before I knew about filters.
I think I'm beyond hope in consolidating these different faces out of fear that closing one might lead to unintended consequences like, "Oh, crap! I forgot to update my info with this site and now I can't log in to do so because that email address is no longer valid!"
I want to express this to writers because if I can make this mistake, others can too. Case in point: I sent the draft of a script to a friend I'd like to direct. Because it's a writing project, I used my Writing address. No worries. But then I sent the same script to an actress friend to see if she'd be interested. I sent it to her via the personal one because she has it.
It felt weird. It felt like sending classified information from your home computer instead of the government-issued one (like that would ever happen). But the "send" button had been clicked upon and there was no going back, only moving forward.
Another instance occurred when I emailed a freelance proposal to a potential client with the Jobs address. We tried setting up an initial meeting but not all of my messages got through because I would sometimes switch between Jobs and Writing. Bad move, Mario. It's never good looking like a scatterbrain to a client. At least, it wouldn't look good to me.
I do encourage writers - anyone, really - to have different email addresses depending on different, specific needs. You can sync them into one mailbox, and forwarding and filtering makes things more organized. But you have to be clear about the face you're using with each.
After tonight, my new rule goes something like this: the Writing address is for submissions and freelance proposals only. It's also attached to a Google Voice account that serves as an office number; I don't like just handing out my cell phone number.
I might sound a little anal here micromanaging little things like this, but I also believe it pays off in the long run. If you're about to hit the pavement for a job and talk to a recruiter, you're likely to hear that you need a professional-sounding email address rather than partydude666@hotmail.com. The same goes for submissions. Even if there's a rejection heading my way, it's best to put on as appropriate a face as possible.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Boiling Frogs
They say that if you want to kill a frog, you put it in a pot of cold water and slowly bring the heat up to a boil. The danger is gradual and the frog doesn't notice it's dying.
Last night, AMC gave us the pilot episode of Fear The Walking Dead. Because I'm on the Left Coast, I saw the reviews before the episode, and felt a little nervous sitting down to it. A slow pacing was the greatest criticism, that it didn't jump into the crisis as fast as the pilot episode of The Walking Dead had done back in 2010. This is true. In the entire hour, we see only four zombies, two of them up close and one of that pair really up close at the end of the episode.
However, we need to take a step back and look at what the series is trying to achieve in a broader sense. We're seeing the early days of the apocalypse, and if every episode can be summed up in one line, last night's pilot is: "We have a problem." Fear The Walking Dead will, I believe have more in common with the Max Brooks novel World War Z than Robert Kirkman's comic books, especially the early parts of Brooks's novel where the crisis unfolds slowly.
This gives us a good dose of reality. I remember the start of the Swine Flu Pandemic in 2009 with a few news reports here and there coming out of Mexico. It didn't seem like anything to worry about at first. But then more people died, things got tense, and for a while, people worried whether or not it would be the next Spanish Flu. Ultimately, 200,000 died from it. Relatively small compared to 1918, but still a large number.
History lesson aside, I think audiences need to be patient with the show. I don't mean, "Oh, let's wait for them to find their footing." I mean we know there's at least one season lined up. Let's see what the writers can pull out of the bag. I will concede the show has an uphill battle ahead. As one reviewer put it, Fear The Walking Dead "can't rely on the huge popularity of its big brother to keep it afloat. It has to prove that it's a show worth watching on its own merits." But we still shouldn't discard it simply because of slow pacing. Let's not forget the first season of Guillermo del Toro's The Strain. Sure, it had more vampires than AMC gave us zombies last night, but society stayed in denial, and things spiraled out of control by the end of the season.
I'm thinking of the Fear The Walking Dead trailer here: scenes of people rioting, of police shooting zombies in the streets mingled in among the crowds of innocent people looking for safety. Complete and utter chaos. I've said it before. I'll say it again. This isn't a show about finding answers. It's about the shit hitting the fan, and the chefs boiling their frogs.
Last night, AMC gave us the pilot episode of Fear The Walking Dead. Because I'm on the Left Coast, I saw the reviews before the episode, and felt a little nervous sitting down to it. A slow pacing was the greatest criticism, that it didn't jump into the crisis as fast as the pilot episode of The Walking Dead had done back in 2010. This is true. In the entire hour, we see only four zombies, two of them up close and one of that pair really up close at the end of the episode.
However, we need to take a step back and look at what the series is trying to achieve in a broader sense. We're seeing the early days of the apocalypse, and if every episode can be summed up in one line, last night's pilot is: "We have a problem." Fear The Walking Dead will, I believe have more in common with the Max Brooks novel World War Z than Robert Kirkman's comic books, especially the early parts of Brooks's novel where the crisis unfolds slowly.
This gives us a good dose of reality. I remember the start of the Swine Flu Pandemic in 2009 with a few news reports here and there coming out of Mexico. It didn't seem like anything to worry about at first. But then more people died, things got tense, and for a while, people worried whether or not it would be the next Spanish Flu. Ultimately, 200,000 died from it. Relatively small compared to 1918, but still a large number.
History lesson aside, I think audiences need to be patient with the show. I don't mean, "Oh, let's wait for them to find their footing." I mean we know there's at least one season lined up. Let's see what the writers can pull out of the bag. I will concede the show has an uphill battle ahead. As one reviewer put it, Fear The Walking Dead "can't rely on the huge popularity of its big brother to keep it afloat. It has to prove that it's a show worth watching on its own merits." But we still shouldn't discard it simply because of slow pacing. Let's not forget the first season of Guillermo del Toro's The Strain. Sure, it had more vampires than AMC gave us zombies last night, but society stayed in denial, and things spiraled out of control by the end of the season.
I'm thinking of the Fear The Walking Dead trailer here: scenes of people rioting, of police shooting zombies in the streets mingled in among the crowds of innocent people looking for safety. Complete and utter chaos. I've said it before. I'll say it again. This isn't a show about finding answers. It's about the shit hitting the fan, and the chefs boiling their frogs.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Anthology Series Matter
Some writers will tell you that television is not a gadget to have around the house. It's definitely not something to have in the office when you're trying to get things done, but I really have a hard time imagining any house today that doesn't have one or two. Like everyone else, writer's like to have some downtime between their stories to relax and recharge, and TV isn't such a bad way to spend it.
Justin Cronin, author of The Passage, once said that really good television has retrained us to enjoy long novels. Referring to his youth in the 70s, Cronin added, "The question of 'what are you shows?' would be like 'what kind of heroin do you prefer?'" It's true. Since The Sopranos for sure, the landscape of television has changed, and strong narrative arcs are pretty much required even in comedies and sitcoms.
My earliest experience of television was cartoons after kindergarten, especially Looney Tunes. The very first time I ever saw long-term storytelling on TV were the "who shot Mr. Burns" two-parter on The Simpsons and the week-long green ranger saga on Power Rangers. Since then, there have been many other greats, but I find anthology series to be really good for writers.
Some of the best ones are listed here...
The Twilight Zone
My God! Rod Serling was such a master storyteller. The Twilight Zone ran for five years. Granted, he was contractually obligated to write most of the series and grew tired of it after so long, but he was always as sharp as they came. Censorship, racism, the threat of war. These were some of the issues that gnawed on Serling's mind, so much that he was one of the first major TV writers to fight over them with studio executive. The Twilight Zone was his outlet. The episodes he wrote weren't just wonderful social commentary, but covered many different genres. There have been two remakes of the series since the 60s, and while there's some debate over their quality, they are pretty good in their own right too.
Notable episodes include Time Enough At Last from the original run, A Little Peace and Quiet from the 80s revival, and Sunrise from the Forest Whitaker remake.
The Outer Limits
This one's considered by some to be The Twilight Zone's close cousin, but aimed more at science fiction than anything else. The Outer Limits first ran in the 60s with The Twilight Zone, but it was the 90s remake I first found, and I guess my opinion is a little sentimental. Guest starring on the show was like the adult version of a guest spot on The Simpsons. Each episode attractive an impressive cast. The 90s version was also notable in that it had numerous crossover episodes and story arcs in which certain characters such as time traveler Nicholas Prentice reappeared.
Notable episodes include The Sandkings with Beau Bridges, Second Thoughts with Howie Mandel, and Simon Says with Joel Grey.
Tales From the Crypt
Okay, look, the Cryptkeeper has never really been scary. I mean, yes, he looks scary, but then he gets carried away with the puns. Tales From the Crypt was a great horror-centric companion on the air to The Outer Limits. The stories were frightening, but with just the right amount of humor to diffuse the tension. And if The Outer Limits got amazing guests, so did this show. Bob Hoskins. Brad Pitt. Ewan McGregor. Daniel Craig. Demi Moore. It's very impressive seeing all these A-list names on what was really a B-list show. Their best episode, I think, was Yellow starring Kirk Douglas and his son Eric. Robert Zebecks directed this World War I drama about a general forced to execute his son for cowardice.
Along with Yellow, notable episodes include Top Billing and Only Sin Deep (not to be confused with the sixth season's Only Skin Deep).
American Horror Story
If the three series so far have been short story collections, then American Horror Story can be compared to a set of novels with each episode serving as a chapter. That format really surprised people. Now, with True Detective and the upcoming American Crime Story, it seems to have set a new standard for television. I was personally impressed with how creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck were able to get my interest in the kinds of stories I don't usually gravitate towards such as ghost stories and witches. More than that, they're writing stories in which the horror is the icing on the cake. There's something else at work on a deeper level. Season 1 - Murder House - is about infidelity. Season 3 - Coven - is about the pressure of being a teenage girl. I'm really looking forward to season 5's Hotel, and my gut's telling me it's not going to be a rehash of Psycho or The Shining.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Lessons from Andrew Ursler
My Andrew Ursler series wrapped up with Arts Collide this week. I never wrote a series before, nor have I ever tried writing romance. So it's a good thing it's over because now I have some time to reflect on it.
Have a reason to write in the first place.
I would say that Andrew Ursler is about 80-90% true. I began writing it a couple of years ago when I thought I was going to get back together with an old flame of mine. It didn't happen, and how a lot of that played out is pretty much what you get in the stories. I did drunk dial her after hanging out with a model like in Grind. We did get together at a coffee shop like in Chocolate. That date in The Feeling That Something Ain't Right was almost verbatim. To borrow from Bon Jovi, it's all the same, only the names were changed. That said...
Make sure it's something you enjoy.
When "Charlotte" and I didn't get back together, my enthusiasm for the stories quickly cooled down. I didn't want to keep dwelling on it, and I didn't think Andrew should either. However, I couldn't just call it quits. The train left the station. I was on board, and had to keep going. It's dangerous to jump off a speeding locomotive. I think the disinterest shows in the writing towards the end. It got a little rushed as though I wanted to get it over with. And that means you need to...
Have a plan.
Andrew Ursler was originally going to be a whopper of a series. Even if things didn't work out for him romantically, I had planned for him to get the other parts of his personal life back together. But again, when I lost my enthusiasm for the story, I didn't want to see anymore. The problem is I had no trap door. This was my biggest mistake. A trap door is something I heard about from the 1990s sci-fi series Babylon 5. If an actor wanted to move on to another project, the writers had an exit ready to go without causing too much disruption in the series. Because my series had no trap door, and because I'd written myself into a hole, I had no choice but to keep going and try writing myself out of it. In doing so, I struggled to...
Keep up the momentum.
Good fiction is all about raising the stakes. Andrew drunk dials Charlotte? Now he has to save face with her. She agrees to go out on a date with him? Now he has to ensure he's got her interest. She wants to break things up? Now he has to try salvaging the situation. These are logical progressions, yes, but they fly in the face of having an exit strategy and winding down the story. A story without a denouement doesn't work. Even a cliffhanger has at least some answered questions. Because I wanted the series to have some sort of ending, I prioritized that over momentum, which leaves it feeling unsatisfying.
I hope this all made sense, and helpful too if you're writing a series of your own. Sure, because the series is online, I guess I could ask Arts Collide to take it down. No harm, no foul. But I really can't because the fact is that these stories have been put up. People have read them, and taking them down won't change that fact, so why worry? The only thing I can do is learn from my mistakes and move on.
Have a reason to write in the first place.
I would say that Andrew Ursler is about 80-90% true. I began writing it a couple of years ago when I thought I was going to get back together with an old flame of mine. It didn't happen, and how a lot of that played out is pretty much what you get in the stories. I did drunk dial her after hanging out with a model like in Grind. We did get together at a coffee shop like in Chocolate. That date in The Feeling That Something Ain't Right was almost verbatim. To borrow from Bon Jovi, it's all the same, only the names were changed. That said...
Make sure it's something you enjoy.
When "Charlotte" and I didn't get back together, my enthusiasm for the stories quickly cooled down. I didn't want to keep dwelling on it, and I didn't think Andrew should either. However, I couldn't just call it quits. The train left the station. I was on board, and had to keep going. It's dangerous to jump off a speeding locomotive. I think the disinterest shows in the writing towards the end. It got a little rushed as though I wanted to get it over with. And that means you need to...
Have a plan.
Andrew Ursler was originally going to be a whopper of a series. Even if things didn't work out for him romantically, I had planned for him to get the other parts of his personal life back together. But again, when I lost my enthusiasm for the story, I didn't want to see anymore. The problem is I had no trap door. This was my biggest mistake. A trap door is something I heard about from the 1990s sci-fi series Babylon 5. If an actor wanted to move on to another project, the writers had an exit ready to go without causing too much disruption in the series. Because my series had no trap door, and because I'd written myself into a hole, I had no choice but to keep going and try writing myself out of it. In doing so, I struggled to...
Keep up the momentum.
Good fiction is all about raising the stakes. Andrew drunk dials Charlotte? Now he has to save face with her. She agrees to go out on a date with him? Now he has to ensure he's got her interest. She wants to break things up? Now he has to try salvaging the situation. These are logical progressions, yes, but they fly in the face of having an exit strategy and winding down the story. A story without a denouement doesn't work. Even a cliffhanger has at least some answered questions. Because I wanted the series to have some sort of ending, I prioritized that over momentum, which leaves it feeling unsatisfying.
I hope this all made sense, and helpful too if you're writing a series of your own. Sure, because the series is online, I guess I could ask Arts Collide to take it down. No harm, no foul. But I really can't because the fact is that these stories have been put up. People have read them, and taking them down won't change that fact, so why worry? The only thing I can do is learn from my mistakes and move on.
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