The importance of Parts
Jul. 20th, 2008 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabeth... and no, that's not an euphemism.
When fic is posted to communities there are conventions usually observed about the subject line.
... at least, it helps if it's the subject line. Sometimes it's just a line, somewhere, above the cut, probably.
It goes something like:
Fic: Hopefully Unique Title, 2/10
2/10 indicates what part this is, and how many parts there are in total.
Another word for 'part' in this context is 'tab' or 'window'.
If a fic is marked 2/10 then that means when you have 10 tabs open with 10 different pieces of this fic, you have the whole story.
If your story has a prologue, ten parts, and an epilogue, you have in fact got a 12 part story.
You can call the first part the prologue and the last part the epilogue and give the ones in between numbers if you like. That's an artistic decision and subject to the whim of the muse. You can give them non sequential numbers, or number them in primes. I've got some very interesting novels that do that. You can even call them Fred if you particularly want. The muse can have a sense of whimsy.
The thing is, the part numbering convention is not artistic. It is purely technical. It is for the convenience of the reader, who has to find all the pieces before they can read them. In order to find them all they have to know how many 'all' will be. So if it says 2/10, they won't be looking for 10 plus a prologue and epilogue. They'll look for 10 and then miss your setup and tag scene. If you want readers, please give your parts numbers, not names.
If your fic has part 1b/10 then again there is a problem. Does your fic have 10 parts including this one? Will the last part be part 10 or part 1j? Does it actually have 15 parts, some of them with letters and some numbers? The only thing 1b tells you is you can't really be sure. This makes it really a bit useless.
Sometimes a story you were sure had 10 parts gets to be too long for LJ to post all at once. Fair enough. (Though usually it means you're posting in the Rich Text editor and it has filled the page with useless code - try pasting it in plain text into the HTML editor instead and the part may magically be short enough after all.) The thing is, if you have to break up a part, it then becomes more than one part. So you do not, ever, have a 1b. You have a part 2. If that means you then have an 11 part story then the subject line needs to be renumbered. If you go back and change the numbering of all your parts, all your readers will then know how many parts (tabs, windows) they need to open. Yes, it's a lot of work. But if you don't do that, people will not read parts of your story, because they won't know they exist.
If you think it doesn't matter what numbers you put on, because people can always follow the next link, clearly you have free and permanent internet access. That's shiny. But some of us have internet access that relies on truth in advertising, the good network security of fellow students, the weather, and the Dance of the Single Signal Bar, and therefore have to download a whole fic while we can get it, because it might be days until the next actually functioning connection. This being the case, getting to the end of even a very good 10 part story to find there's actually a 10b can be... frustrating. And by the other end of the weekend it's quite likely the browser crashed and you've forgotten where you were reading anyway.
If you make it easy for people to find your story, more people will find it.
Numbered parts are part of the easy.
When fic is posted to communities there are conventions usually observed about the subject line.
... at least, it helps if it's the subject line. Sometimes it's just a line, somewhere, above the cut, probably.
It goes something like:
Fic: Hopefully Unique Title, 2/10
2/10 indicates what part this is, and how many parts there are in total.
Another word for 'part' in this context is 'tab' or 'window'.
If a fic is marked 2/10 then that means when you have 10 tabs open with 10 different pieces of this fic, you have the whole story.
If your story has a prologue, ten parts, and an epilogue, you have in fact got a 12 part story.
You can call the first part the prologue and the last part the epilogue and give the ones in between numbers if you like. That's an artistic decision and subject to the whim of the muse. You can give them non sequential numbers, or number them in primes. I've got some very interesting novels that do that. You can even call them Fred if you particularly want. The muse can have a sense of whimsy.
The thing is, the part numbering convention is not artistic. It is purely technical. It is for the convenience of the reader, who has to find all the pieces before they can read them. In order to find them all they have to know how many 'all' will be. So if it says 2/10, they won't be looking for 10 plus a prologue and epilogue. They'll look for 10 and then miss your setup and tag scene. If you want readers, please give your parts numbers, not names.
If your fic has part 1b/10 then again there is a problem. Does your fic have 10 parts including this one? Will the last part be part 10 or part 1j? Does it actually have 15 parts, some of them with letters and some numbers? The only thing 1b tells you is you can't really be sure. This makes it really a bit useless.
Sometimes a story you were sure had 10 parts gets to be too long for LJ to post all at once. Fair enough. (Though usually it means you're posting in the Rich Text editor and it has filled the page with useless code - try pasting it in plain text into the HTML editor instead and the part may magically be short enough after all.) The thing is, if you have to break up a part, it then becomes more than one part. So you do not, ever, have a 1b. You have a part 2. If that means you then have an 11 part story then the subject line needs to be renumbered. If you go back and change the numbering of all your parts, all your readers will then know how many parts (tabs, windows) they need to open. Yes, it's a lot of work. But if you don't do that, people will not read parts of your story, because they won't know they exist.
If you think it doesn't matter what numbers you put on, because people can always follow the next link, clearly you have free and permanent internet access. That's shiny. But some of us have internet access that relies on truth in advertising, the good network security of fellow students, the weather, and the Dance of the Single Signal Bar, and therefore have to download a whole fic while we can get it, because it might be days until the next actually functioning connection. This being the case, getting to the end of even a very good 10 part story to find there's actually a 10b can be... frustrating. And by the other end of the weekend it's quite likely the browser crashed and you've forgotten where you were reading anyway.
If you make it easy for people to find your story, more people will find it.
Numbered parts are part of the easy.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 10:14 pm (UTC)Otherwise if I just see that its 10 parts and it's not clear that 1b/1c are there I could lose parts of the story~ Do books split up their chapters like that? I know I haven't read every sort of book in existence but you're of much sound literary background than I~
no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 10:19 pm (UTC)I don't see the sense.
I think people are dividing it up by some narrative turning point and think that's what the numbers are for. But they're not.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 12:13 am (UTC)One thing in defence of 1a/1b: sometimes people post their stuff on lj and archieve it on their website, or even had it there first. If that place doesn't have the same word limit lj has, they might realize too late, that a new chapter has to be split, i.e. after they have posted it in the other place. And for the sake of keeping their chapter numbering the same in both places, they do the "part 1a, part 1b" thing.
In general though, I agree with you. Numbering story parts in a way that is easy to comprehend ensures that people can follow your story and enjoy reading instead of wasting time chapter hunting and ultimately losing interest.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 12:42 am (UTC)Having different titles isn't useful at all. I think people that do that expect the world to be paying attention.
Chapter hunting is not particularly amusing most of the time.