While I’ve been exploring the jungles of Peru, the stranded astronauts of Aniara have been exploring the jungles and islands of Kepler 62f, fifth planet of a star 1200 light-years distant from Earth. I know you’ve been worried about the fates of Anna, Laxmi, and Jaci, so read on to learn what happens as they press…
It has been a few months since I last published a scene from my serial work-in-progress, The Silence of Ancient Light, so if you’re just joining us on this journey, you might want to start at the beginning. You can find an overview of the chapters and scenes so far at The Silence of Ancient Light.
Speaking of publishing scenes, I have a question for you. Do you find it more effective — are you more drawn in to want to read — if the scene is published as a page, the way I’ve been doing so far, accessible via menu links and so forth, and then announced with blog posts like this one? Or would you rather see the text of the scenes appear directly as blog posts?
There are pros and cons to each approach. Blog posts appear automatically in the WordPress Reader, for instance, and thus if you have a WordPress.com account, it’s possible for you to read the entire scene from your Reader feed without ever having to visit my website. Static pages do not, so you have to click the link in this post to take you there. I notice that I get more visits and likes on blog posts announcing scenes than I do on the scenes themselves, which leads me to believe that many people never follow that link. Pages also do not have a mechanism for assigning categories and tags, so there is less control over search terms and keywords. They may or may not show up as easily in Google searches.
On the other hand, blog posts become ‘lost’ in the blog roll over time, without an easy way to link directly to them with website menus. They can be found via category links, of course, but it would be more difficult for someone who wanted to read all the scenes straight through, in order (do any of you do that?). So, I tend to think of the blog as having a more immediate but short-term advantage, and the page as being more persistent and easier to find in the long-term, at least for someone who knows what they’re looking for.
What do you think?
What about a hybrid approach, posting the scene first in the blog, and then copying it later to a static page? Or would the repetition be a turn-off?
header image credit: user:DasWortgewand / pixabay.com under CC0 1.0
Matt Fraser 
Hi Matt! I, too, have been thinking about scenes as blog posts versus pages. I do not have helpful thoughts for you, but I’m curious what others might say. I’m glad you asked.
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Hi Ivy!
Happy to see you here. 🙂 If stats are anything to go by, I’ve had a couple dozen visits to this blog post, but apparently only one person has clicked through to the actual scene (stats tend to lag realtime, though, so it may be more than one). While I’m happy to have people reading and liking my blog posts, I’d be happier if they read and liked my scenes! So that’s what led me to ask the question. Like you, I’m curious what others think and might have to say about it, especially if they too write scenes and have experience with different approaches.
Let’s hope this generates some conversation!
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