New, Handier Way to Read Ella’s Story!

You’ll recall that I had to wrap the ongoing installments of The Complete Writer into PDFs, after the publishing a series of chapters maxed out WordPress. All things considered, I decided that was pretty cool. It allows readers to go straight to the content that interests them without having to unravel a roll of electronic toilet paper to find it. How, one wondered, would that work for Ella’s Story?

One does not read a piece of fiction for the same reason, though, that one reads a nonfiction book. Fiction, outside the sticky confines of a literature course, is read for pleasure, to pass the time of day (or night). There are no subject headings into which to divide a recitation of facts or advice. This is a challenge when the noveloid is really a kind of telenovela, a genre whose authors invent on the fly.

It struck me, though, that I could gather ten chapters of Ella’s Story at a time into a single PDF. Then let the E.S. page run the next ten, one at a time, until enough installments accrue to build the next PDF.

Yesterday I published Chapter 22 in blog format. So that presented enough material to create “Part I” and “Part II”: two PDFs containing the story as published so far, and then some. The PDFs, I put online last night.

Once I get to Chapter 30, I’ll take those new 10 pages off the E.S. page, post them all together in a single PDF (“Part III”!), and…so on to infinity.

As it develops, this will be a huge improvement for the reader. With the contents of each 10-chapter “Part” listed on the E.S. page and no more than 10 new chapters posted there, you’ll be able go straight to where you left off, rather than having to scroll endlessly to pick up the story.

Try it! You’ll like it!