The Joys of Anticipation
The Joys of Anticipation
Diane Byington
I discovered “The Great British Baking Show” last year and delighted in watching an episode every evening. I grew attached to the characters and the competition, and my evenings weren’t complete without the show.
But then it ended. I’d watched all the seasons. Oh yes, there were other things on TV to watch, but nothing quite like the Baking Show. Finally, another season started. I sat in front of the television, ready to resume my watching habits. I loved the first episode, but discovered, to my horror, that I would have to wait A WEEK for the next episode. How could that be? I was used to watching when I wanted.
Over the past weeks, though, I’ve come to appreciate the act of anticipating the next episode. During the week, I think about the previous episode, which baker had to leave, and who was star baker, and I wonder what will happen next. I talk with other people about the episodes and I read blogs about what happened. It’s fun to be part of a shared experience. And on Friday evenings, I know I’m going to sit in front of my television and watch what happens.
In a way, reading a book is like binge-watching TV. You can read when you want, stop when you want, or continue all the way to the end. That’s great. I love it. But there’s another way to read, and that’s through serials. For example, The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens was the first book to be published as a serial, and it was a cultural phenomenon. The Martian was also released first as a serial, and we know how that turned out.
The advantages of reading serials mirror the advantages of watching episodes on TV. If more than a few people are reading the same episodes, the act of reading becomes a collective experience. As C. S. Lewis once said, “friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another, ‘Oh, you too? I thought I was the only one.’”
Several places are experimenting with serialized fiction: Medium, Wattpad, Radish, and Kindle Vella are some of them. The jury is still out as to whether this style of publishing will catch on in a big way, but there’s something to be said for anticipation and the collective experience.
Excuse me now. I have another episode of “The Great British Baking Show” to watch.
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Diane Byington is the author of two novels: Who She Is and If She had Stayed, and is publishing a third novel, Mia’s Journey, to Kindle Vella.
Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/dianebyington
Find out more about her on her website http://www.dianebyington.com/
IF SHE HAD STAYED, Diane Byington
Sometimes the past is better left alone.
Kaley Kline is thrilled to have landed a job as director of the new Tesla Museum in Colorado Springs. To make the museum successful, she searches for undiscovered works to display. When she finds an old safe that might have been Tesla’s, she’s shocked to find some diary pages supposedly written by the inventor himself.
Kaley initially thinks either that the journal is a fraud or Tesla was experiencing a nervous breakdown when he wrote it. However, if his experiments were real, the world will never be the same. She decides to secretly build Tesla’s time machine and attempt to go back into her own life to change a decision she has always regretted.
She prepares for a trip to the past, not knowing whether she will electrocute herself or travel back to the Boulder of her sophomore year in college. But an old boyfriend might have hidden some secrets from her—secrets that could have her fighting for her life.
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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