for The Nation magazine’s Web site, Saturday morning movie serials from the Age of Dinosaurs--Perils of Nyoka, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, Commando Cody: Radar Men from the Moon, and the like--definitely affected how I imagined laying out my story. I knew I had to use cliffhangers, twists and turns, reveals and reversals in the telling, if I wanted to keep the audience coming back--and maybe spread the love around a little by word of mouth. One plus is that my serial is being featured on a well-trafficked site--though that’s also somewhat of a minus, as genre fiction doesn’t track particularly well with the hardcore lefty, politically wonkish crowd. But what the heck.It’s not like there aren’t modern versions of the serial already available on television. Certainly, shows such as 24 and Lost, and cable’s Sleeper Cell, use the aforementioned plotting devices to enthrall their audiences week to week, as their story arcs play out. Sure, all I have is words, and though I’m no Charles Dickens--arguably, the undisputed master of the novel on the installment plan--like the moving image, I can use pacing and how characters act and react to each other to make things interesting.
This wasn’t my first opportunity to compose an online serial. Last year, for the Los Angeles Web site FourStory, I wrote biweekly installments of The Underbelly, a murder mystery that had as its protagonist a semi-homeless Vietnam vet named Magrady. It’s a good thing I had that experience, too, as one of the traps I knew I had to avoid was writing myself into a corner; for, unlike those old-timey serials--where one week the hero is seen dashing into a house that explodes, only to have it revealed the week following that he’d tripped right before he reached the house as it went boom--you can only play so fast and loose with sequences and details. I knew I had to be careful that some plot element I’d introduced in, say, Week 3 wasn’t later dropped without explanation, but was instead allowed to play out in a logical fashion.
At the same time, in Citizen Kang I reference topical and newsy issues now and then, such as the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent landmark ruling on gun ownership, John McCain’s gaffes and flip-flops, and so on. Those events may occur out of their real-time sequence, for I’m having to collapse my storyline in order to give this serial novel a feeling of immediacy. Two days in Congresswoman Kang’s world might, as a result, contain a week’s worth of real-world occurrences. But that’s just the way these things work.
This business of syncing up my fiction with real-world developments is something I can smooth out later on, when I get around to re-editing Citizen Kang for publication in book form. Real-deal politics also messed with me early on, when I was conceptualizing this work. As I’ve mentioned before in The Rap Sheet, Cynthia Kang was originally supposed to run as an independent candidate for the Oval Office, á la the satirical Tanner ’88 that showed on HBO (created by Robert Altman and Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau). Although former Michigan Congressman Jack Tanner was actually running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, in both Tanner ’88 and Citizen Kang, real, developing political stories were meant to influence the fiction’s progression. The trouble was, as states started moving up their primary election dates, and as Barack Obama began raking in money like it was free lunch, who in their right mind would have jumped into such a race?
I mean, besides windmill tilters--or is that would-be spoilers?--like Bob Barr and Ralph Nader.
Still, I haven’t been hampered significantly by making Citizen Kang about a congresswoman’s difficult re-election campaign, instead of her history-making struggle for the White House. We’re now up to 25 weekly episodes on The Nation’s Web site, and already our heroine has become romantically involved with a tough, female plainclothes detective; her mentor has committed suicide, though who provoked him to do so remains unknown; Kang has discovered that a mysterious billionaire is pulling strings to affect this year’s presidential election; and her chief of staff, who a few episodes back was blasted at by an unidentified assailant using a shotgun, is missing and presumed kidnapped.
Funny, but it’s only now--as I prepare the 26th episode of Citizen Kang for next week, with just 14 more weeks to go before this story’s projected end--that I’m starting to sweat how specific plot points will pay off and how I shall go about tying up loose ends. Fortunately, my characters are all in place and well defined, and their schemes are well underway. All I have to do is keep everything up in the air, and keep juggling events until the grand finale on the grassy knoll--oops, did I just let that slip?
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(Editor’s note: To catch up--and then keep up--with Gary Phillips’ developing political thriller, Citizen Kang, simply click here.)
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