Has any thought been given to putting author's stories that are in series in series order on the archive? Or at least in date order by author?

This would be a huge benefit to new comers and old hands alike to be able to read the author's stories in date order or even better in series order. Then the joys of reading Nan's various series, or Dandello's, or ShayneT's or Bobbart's or (fill in the blank) would be even more so.

James

Amen. Great idea. I would love to see this.

I see a couple of items that would need to be worked out in advance or it could be tough.

If the stories aren't explicitly ordered I think each author would have to give a preferred display order. A case in point: Broccoli Dancing by Irene Dutch is a sequel vignette to Firestorm but it is also included as a scene within one of the other stories. Would reading them out of order confuse things or spoil the story?

There are also a few collaborative series where stories are listed under both author's names that might be a problem. (i.e. SwapMeet Metropolis by Margaret Brignell and SwapMeet Burbank by Debby Stark)

*Crosslinks under both authors would be good for the person reading but might be a pain to build and manage.
*Adding a "by series" dropdown might be an option but could also be a pain.

Nan's stories do have a list which is linked on the archive, and can be found here . (And I'm constantly amazed the Geocities site still works!) But it would help for other series. Either a similar page, a note next to it, or maybe a rollover note.

Absolutely. My initial thought though is that unless there's some nice magic piece of tech that makes it easy to do, it would be an enormous amount of work to tackle retrospectively on hundreds of stories.

But I'll pass it by Lauren anyway. She has a habit of coming up with magic tech that makes things I assume will be difficult easy as pie.

LabRat

I agree, I was thinking that the authors, if reachable, could at least supply a listing of their stories in order. That would solve a goodly portion of work.

James

Maybe have a "series" file for each author as a link after their name, but only post such a link if there are stories in a sequence.

I am working on a web list of my stuff - but my desktop is in the guest room and I have guests this week. So next week.

Mine is pretty simple - I haven't posted any series at all, with the exception of the two "Owls over Metropolis" drabbles. It'd probably be easier to combine the two stories in one file than to set up a series page for it!

LabRat, thank you as always for your support.

Those of us converting stories to epub have tackled this a little over on the epub-by-author wiki page , where we've listed stories in a series by the series name first, followed by the story name. For example...

Irene's Storm series
Storm Series 1 - Firestorm
Storm Series 2 - Starfire and Sunstorm
etc.

and Carol Malo's Recognition series
Recognition 1: Truth
Recognition 2: Justice
etc.

... which is different from how they're listed on the archive.

We could definitely change how we identify stories on the larger archive, in this fashion, but we would need the approval from authors, I think. And the "definitive" name of the series.

Lauren

A couple of my stories: Superman, What? (set in my Missing Lois universe), and The Superman Effect (an extra vignette of my Wrong Trilogy) while set in universes of some other stories also work as stand-alone stories.

Green-Eyed Monster precedes Nightfall Honeymoon (currently clogging up Labby's GE mailbox.)

Book 1:Another Dimension, Another Time, Another Lois (also about to be returned from GE to Labby) precedes Book 2:Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark (WIP) of my Wrong Trilogy. (I haven't come up with a title for Book 3, yet.) But I've already warned Labby of that they are part of a series.

While Lois Rules! - A Story goes hand-in-hand with Lois Lane - A Handbook I don't think they count as a series. (Although, I do have a sequel for Lois Rules! - A Story in my plot bunny slush pile.)

Just a Little Too Far and Just a Little Too Much are not a series, but they both start out the same, but end differently.

Maybe you could ask writers to note when submitting stories to the Archive (in the comments/notes section) or add a check-box to the submission form, should the story be part of a series or a sequel to an already submitted story. (My guess is that sometimes when the first story is submitted to Labby, the writer doesn't know that he/she will write another story in that universe or a sequel.) I try to make such a note when submitting stories to the Archive.

Out of mine, only two are related to each other.

Clarkus Maximus comes first.

Soul Desire is a sequel and is designated as such in the description.

My Looking In and From the Outside tell the same story from two different points of view. Although they can be read in either order, I would suggest reading "Looking In" first.

I have reached an impasse with another story of mine, tentatively entitled, "The Diagnosis." It is intended to be a prequel to "Echolalia." The latter should be read first, though. I bring this up to make sure such a situation is considered: That there might be cases where story A takes place chronologically before story B but, for whatever reason, should be read after it.

Joy,
Lynn

I've just been updating the Archive's Fanfic Database and it occurs to me that, in the meantime, you should be able to work out the series order of many of the stories by using that.

The stories are grouped by author and then a couple of columns along by date uploaded, which should give you a clue in many cases. And in some cases - Anti-K's I Sense series for example - the order of the series is actually right there in the story title column.

Not perfect, but a little bit of a help, perhaps, until we work out if it's possible to get the order into the Archive proper.

LabRat

brilliant I keep forgetting that thing.

Um What about folks like me who have a loose series of stories?

Stranger in our Midst will have at least two stories which will take place during the time last three months that Stranger occurs.

Oh well, I should not worry about it until all three stories are in the archives.

Just a thought.