A Second Shot at Getting It Perfect: An Interview with Chuck Palahniuk

It’s such a joy to bring you my interview with

Chuck Palahniuk

. It’s nearly impossible to summarize Chuck’s incredible life and career, so I’ll do my best here, which will come up short, and point you to his must-read bio on his website, The Cult.

To keep it short, I’ll rely on his Simon & Schuster author page. Chuck is the author of fourteen novels, including the bestselling Snuff; Rant; Haunted; Lullaby;  Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher; Diary; Survivor; Invisible Monsters; and Choke, which was made into a film by director Clark Gregg. He is also the author of the nonfiction profile of Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. His story collection Make Something Up was a widely banned bestseller. His graphic novel Fight Club II hit #1 on the New York Times list. He’s also the author of Fight Club III and the coloring books Bait and Legacy, as well as the writing guide Consider This. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

He’s currently promoting his new novel, Not Forever but for Now, which is part of a two-book deal he sold to Simon & Schuster. That deal included the single-volume publication of Greener Pastures, which he originally serialized on Substack.

This interview is a must for serializers, of course, and anyone in traditional publishing. We cover a lot of ground in a short space, including

• how starting a book on Substack can give that book a long life,

• how publishing online can build a better book,

• allowing or not allowing subscriber comments,

• taking the fact that we’re writing in people’s inboxes into account, and

• approaching serialization as an experiment.

Enjoy!

Sarah

p.s. For more on serialization, check out these posts:

• “How to Serialize Your Book, Novel, or Memoir with Sarah Fay” and

• “Yes, You Should Serialize Your Memoir on Substack: Find out why.”

---

Sarah: You talk about how a book can have a long life by starting on the Internet and then moving into a single volume. Was that what attracted you to serialize ‘Greener Pastures’?

Chuck: Several aspects of serializing spoke to me.  First, there’s the golden age of Dickens. No modern fiction writer has come close to the success of Dickens, and that success came from being serialized in huge general interest magazines made possible by artificial light. Gaslights and electricity gave people evening time, and they needed diversion. Subsequently, writers like Fitzgerald stayed afloat by writing boatloads of short stories for those magazines. Everything old is new again, so it seems inevitable that serialized novels would make a comeback.

Second, I’m a lifelong fan of the Tales of the City books which were first serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle. Armistead Maupin wrote them by the seat of his pants, in short, pithy installments, and then later pruned and polished them for the resulting books.

Third, any experiment is worth a go. Margaret Atwood serialized a novel with the platform Byliner. And if it’s worth her time, I should give it a shot. 

Did you know Simon & Schuster was going to publish it before you serialized it? Was the plan always to publish it in book form? 

Chuck: My eternal thanks to Hachette, another publisher of mine. They’d actually bought the book but planned to wait a couple years to publish. When I begged it back, they complied and allowed me to publish it on Substack. Consequently, Simon & Schuster bought it as part of a two-book deal. The first of those books is a hardcover titled Not Forever, But for Now which is launching September 5th. As of now the complete chapters of Greener Pastures are slated to launch in the spring of 2024. However—and this is a big however—my plan is to radically rework Greener Pastures so I might beg S&S for a later pub date.  

I love how you say that publishing online can build a book. Did serialization allow you to see where the protagonist’s ‘want’ was lacking?

Chuck: Bear with me, when a book of yours becomes a film it’s easy to see the small errors you've made in the plotting. Screenwriters and actors can fully realize the book better than a single author can. So the film tends to be more effective, plot-wise.

In serializing a book, it’s as if you get a second shot at really getting the plot perfect. In the original Substack version of Greener Pastures my strong scenes were great, but to be honest, the third act was muddled and lacked drive. Given the time and experience of serializing it, I can now see how that overall plot can be honed down and made stronger.  

How did you handle the chat and subscriber comments? Did you ask for feedback? If so, was it helpful? Did the comments you received allow you to see the book anew?

Chuck:  I did not allow comments on the book’s installments. Too many cooks spoil the soup.  Even when I showcase my short stories and the work of my students on Substack I allow “likes” but I seldom allow comments. A million generous compliments can be destroyed by a single hateful word.

While you were serializing it, how much did you take the platform into account? Did you think of it as an email novel given that people would be reading chapters in their inboxes?

Chuck: Hah! I didn’t know enough to take anything into account. I only wanted to model the very short chapters after those in Tales of the City, which might’ve been a mistake. The Maupin novel published installments frequently, and people’s curiosity was tested on almost a day-to-day basis. In retrospect I think my chapters should’ve been longer, to satisfy weekly readers. My cliffhangers might’ve been irritating instead of enticing.   

Did you write chapter by chapter as you were serializing and if so did you take readers’ feedback into account as Dickens did? (He’d change the plot if readership flagged.) Or did you have a full draft going into it?

Chuck: I had a full draft which more or less broke into fifty-two good chunks, each a plot point. And, no, I didn’t tailor the story to reader response. In that direction lies the liquor cabinet.

What unexpected difficulties did you encounter during the serialization?

Chuck:  I wasn’t ready for how the Substack system reformatted the text. I’m used to indented paragraphs, and Substack seems to set everything flush left. The reformatting was a challenge for me.

What’s the one piece of advice you would give to someone serializing or thinking of serializing a novel in Substack?

Chuck: Please always keep in mind that this is an experiment. Any form of storytelling is most exciting while its rules are still in flux. Remember when music videos were fresh and raw? People tried so many ways to present them.  Such videos had a short life and any mistake would be forgotten, but they were a chance to test radically new ways of storytelling. I’d push writers to follow that impulse. The story can be wild, but so too can the presentation. Don’t accept the idea that it all has to look like anything that’s come before. Now, knock yourself out.  

Let’s also consider the incredibly popular books by writers like Erma Bombeck and Peg Bracken. They weren’t serialized novels per se, but they did originally appear piecemeal as short humor bits serialized in hundreds of newspapers. These anecdotes were funny and sharp and touching, and readers looked forward to reading one each week. Occasionally, the best of the pieces would be wrapped together as a book such as The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank by Bombeck. 

In short, don’t rule out the idea of building a readership with short, clever stories that can be sold later to a publisher. That form is long overdue for a comeback.

---

Get my expert eyes on your Substack and discover how to use Substack to reach your goals—book a Single Substack Strategy Intensive or Strategic Substack Growth Package.