A Most Dangerous Woman: Brenda Clough on Writing serialized fiction in today’s world.

Hello everybody – we are here today with MOST EXCELLENT news about Serial Box’s new series. Creator Brenda Clough returns to the roots of serialized fiction with a sequel to The Woman in White by Wilkie Collin, with A Most Dangerous Woman. Originally published in serial form in 1860 in Charles Dickens’ magazine “All the Year Round,” The Woman in White is considered to be one of the first and finest examples of the mystery genre. A Most Dangerous Woman continues the tradition laid out by Wilkie Collins.

At the conclusion of Collin’s tale over 150 years ago, the brave Walter Hartright has saved his love Laura Fairlie from a plot to steal her fortune, with help from Laura’s plain but whip-smart half sister Marian.

In Brenda Clough’s sequel it’s Marian who finds and marries her true love, Theo Camlet. But when Theo’s first wife, who everyone believed to be dead, reappears, Marian and Walter must delve into the darkest and most dangerous corners of London to save Theo from accusations of bigamy and murder, as well as the hangman’s noose.

We invited Brenda Clough over to talk about writing a series in 2018 and about the great heroine that is Marian.

You could argue that serialized fiction has no place in today’s literary universe. This is the era of instant gratification. Drones deliver pizzas to your door. You can download movies in one minute, order ebooks with the click of a mouse. Surely the form pioneered by Dickens and Trollope is as dead as the dinosaur. Who has time to wait for the next chapter?

But it is possible that stringing a story out over time is instinctive to us. The very oldest literature we have must have been serialized. It is said that the Greek poets had the Iliad memorized entire. They could recite the entire epic for you at the drop of a hat. But the Trojan War took ten years, and the Iliad repeated aloud must have been an all-day event. You would want to break it up, if only for meals.

For depth of theme, for expansive characters, for major action, you need elbow room. You’re not going to get a cast of thousands into Twitterfic. The movie producers know this. How many Marvel movies are there, or Star Wars movies? Their plan of course is for you to see them all, in order. Maybe we don’t do that. But viewing all the Thor movies does make Avengers: Infinity War more meaningful. The movies are designed, more or less, to both stand alone and yet be more fun if they are all viewed. Has there ever been anyone who has only seen one Star Wars movie?

And TV shows are still releasing their seasons serially, one show a week, sometimes for years. Consider the current SF hit The Handmaid’s Tale, for instance, or (to pick something that’s already complete) Mad Men. There were arcs in Mad Men that spanned the series from the first episode to the last – Peggy’s rise from the secretarial pool to executive, Dan Draper’s ongoing personal issues. Within that big structure were smaller one-season arcs, like the machinations of Pete, and within each episode there was smaller peaks and dips. Having one episode a week allows a vast fan base to pick up, exchanging blog comments and analyzing Peggy’s dresses. Once we’re in we want more, lots more.

Which is how I began to write Victorian thrillers. Like so many readers I adored The Woman in White. Miss Marian Halcombe, the heroine, is surely one of the most fascinating women in fiction. This was a period when heroines in books were supposed to be pretty and blonde, the passive prizes for male contention, and Wilkie Collins was careful to give the readers one because he was a smart writer. But he knew it was idiotic – within the novel the other characters point out the silliness of Laura Fairlie. Her brunette sister Marian Halcombe, older and ugly but smart, tough and imaginative, comes to her rescue when the men fail her. The novel was a massive best-seller and Miss Halcombe completely eclipsed the nominal heroine of the work, to the point where her publisher was getting her marriage proposals in the mail.

Why are there no more stories about Marian? There are so many sequels to Price & Prejudice that there are entire web pages devoted to listing and organizing them. Well if you want something done you just have to step up and do it yourself. I wanted Marian to be a perfect Victorian lady, but to push back against the expectations of her culture. She does all the things that women must have done, but were careful not to tell the men about, and that never appear in the pages of the novels.

And because THE WOMAN IN WHITE came out in serial form, it is entirely appropriate for A Most Dangerous Woman to be coming out in episodes as well.

Brenda W. Clough is a novelist, short story, and nonfiction writer. Her recent e-books are Revise the World and Speak to Our Desires. Her novels include How Like a God, The Doors of Death and Life, and Revise the World. She has been a finalist for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards. She has been teaching science fiction & fantasy workshops at The Writer’s Center for over 10 years.

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