I don't know exactly where this is going to go but I hope you find it interesting nonetheless. The reason I'm writing this is because right now I'm stalling on a scene for my book series and I need to do something to reinvigorate my passion, drive, and test of will for writing again. Writer's block is a sickle bitch. So, like I said, I'm writing a book series. I've been working on it for roughly seven years, on and off, and have never even finished a first draft, or even got past the first three chapters, falling victim to numerous false starts, and have just mostly been doing outlines, writing them and then always deleting them. It's not been a fun road. But I think I finally have all of my questions figured out and answered and am on my way to a first complete first draft of one of my books in the series. The series is going to be 7 books long. Each book is going to have 13 episodes. Each episode is going to have 8 chapters. Each chapter is going to have 3-5 scenes. And each chapter is going to have 2,500 words. To put this down visually for you, here's what I'm going to have outlined for each book in the series: Episode 1 (Chapters 1-8) Episode 2 (Chapters 9-16) Episode 3 (Chapters 17-24) Episode 4 (Chapters 25-32) Episode 5 (Chapters 33-40) Episode 6 (Chapters 41-48) Episode 7 (Chapters 49-56) Episode 8 (Chapters 57-64) Episode 9 (Chapters 65-72) Episode 10 (Chapters 73-80) Episode 11 (Chapters 81-88) Episode 12 (Chapters 89-96) Episode 13 (Chapters 97-104) Alright, so maybe you saw it and maybe you didn't. If you look through my post history, you'll notice something about this structure I've created or am using. As you see, each book in the series is going to be divided into 13 episodes and what you will find out about me if you research is that I've been struggling with how to write a cohesive and interesting story in exactly 13 episodes. Well, I think I've finally figured it out. The 13-episode structure is taken from acclaimed television shows like The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad, and how they divide up their seasons. How this unique structure came to be is that each block of 13-episodes is called a season and, well, since a season is one-fourth of a year and there are 52 weeks in a year, then it would constitute that one season is 13 weeks, and as you probably know, most television shows premiere their episodes once a week. So, 13 episodes of a television show make up one season of television. The only difference that I'm making is that I'm trying to write it all out as a novel, and not yet a television show, but I'm doing it in the hopes of my book being adapted into a television show one day, making for a seamless adaption. I had problems with using the structure of 13 episodes for my story for a long time for unexplained reasons, like I've said before. However, I didn't give up because I liked the idea of sticking with a group of characters and really getting to know them over the course of 13 long hours instead of just 2 hours like a film and how most novels are. I struggled with 13 episodes for a long time and even now I can't tell you what my problem exactly was because I see the solution so easily now. If you know anything about stories, you know that there's this thing called the three-act structure. It divides itself perfectly into creating a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning takes up the first 25% of the story, the middle takes up the next 50%, and then the end takes up lastly the final 25%. If you look back up at how I've structured my 13 episodes for each book, you'll see that it's divided into five parts, which are that Episodes 1-3 are the first part, Episodes 4-6 are the second part, Episode 7 is third part, Episodes 8-10 are the third part, and Episodes 11-13 are the fourth and last part. This is important to the three-act structure because if you divide act 2 or the middle of the three-act structure in half, you will get four parts, or 25% of the story for each part, and this is done at the midpoint. If you can, you will see that is how I've divided up the 13 episodes, with the first two parts covering Episodes 1-6 and the last two parts covering Episodes 8-13, and then the midpoint belonging to Episode 7. Now that we have the 13 episodes divided up into the three-act structure, we can finally start crafting an actual story. The problem with dividing a story into 13 episodes for each book involves the lack of content that you might have in writing a story this way and filling in the blanks. I have an easy solution for you and that is just focus on one character at a time. It would be nearly impossible to write this way from one character's point of view as there is just too much that needs to be written to cover all thirteen episodes adequately without having it feel like filler. This is where you need to come up with the side characters and a number of different subplots. But like I said, just focus on one character at a time, most notably your main character. Think of the 13 episodes as like a long drive to somewhere. You start at point A with your main character stationary and not having begun the trip yet and then ending at point C with your character having arrived at their destination. Point B, of course, is everything in between. Then, the story becomes about the journey and not the destination. Well, how do you fill in the blanks and make it one cohesive story that's not just made up as you go? That's where theme comes in. Figure out what the message of the story that you want to express is and then use that idea to come up with ideas for all of your episodes. As you will discover, limiting your creativity to a single category doesn't hinder it, but grows it. Your main character is going to meet a lot obstacles and other characters on this long drive and it's up to you to decide how they're going to get passed them. Let's get started on the journey of how to write a new story with just 13 episodes. An amateurish idea I've had for writing an outline of a story to test my 13-episode story structure theory is that of vampires. Since I've told you that you just need to figure out the story with just one character at a time, and to worry about the side characters and subplots later, let's just create right now who are main character is going to be. To make this clear and understandable to anyone new with this, let's make this main character and thus the story a cliche one and our main character a male who is sixteen-years old still in high school and a nerdy virgin. Surprise, surprise! He finds out that he's a vampire. How? He gets fatally stabbed or crushed to death and comes back to life. After this discovery, he can't believe how special he is and that's when the vampires reveal themselves to him and take him into another world. If you know anything about story structure, you probably know about Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey or Dan Harmon's story circle. It's a story structure that's divided into 8 parts as our hero or main character moves forward in the story from a place of safety and order into danger and chaos and then back to safety and order again, but this time having changed. If you recall, you will remember that each of my episodes are divided into 8 chapters. This is not some arbitrary number because stories can be divided easily into eight sections. Dan Harmon probably puts it best as it's the most simple to see and understand and it looks something like this: 1: The hero is in a place of comfort. 2: But they want something. 3: They enter into a new world. 4: They adapt to this world. 5: They find what they wanted. 6: But pay a heavy price for it. 7: They return back home. 8: But now having changed. If we look back at our vampire story that we're creating, we can see that we're in part 3 and that our hero is entering into a new world where seeing vampires is common. The most important thing to remember about writing a story is figuring out what a character wants and how they get it. If we return back to our nerdy hero and vampire, whom we'll name Fred, we'll say that he just wants to have a normal life and to one day start a family. Well, here are two conflicts already setup for us and that is that for one he can't have a normal life anymore because he's a vampire and two he can't have a family yet because he doesn't even know how to talk to girls. Using this eight-point story structure, we can divide our entire story this way. Instead of explaining it, it's probably best that I just show you: Parts 1 and 2 (the hero is in a place of comfort but they want something) can be divided into Episodes 1-3. Parts 3 and 4 (they enter into a new world and adapt to it) can be divided into Episodes 4-6. The midpoint or the end of part 4 and the beginning of part 5 (finding what was wanted) can be Episode 7. Parts 5 and 6 (finding what's wanted and paying a heavy price for it) can be Episodes 8-10. And lastly, Parts 7 and 8 (returning back home and having changed) can be Episodes 11-13. You can do this format, then, with each episode, like creating a story circle within a story circle. If you don't know what I mean by a story circle, look up on the internet Dan Harmon's story circle and you'll know what I mean. Now, let's get back to our vampire story. *** Hopefully with the story structure of using 13 episodes making a little more sense to you, let's just jump into Episode 1 and figure out now how we'll craft it into a cohesive story that's part of a whole. Instead of looking at Episode 1 as part of a 13-episode season, let's look at it like it's the first act of the first part of the season, which is Episodes 1-3, where the hero is in a place of comfort but they want something. Since each episode is divided into 8 chapters, which we now have and can use milestones or markers on what should happen in each of the chapters, it's not going to be hard, difficult, or arduous to create a story for the first episode....
I dropped out of university for the second time four months ago and I'm thinking of going back again in the spring (either to the same one or a different one). I'm hoping a different one because then I can get a fresh start. But now I'm kind of in this waiting for 2-6 months because school doesn't start until then. I've been really depressed about my life recently. Last quarter of school I was put into psychiatric hospital because I wanted to kill myself, which I wanted to do because the girl I liked rejected me and I failed the quarter. I feel like such a failure and that if I don't pass university again this third time around that I'm just going to kill myself. I went to community college after I got my GED and got an AA with a 3.8 GPA. But when I transferred to university, I just couldn't replicate the same results and failed three out of four quarters. I've dropped out twice now. I feel so shitty and I don't feel it's a reflection of me at all. I've been reading books, watching TV, browsing the internet, hanging with friends, and writing but none of these things seem to cheer me up. The only thing that seems to recently is posting on here my problems (venting). I really hate where my life is going. I really wish I didn't mess up school because without graduating I don't know what I'm going to do with my life because I'm not going to work fast food for forty years. If David Foster Wallace had the balls to kill himself because he thought he was a failure, then I do too. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was put into the psychiatric hospital and it would explain why I did so poorly in school -- the depression and making impulsive decisions -- but now I'm medicated and feel normal for once in my life. I'm hoping the school will let me back in because of this and possibly let me retake all of the classes I failed because that would be the only realistic way I could get my GPA back up. I'm living with my grandmother and three uncles right now and while I don't pay rent I'm kind of hating myself right now for it. I'm two months away from turning twenty-five and I just have nothing to show for it. I thought I was going to become a professional writer or a poker player but it turns out I suck at those things. Now I'm just some lazy adult who's a failure at everything. I don't know what to do. I feel I'm just stupid. That everyone knows it but me. My jaw is crooked and it probably makes me look like a retarded person (or Jay Leno, as my friend suggested) and when I took a picture of myself yesterday I realized I was ugly even though I think I'm just some ordinary, good-looking, white kid. Life sucks with how mundane it is sometimes.