On Writing a Book Series

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. Remember, we're working on Episode 1 like it's the first act of the first part of a 13-episode season that's divided into four parts with a midpoint using the three-act structure.

Again, like I said, for right now we should just focus on one character and not the subplots or other side characters yet and just move through the story naturally with what the main character wants. I'm going to skip the details and just write out a quick outline for you of how episode 1 is going to look and then explain the details later:

Chapter 1: Fred is a sixteen-year old nerdy virgin still in high school who wants one day to live a normal life and start a family. We can "show" this with him being bullied in front of a girl he has a crush on and then going to his family or therapist to explain what he wants out of life. This is the zone of comfort for him.

Before I move on, let's figure out what we want happening at the midpoint, or at the end of chapter 4 (finding what he wants), and what we want happening at the end of the episode. Let's let the midpoint be him dropping out of school but impressing the girl he likes. This creates a dilemma because the girl isn't going to date a high school dropout with no future. The end of the episode will be with him entering into the world of vampires.

Now that we have a general outline of episode 1, let's just quickly decide what we want the season to be about and how we want it to be structured. Let's say that at the end of the season, Fred no longer becomes a vampire by destroying the curse that plagues all vampires and gets the girl (whom we'll learn is also a vampire), and then gets to live a normal life. What's the midpoint of this season look like? Well, let's find out.

Chapter 2: Fred watches reports on the news of people being bitten and their blood being completely drained from their bodies. The killers are being called vampires and Fred gets a hint that there's possibly a new world out there to discover, but he's too afraid to enter inside of it. We learn that Fred hates school even though he's a genius who works on his own projects at home like writing a book series and that he gets nervous when he approaches a girl that he likes. Then, Fred will come home and discover that both his parents were killed by these supposed vampire killers. This is showing what Fred wants and also entering him into a new and unfamiliar situation.

Chapter 3: Fred goes to live with his uncle and aunt whom he hates and who tell him that school is important and that he must do good or his life is going to suck. Unfortunately for them, Fred is doing terrible in school because he can't focus unless it's working on something he loves,. Fred goes to the funeral of his parents and then starts skipping school. This is him adapting to his new situation.

Chapter 4: This chapter is the beginning of the midpoint and should be one of the most important parts of the episode or story, other than the ending. If we remember, Fred just wants two things: to live a normal life and to have a family. Now that he's dropping out of school because of bullying and bad grades and can't see the girl that he likes anymore, this is a thorn in both of the things that he wants. Since the end of the episode is about Fred finding out that he's a vampire, we need to build up to that. Since we've already established with a proactive action that Fred is no longer going to go to school (and thus not live a normal life), we need to show him making another proactive decision but this time with the girl. That's when he'll go to a party, get drunk, and start talking to her. But the bully is with her and beats Fred up to give him the idea that he doesn't have a chance with her. Defeated and feeling like he's at the bottom of life, Fred wants to kill himself, which is when the vampire killer reveals herself and meets him. Fred is contemplating jumping off a bridge but can't be talked out of it by this person whom we don't know yet is the vampire killer and jumps to his death. This is Fred getting what he thinks he wants because if he can't get the normal life or the family one day with his dream girl, then he'll want to die because settling for something worse is not an option for him when he has the kind of intellect that he does.

Chapter 5: After getting what he thought he wanted through suicide, Fred wakes up fine, healed, and okay with the female vampire sitting near him or standing over him and telling him that he's alive. This is the heavy price that Fred has to pay and that he can't die. He's going to have to deal with his problems and overcome them. Fred wants nothing to do with this vampire and goes back into the real world but discovers that his death has had a major impact on the community and Fred learns that maybe he meant more to people than he realized. Not wanting to reveal that he's alive, Fred continues to avoid going to school and talking with the girl. Now that he knows he can't have the two things that he wants (a normal life by completing school and starting a family one day with the girl that he likes) and that he can't kill himself anymore because he's immortal and doesn't know yet he's a vampire, Fred becomes depressed and doesn't know what to do with his life anymore. He goes back to the female vampire killer for mentorship.

Chapter 6: After failing to find her and having nowhere to go, Fred is forced to live on the street and continues to hear reports of people being killed by these vampire killers. In the night, Fred is wandering around and thinks he sees someone homeless being killed by one of the vampire killers. After catching them in the act, Fred chases after the killer, knowing that he's immortal now and not afraid, and discovers that one of the killers is the girl that he likes and was going to school with. After she briefly tells him why she kills people, Fred is left alone wondering what he's supposed to do in this world that he doesn't understand anymore.

Chapter 7: Returning to ordinary life, Fred wants to forget about his immortality and that his longtime crush is a nighttime vampire killer and just wants to be normal again. However, Fred gets the urge to kill someone and drink their blood. He chooses to kill his uncle who hates Fred because Fred is a failure and his uncle is a bully. Fred is caught in the act and recorded and becomes the first vampire killer to get caught. Fred now goes on the run and doesn't know who he's become and tries to find the female vampire mentor that helped him after he tried to kill himself.

Chapter 8: Because he needs help to hide, the many vampires reveal themselves to Fred and take him to an underground lair where all of the other vampires hide and collect and Fred is told all there is to know about this new world of vampires. He sees the girl that he likes also there, telling him that she was implanted in society for him, and that there's a curse the vampires need to break if they want to be normal again. Fred is told he's the chosen one and that he's the one who is going to break the curse, thus returning him back to wanting a normal life and to get the girl.

So, hopefully you have a better idea now of how an episode is structured and how it should shape for the rest of the season. The next episodes can be about how the girl came to be a vampire or other vampires are rebelling and creating their own society of vampires and doing extraneous evil things, or something like that. Once you figure out how to structure an episode like this, you can easily figure out how to structure an entire season this way.

For my own series, I'm following the exact same structure, except with a lot more different characters with each their own subplots. I guess this is enough for what I wanted to say and now I believe I can get back to writing the scene I was stalling on. Thanks for reading.