A Book Written As If It Were A TV Show

I am writing a unique book and wonder if any of you have read books written in this manner. There are going to be seven books in the series. I am writing all seven books at once due to foreshadowing, and hidden clue necessities that allow me for big reveals later in the series.

To understand my book, think of a long-running TV show. Each TV Show is broken into seasons and has a main plot with each episode in that season telling a story and somehow furthers the main plot along, but at the same time, the episode stands on its own. This is how my books are to be written. Book 1 is split up into three parts that would represent a different season if it were a TV show. Part One consists of 46 episodes, or short stories if you will that further the main plot along.

Each short story has a date and time of when it occurs. This is important because my story involves an element of time travel (time travel is not the focus of the book series) so the readers need to know when that episode occurs on the timeline and in relation to other episodes. There are times in the book when different characters are doing different things all at once but instead of just going back and forth between characters in one story, a separate episode is written that follows each group of characters whenever they are split off from one another and the date and time serve as a way for the reader to know this.

Also, the date and time serve as a way to tell the reader how long time has passed between the episodes.

Each episode has a chapter title and both stands on their own as a short story but also progress the main plot forward in some way. But not every episode is a big plot mover. Some episodes are more like character sketches, which allow the reader to get to know each character personally. Conversations amongst the characters about what has happened in other episodes are included as well.

And, just like a TV show, I have chosen a song to go along with each episode. Think of the song that plays during the credits of a TV show. For my book, the song serves as another way to engage readers since they can go play the song and hear it and would have a better feeling for what the theme of that episode is but it leaves open for interpretation from the reader as some songs are "on the nose" and others are more subtle.

The last feature of the book is similar to a choose your own adventure book where the reader chooses to only read the episodes that involved a particular character. All characters in the book are written as if they are the main character. Even minor characters have episodes that make them the main character for at least that episode. The reader can choose to follow one character or they can read the book all at once, from front to back, and know everything all the characters are doing just like you would in a traditional book.

A table of episodes is provided for the reader to know which episodes they need to read in order to follow a particular character.

If you follow only one character, the book can be read and re-read as if it were different books following the same story. So, in essence, I am writing multiple books at the same time. This is perhaps the most challenging part of the book series.

I have written 670 pages thus far and it is all coming together nicely.

I'm just curious to hear what people have to say about this format of story-telling.

 

I have heard people complain about books being written as though they were movies or TV Shows, I don't know if they mean the prose or the premise. But I say, do as you like. It might be an interesting experiment if nothing else. Also, it may attract people who like that kind of setup.

You have already come far in your project, good job on that.

I am a bit confused though, about how one can follow only one character. Does the reader still gain the plot insight necessary from only one viewpoint? If so, are other viewpoints perhaps obsolete?

To conclude, I would say go for it.

 

I'm sorry for the long reply. I just thought it would be best to explain this out.

Firstly, Thank you for the feedback. It is very helpful and encouraging to hear someone just say "go for it". I have shared my vision of the book to other writers but they have been skeptical at best, and many feel that the story is too complicated. But I like to think the readers are smart and do not need everything spelled out for them. In my book, there is some questions remaining that I intend to bring the reader to question and at times the reader will have to make their own opinions on the topic.

Allow for me to explain.

To answer your question, as for following one character, that is the most challenging part and truthfully it might be a part that I eventually stop trying to do because it is very complicated to tell a story like this. I have to plot out the scenes that will go in all the books and my outline of the content is 350 pages long. Very complicated story. But it is also unique and what I have always planned to do. I'm not an author. This will be my life's work.

There are 7 books total and I am writing them all at one time because I have to plot out what each person does and says very carefully. I want to create a series that has big, major reveals, but I want to ensure that there were clues to that reveal from the very beginning of book 1. And some things the readers will figure out along with the characters, who have to figure things out. One thing the reader will know is that all is not what it seems. I am trying to ensure the reader will have one experience the first time they read the books. And they will have a different experience re-reading the books because the clues were there the entire time. They just didn't know it. Or, the reader can read the entire book front to cover and they will understand how the story unfolds.

basically, book 1 starts with a prologue, where all the main characters are involved and thus would know about the situation is that is occurring. But this scene doesn't go into the background of how or why the events in the prologue happened. The scene starts in the middle of what is going on. It's my intention to start book 1, Part 1, with the reader thinking the book started at the end of the story and then is going to tell the reader how everyone gets to that end. But that's not what the book does. Some of the writing is to have the reader be just another person having to learn things just like the characters have to learn things.

If you read front to cover you will immediately know that this is a time-loop, where only one character knows that this is a time-loop, and that prologue the reader read wasn't the end of the story. In fact, the story starts with the prologue having just happened and time was reset immediately following the prologue events and the loop is now starting again, but a good deal before what happens in the prologue happened. The idea is that you can't know what you know before you come to know it. So, when time is reset back, nobody has any memory or understanding of what just occurred. And the book will later reveal why those who can restart time, restart it to back before everyone knows everything. There's a reason for that to be revealed.

So you have the prologue, and then Book 1, part 1, introduces everyone through character sketches and gives the reader an idea of how they want to read the book. So the book starts with about 15 character sketches that introduce the reader to all the key players. I focus on creating very complex characters that are interesting and well developed so the reader can find the story engaging and identity with a character they find interesting. Each character has a role to play in the story but they don't know what role that is when Part 1 starts. So the reader will follow the character as they learn their roles and each character comes to find this out in a different way, with different responses and levels of willingness to proceed varrying. If you are reading cover to cover or reading the story from Nemesis's point of view, the reader will see that Nemesis is telling each character something different and luring them to reprise their roles in a manner that works best for that character to ensure they again do what they need that character to do. But if you are reading one of the other characters, then the reader only knows what that character has been told and thus wouldn't know there is a lot of manipulation of information being given out. That is why I have to write all 7 books at once. The dialogue is very important because just changing certain words when talking to someone makes all the difference as to how that information will be processed by both the character and the reader. There are places where I want the reader to say "hold up, by I thought..." and they can go back and re-read and they will realize that, no, how they interpreted that previous conversation can actually have mean different things and have different impacts on the story.

. After the prologue, the reader can decide if they want to read cover to cover and know everything at once. Or they can choose a character that they like to follow and follow in their footsteps as the character remembers what they did previously and what they are trying to do.

One of the central themes is the topic of free will, fate, and destiny. Each character comes to realize what everyone is ultimately trying to do but they are told different things at different points in the book and the truth is learned in different ways at different times in the series. And each character has their own reactions to this. Some are all for it, others are against it, and others are just confused by it all. Each character will face the fact that they do not in fact have free will as they suppose they do, especially when the manipulations are revealed. Each character will learn a lesson in "if only I knew then what I know now...it turns out I would do the same thing anyway"

 

It might be useful to know how long an episode is.

But from this it seems like how I'd expect sitcoms (or similar) to be written. And people don't normally read those - for all sorts of reasons - but they might do if it was executed well.

I'd wonder if it's ambitious or placing too much strain on the form. TV episodes have to be tightly-written, and they might be 20-100 pages each to tell a story convincingly. If that was cut down for this new format, with the added need for them to contribute to themes* and describe what film shows - I'd worry that the reader is getting a few hundred bitty stories. (* re. themes: tv shows can sustain themes across episodes and series, but usually the expectations are lower than for novels).

All of that falls away if it's executed well. Since the episodes are self-contained, I'd suggest to test the experiment on some readers. 670 pages in 12pt double-spaced might be ~250k words - which is a lot if the format is going to need tweaking for reader-comprehensibility.

 

That sounds like a monumental undertaking. Best of luck with it -- I hope you can pull it off.

 

Thank you. I hope I can pull this off too. I've been outlining the story for 1.5 years now

 

Alright, that's more to go on. So if I get it right, the more perspectives you read, the more the story will become clearer. While reading from only one or a few perspectives may tell the story, but may also leave some things unclear, or as a mystery.

Also, I agree with you that readers are smart and that leaving some things for them to puzzle about may actually boost their interest in the book.

 

Hello, thank you for responding. I don't think I explained myself well in the original post. Each scene would vary in length with some being very short, under 1000 words, and some being short story lengths of 5000-8000 words. It just depends on the scene scope and how it fits into the story. I have the entire story broken up into 7 books total and the 670 pages I have written so far is across all 7 books because I am writing all the books at one time. Thank you for your feedback. It was helpful.

 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and giving me encouragement. Just me trying to explain my vision to you brought up a terrible issue that I just realized I had not addressed. So, I can't thank you enough for asking for clarification. I do not have anyone to discuss my writing with, which is why I'm here so when I tried explaining it to you, I found out that there are a lot more questions to this format than I realized. Thank you again.

Let me know if you agree:

I got to thinking that I can't just start the book series with the reader being able to select someone to follow because at the start of the book, the reader won't have any idea who the characters are or what the story is about, and thus they wouldn't be enticed to only follow one character. I think they'll just read front to cover like a traditional reading because they'll have no reason to read it any differently, even if I put a "how to read this book" section in the forward, which I don't really want to do. But I do need to figure out how to tell the readers how to read the books.

I want the reader to actively choose how to read the story and thus control their experience of it. And to do that, they must have some knowledge about what it is they are reading. So I think I should start Book 1, part 1, just like a traditional reading. Here, I will focus on characterization. I want to give the reader a good understanding of who is who and what is going on. The idea is the reader will take a liking to the characters and be interested in following the story from that character's point of view and individual journey throughout the series.

In Book 1, part 2, I can start having the reader decide who to follow. It is in part 2 where the manipulation of information to bring the characters along with the story starts to fragment and as the reader reads from various viewpoints they will start to see that the characters are being manipulated from the start. But I'm not going to say "and he was manipulated". I want to write in a way that allows the readers to conclude that on their own. I want to treat the reader as a smart person. There will be scenes where the character interprets information/events differently, leading them to conclude something different than another character might conclude. There are times when all the characters are together, so that will require having some scenes redone over again but from a different character's perspective. But I don't want the reader to have to re-read the same events word for word. So I have to make sure that each scene is unique, even if the same event is experienced by different characters. I am not going to tell the reader that Character A is manipulating everyone. I want the reader to eventually come to that conclusion, but they won't come to that conclusion until they've read more than one character's POV and discover that the characters are being told different things.

And not all characters that can be followed will be in the entire story. For instance, the reader might find that they like The Accountant, who is a supernatural entity that is in charge of ensuring everyone dies, and stays dead, in accordance with their fate/destiny. This character shows up in Book 1, Part 1. But then becomes a character they can follow in Part 2. The Accountant goes on an incredible journey throughout Book 1 as he is trying to find the person who is responsible for restarting time itself. Following the Accountant gives the reader information about how the universe is run, and who it is run by. The Accountant goes around looking for who is responsible for the time travel and his adventures serve to show his personality but he doesn't really have anything to do with what the others are doing so limited information about the main plot is given. And at the end of Book 1, The Accountant reports that he has located who was doing the time travel and that person was dealt with and is no longer a threat to time. The reader will know this is a lie without me saying "and the accountant lied to the supreme council". The reader will be left with some questions that will be answered by reading a different character's scenes. So, the Accountant might be in the story throughout book 1, there won't be that many scenes with him so he might only be in 15 pages of Book 1. So he is a short character line to follow and the Reader would then go back to the beginning of the book and select another character.

If the reader follows the character of Nemesis, who is the only one to know "everything" the reader will have their questions about the Accountant answered. The reader will learn that the Accountant already knew who was responsible for the time travel when he was tasked with finding the person out and thus everything he did in his sections of the book only perpetuated that lie that he tells in the end. But the reader will not be given a reason for why the Accountant lied until Book 2 and I am not going to outright explain how Nemesis knows he already knew. Nemesis is a Telepath who can read people's minds. The reader, then, should be able to guess that Nemesis knew the Accountant knew because she read his mind.

The reader is meant to have questions, formulate opinions on their own, and then in later areas, those inevitable questions will be addressed as a way to give clueless readers the answer or, more favorably, give readers confirmation that they were right about what they themselves concluded.

Again, that you so much for allowing me to work this out. Your little bit of feedback inspired me to take another look at how I am trying to implement this story idea. And explaining it to someone really helped me clarify things for myself, as well as for you. Many thank yous.

 

One thing I would personally caution against with this project is too much repetition. At least for me, when being entertained by time restarting stories, the biggest hurdle that gets me to lose some of my interest is when the same thing is happening again and again with little difference. But with your change of perspective depending on which character the reader follows, that may not be an issue, especially if you have widely different characters, such as the Accountant and a mind reader.

I think your plan may be good, starting as a normal story in book one, part one. You may need to state somewhere after part one that the reader can follow whichever character they liked best on whichever page the character appears next. Like a guide of sorts, maybe? Or if you want the reader to come to this conclusion on their own, perhaps name the different perspective parts with the characters name:
Example:
Book one part one: The Beginning.
Book one part two: The Accountant: (Part/Chapter Name).
Book one part three: Nemesis: (Part/Chapter Name).
Book one part eight: The Accountant: (Part/Chapter Name).

Perhaps? Just a thought.

 

Impressively ambitious! I know more people who write for TV than write novels, so, although I assume you know this, I thought it worth pointing out that a screenplay of that complexity or scale would only ever be attempted by a writers room of half a dozen people under full time contract. Not to dissuade you! Sounds like you're prepped.

 

I thought this was one of the most interesting things about the idea. It's possible to do all sorts of odd things in an experimental novel - e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Cort%C3%A1zar_novel)

Perhaps a creative chapter list with a table of characters?
Or order the episodes as if someone was binge-watching them, but show the 'real' episode numbers in the chapter titles so that the reader can (somewhat painstakingly) read the plot continuity rather than the characters' biased perceptions of it?

There must be a way.

 

lol. I have one person that is "helping" me bounce ideas off of. Otherwise, I'm the entire writer's room, editor, and producer. We shall see how I do in time.

 

That's a great idea. I had planned to create a table of contexts for each part just to list the titles and page numbers. But I haven't quite figured out how to display what character is in what title.

 

This is a great idea I had not thought of yet. I think I will steal the idea and see if it works for me. Tank you so much.

 

It does seem like you're asking readers to do a lot of work. How many books have you read multiple times? I have reread a few books more than once, but it's rare that I do so. Don't hate me for saying this, but maybe your real story is buried somewhere in this complex plan. I wrote a story and gave it to my mentor who said the first two paragraphs were the story I needed to be telling. Sort of hard to hear, but he was right. Just a thought.

 

well it seems to me that this is one those stories that if you try to explain it is way too complicated, but when you actually read it it all makes sense without too much effort, given that the pacing is correct avoiding overloads of information in a few pages, where it would be hard to move through. With that said, I know lots of people who enjoy going around picking up clues and details to then piece them together. I find your idea intriguing, and I say go for it! Especially if you feel it is something you want to do and feel it right in your heart, don't let anyone stop you! My words might sound a bit corny, but I do believe the best thing about writing is that you can make it whatever you want and feels right for you.

There is one thing I am not quite understanding: are you writing the books in prose but as a screenplay in your mind, like you are watching each episode/story? Or are you using the TV show example to explain how the books fit together as a series?

 

This sounds super neat! I'm not sure I can comment on most of it, but I think the idea of writing a book as if it were a tv show is fine. I'm actually writing my own book and in a similar way. Rather than chapters I have 9 short stories. I kinda envisioned it being similar to the way in which Avatar the Last Airbender is told. Not in the sense that I'm telling a similar story, but in that Avatar is literally divided into "Books" and each episode feels like it can either stand alone or be a chapter contributing to the overall story. Your project sounds a lot more complicated, but I think the idea of blending the tv show and book feel is fine. You could also consider just writing a show too. Whatever works for you! Best of luck on your project!