This was fun to read! Totally agree with what you say about X-Files, and the way the two types of storytelling seemed to conflict.
For me, Babylon 5 is still the the main reference point for a blended form of storytelling - and that's from the same era as X-files. B5 has a strong 5-year arc, but each individual episode is highly self-contained, even when in the thick of the on-going plot. There are surprisingly few episodes that aren't approachable for a new viewer - hence I've bumped into numerous viewers who only started watching in seasons 3 or 4 (I started in 2).
The trick is having consistent character continuity, so that long-term viewers are always getting the feeling of progress, even if the episode plots are standalone thing-of-the-weeks. The most frustrating form of serialisation, I think, is when characters never evolve and remain in their original archetypes throughout.
I've found that removing chapter numbers and presenting Triverse as an anthology of connected short stories has really helped to bring in new readers: it's still a small thing, but there's definitely new people popping up in the likes and comments all the time. Occasionally I'll mark a new story as being a good jumping-on point (which I know worked for one subscriber, who then became a paid subscriber). Certainly feels like I haven't cracked the best way to do it yet, though.
As someone else who considers Babylon 5 a high-water mark for blending episodic and serialized storytelling, I'll just agree with Simon it rocks, and use it as a comparative touchpoint.
X-Files was conceived of as an episodic Monster of the Week show. The "arc" grew because Chris Carter (like Babylon 5's J. Michael Straczynski) was an early adopter of the nascent internet. Carter was active on AOL and Usenet and saw that fans were starting to draw conclusions from disparate elements. As an example, the "Cigarette Smoking Man" was just supposed to be a random one-off character. Because Carter saw the fans drawing conclusions and conspiracy where none existed, he decided to lean into that aspect and give the fans what they seemed to want.
Hey, what do you expect when the tagline is, "The Truth is Out There?" The audience became unconsciously primed for a big reveal which wasn't intended to occur.
Problem is, it's really hard for the show's writers to seed an overarching conspiracy plot when the show's writers haven't figured out what the conspiracy is. Which is I nice way of saying "ya can't write what you ain't got." X-Files doesn't actually make sense in the end.
RTD in Doctor Who did better at this, but that's because he would seed one recurring element and figure out the payoff layer. RTD has said he didn't sit down to figure out what Bad Wolf actually WAS until ep9 was in production. Since he was teasing one thing, not throwing ten things at the wall to see what stuck, he didn't write himself into a corner (looking at Stephen Moffat now...).
Lost, as a mystery box show, had similar issues. JJ Abrams had an arc planned out, but, during a radio interview on NPR in the second season he noted Lindolf had tossed Abrams' arc and was doing something different. Abrams was excited to find out what that would be.
Of course this meant things set up in S1 for purpose "X" got dropped or retconned into plot "Y." Lost ended up spinning wheels for awhile, and, after doing am episode about how a character got his tattoos (tattoos the actor had when hired), the producers went to the network and BEGGED them to set a finite number of episodes before the run ended so they could start trying to tie up the sprawling mess.
Even mid-2000's Battlestar Galactica had this problem. Sure, Ronald D. Moore always knew the end of the show was "find Earth," but much of the middle was - look, man, Moore determined the final five Cylons by putting everyone's name on a wall, putting on a blindfold and throwing darts.
Babylon 5 went in with a five year arc planned out, with "trap doors" for all the main characters in case he lost an actor. Several of the trap doors were sprung. Now, I have the book where the original five year arc is reproduced and the initial plan changed in the making. Season 5 in particular went in a different direction when JMS decided to use a previously unknown race as a major antagonist rather than an established one. Losing his original lead actor meant JMS moved the original show ending to season 3, and needed a new ending/fate for the replacement lead.
But the THEMES stayed intact. Some radical shifting of action or character beats didn't screw up what the story is ABOUT.
And it's ALMOST seamless. There's a group in season 2 intended to recur, until the production found out a TTRPG used the same name. Well, the group appears again, but under a different identity. There's one element from season 5 moved to season 3 which would have been a great help to our heroes which got handwaved aside. JMS thought the show was cancelled at the end of season 4, so he accelerated some plot threads to reach a satisfying ending. An 11th hour renewal/distribution deal saved the show, but it does mean a season 5 mini-arc intended to run three episodes drags out for half a season.
But it works, and what makes it work is writing 101 - having a damn outline, and knowing what your story is about before you tell it. And for Babylon 5 to also have a plan for an episode count - 5 seasons - so you can drop your big revelations in the correct places (like always sticking a "WHAM" episode in the last slot before a block of repeats).
(Wow, that was so carefully spoiler-free, yet incredibly specific!)
So let's compare Simon Jones to J. Michael Straczynski - because that'll give Simon a warm tingle all the way down!
With Triverse Simon's got his themes and big beats worked out. He knows who is plotting and planning and what their end goals are. BECAUSE Simon knows what his antagonists are doing "off page," he's got a lot of room to experiment with his individual mini-arcs and chapters. Maybe something he thought would be three chapters only takes two. Maybe it takes five. Maybe one of Simon's characters surprises him and twists into a slightly different lane than planned. Maybe the verbose guy who comments at length on every chapter thinks of something cool and inspires a minor change or added details (I'm pretty sure that's happened a few times). Either way, because Simon's got a strong core outline of themes and events, he's got something keeping his story on the rails, even if the cars, cargo and passengers may get swapped around at every station.
(I make ZERO apologies for that tortured train metaphor. It was that, or "Ship of Theseus storytelling.")
Simon describes writers as "plotters and/or planters," and he's a plotter first leaving room for the plants to grow on his plot.
(I make zero apologies for mangling Simon's metaphor).
There's value in both methods, but I would argue "episodic" writing is better for planters. Let those seeds and weeds grow willy nilly! For "serialized" writing - ESPECIALLY if the story is mystery/conspiracy heavy - one NEEDS that plotting in advance. Planting which writing conspiracies and mysteries inevitably leads to weeding, and sometimes accidentally pulling your flowers.
(I'm looking at you again, Steven Moffat writing Doctor Who series 5, 6, and 7 where you couldn't stick a landing except for "Day of the Doctor" which you later messed up by returning to a theme you'd closed perfectly during "Day of" in "Time of the Doctor." Easily the single worst regeneration story. Worse than Sylvester McCoy in a blonde curly wig.)
Thanks for your insight here, I'm currently editing a book but I've become increasingly enamored with the capacity of Substack for another project. The episodic format therefore homework you mention is completely accurate. Which is some of the reason why I'm hesitant to commit just yet to starting something fictional and episodic here. But, the way Sarah Fay suggests is to make it so the entries can be read in any, or near enough any, order and this feels like it would work and remove the "homework" feeling. The thing is, the narrative, and the arc, but if each one is individual that will happen within each post I guess? Lots to ponder!
Thanks for sharing your inner dialogue. It's good to see what other creators are thinking and why they are doing it. Love the experimentation. I'm struggling with what I want to do with detect magic vs writing books so this really helps. Keep it up and thanks for the insights.
This was fun to read! Totally agree with what you say about X-Files, and the way the two types of storytelling seemed to conflict.
For me, Babylon 5 is still the the main reference point for a blended form of storytelling - and that's from the same era as X-files. B5 has a strong 5-year arc, but each individual episode is highly self-contained, even when in the thick of the on-going plot. There are surprisingly few episodes that aren't approachable for a new viewer - hence I've bumped into numerous viewers who only started watching in seasons 3 or 4 (I started in 2).
The trick is having consistent character continuity, so that long-term viewers are always getting the feeling of progress, even if the episode plots are standalone thing-of-the-weeks. The most frustrating form of serialisation, I think, is when characters never evolve and remain in their original archetypes throughout.
I've found that removing chapter numbers and presenting Triverse as an anthology of connected short stories has really helped to bring in new readers: it's still a small thing, but there's definitely new people popping up in the likes and comments all the time. Occasionally I'll mark a new story as being a good jumping-on point (which I know worked for one subscriber, who then became a paid subscriber). Certainly feels like I haven't cracked the best way to do it yet, though.
As someone else who considers Babylon 5 a high-water mark for blending episodic and serialized storytelling, I'll just agree with Simon it rocks, and use it as a comparative touchpoint.
X-Files was conceived of as an episodic Monster of the Week show. The "arc" grew because Chris Carter (like Babylon 5's J. Michael Straczynski) was an early adopter of the nascent internet. Carter was active on AOL and Usenet and saw that fans were starting to draw conclusions from disparate elements. As an example, the "Cigarette Smoking Man" was just supposed to be a random one-off character. Because Carter saw the fans drawing conclusions and conspiracy where none existed, he decided to lean into that aspect and give the fans what they seemed to want.
Hey, what do you expect when the tagline is, "The Truth is Out There?" The audience became unconsciously primed for a big reveal which wasn't intended to occur.
Problem is, it's really hard for the show's writers to seed an overarching conspiracy plot when the show's writers haven't figured out what the conspiracy is. Which is I nice way of saying "ya can't write what you ain't got." X-Files doesn't actually make sense in the end.
RTD in Doctor Who did better at this, but that's because he would seed one recurring element and figure out the payoff layer. RTD has said he didn't sit down to figure out what Bad Wolf actually WAS until ep9 was in production. Since he was teasing one thing, not throwing ten things at the wall to see what stuck, he didn't write himself into a corner (looking at Stephen Moffat now...).
Lost, as a mystery box show, had similar issues. JJ Abrams had an arc planned out, but, during a radio interview on NPR in the second season he noted Lindolf had tossed Abrams' arc and was doing something different. Abrams was excited to find out what that would be.
Of course this meant things set up in S1 for purpose "X" got dropped or retconned into plot "Y." Lost ended up spinning wheels for awhile, and, after doing am episode about how a character got his tattoos (tattoos the actor had when hired), the producers went to the network and BEGGED them to set a finite number of episodes before the run ended so they could start trying to tie up the sprawling mess.
Even mid-2000's Battlestar Galactica had this problem. Sure, Ronald D. Moore always knew the end of the show was "find Earth," but much of the middle was - look, man, Moore determined the final five Cylons by putting everyone's name on a wall, putting on a blindfold and throwing darts.
Babylon 5 went in with a five year arc planned out, with "trap doors" for all the main characters in case he lost an actor. Several of the trap doors were sprung. Now, I have the book where the original five year arc is reproduced and the initial plan changed in the making. Season 5 in particular went in a different direction when JMS decided to use a previously unknown race as a major antagonist rather than an established one. Losing his original lead actor meant JMS moved the original show ending to season 3, and needed a new ending/fate for the replacement lead.
But the THEMES stayed intact. Some radical shifting of action or character beats didn't screw up what the story is ABOUT.
And it's ALMOST seamless. There's a group in season 2 intended to recur, until the production found out a TTRPG used the same name. Well, the group appears again, but under a different identity. There's one element from season 5 moved to season 3 which would have been a great help to our heroes which got handwaved aside. JMS thought the show was cancelled at the end of season 4, so he accelerated some plot threads to reach a satisfying ending. An 11th hour renewal/distribution deal saved the show, but it does mean a season 5 mini-arc intended to run three episodes drags out for half a season.
But it works, and what makes it work is writing 101 - having a damn outline, and knowing what your story is about before you tell it. And for Babylon 5 to also have a plan for an episode count - 5 seasons - so you can drop your big revelations in the correct places (like always sticking a "WHAM" episode in the last slot before a block of repeats).
(Wow, that was so carefully spoiler-free, yet incredibly specific!)
So let's compare Simon Jones to J. Michael Straczynski - because that'll give Simon a warm tingle all the way down!
With Triverse Simon's got his themes and big beats worked out. He knows who is plotting and planning and what their end goals are. BECAUSE Simon knows what his antagonists are doing "off page," he's got a lot of room to experiment with his individual mini-arcs and chapters. Maybe something he thought would be three chapters only takes two. Maybe it takes five. Maybe one of Simon's characters surprises him and twists into a slightly different lane than planned. Maybe the verbose guy who comments at length on every chapter thinks of something cool and inspires a minor change or added details (I'm pretty sure that's happened a few times). Either way, because Simon's got a strong core outline of themes and events, he's got something keeping his story on the rails, even if the cars, cargo and passengers may get swapped around at every station.
(I make ZERO apologies for that tortured train metaphor. It was that, or "Ship of Theseus storytelling.")
Simon describes writers as "plotters and/or planters," and he's a plotter first leaving room for the plants to grow on his plot.
(I make zero apologies for mangling Simon's metaphor).
There's value in both methods, but I would argue "episodic" writing is better for planters. Let those seeds and weeds grow willy nilly! For "serialized" writing - ESPECIALLY if the story is mystery/conspiracy heavy - one NEEDS that plotting in advance. Planting which writing conspiracies and mysteries inevitably leads to weeding, and sometimes accidentally pulling your flowers.
(I'm looking at you again, Steven Moffat writing Doctor Who series 5, 6, and 7 where you couldn't stick a landing except for "Day of the Doctor" which you later messed up by returning to a theme you'd closed perfectly during "Day of" in "Time of the Doctor." Easily the single worst regeneration story. Worse than Sylvester McCoy in a blonde curly wig.)
Thanks for your insight here, I'm currently editing a book but I've become increasingly enamored with the capacity of Substack for another project. The episodic format therefore homework you mention is completely accurate. Which is some of the reason why I'm hesitant to commit just yet to starting something fictional and episodic here. But, the way Sarah Fay suggests is to make it so the entries can be read in any, or near enough any, order and this feels like it would work and remove the "homework" feeling. The thing is, the narrative, and the arc, but if each one is individual that will happen within each post I guess? Lots to ponder!
Thanks for sharing your inner dialogue. It's good to see what other creators are thinking and why they are doing it. Love the experimentation. I'm struggling with what I want to do with detect magic vs writing books so this really helps. Keep it up and thanks for the insights.