Hi, my Friends.
I'm learning something different this month. I have been toying with expressing my fifth Marc McKnight Time Travel Adventure story as a group of shorter, serial episodes rather than a standalone book. I decided 25K would be a reasonable size for an episode (still not certain, though).
It's my understanding that a serial of 6-10 episodes should have an overarching plot to resolve over the series, but each episode should have a subplot that gets started, executed, and resolved within that episode. Or, at minimum, there is enough resolution in each episode that the reader gets a sense of fulfillment and closure, but still wants to pursue the big plot (i.e., the remainder of the episodes).
What's challenging me right now is that I'm accustomed to chasing a plot over a book of 100K words, but now, I must set up, execute, resolve a plot in the 25K words of the episode. I find myself building a scene with action and dialogue and realizing that not much is going to happen per episode if I don't learn how to pare the story down -- express the story in much fewer words.
I need to do more study and thinking on how to do this.
If you have any advice or suggestions to offer, I'd love to hear from you, readers and writers alike.
Cheers and Regards,
Kim