Episodic Stories

Episodic stories and episodic novels are an underestimated format. They allow for a more loosely-connected story with more of a break between the episodes and still support boosting the stakes and raising the tension throughout. My own interest in this format was raised when I read “The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings” (see review here) and was fascinated by how the stories within raised the overall tension and stakes. Afterwards, I tried it out with “The Lady of the Dead” (coming February 2023) and plotted several other story collections like this one. What are episodic stories and how are they best used? Read on.

Travel stories are an easy way to incorporate the episodic format into a novel. In a travel story, your main characters are travelling from one place to the other, so all stories you tell about the trip will be episodic by nature. The characters will be in a new place with a new setting, different problems, and new conflicts in every story. Novelty comes easy like this, too, as long as you make all the areas they visit very different from each other. Still, don’t put too much faith into the novelty — each of the episodes of the travel story must be able to stand on its own. Stories in an episodic format always have to, otherwise you’re just writing very long chapters.

Episodic stories are by their very nature more fragmented than a regular novel or novella. Even though a short story can have 15.000 plus words, it is still much shorter than a novella, not to speak of a novel. A set of such stories is bound to be less well-connected than a single narrative, no matter the form. Since there is no strong connection in the story binding them together, there needs to be something else.
Generally speaking, all stories in a book should be the same genre, if nothing else. Yet, for an episodic story, this isn’t enough. Stories must at least share main characters. Ideally, there is also some sort of plot which goes through all stories, internal or external.
At the same time, every story in an episodic format needs to be a full story, including their own beginning, middle, and end. If a story can’t stand by itself, if it is missing a resolution or isn’t really introducing the situation, it is not a story, only a bigger chapter. If every story stands on its own, though, should you escalate?

There are two different types of episodic books. One is made up of different stories which share genre and cast, but are not in any way connected beyond that. The other is made up of stories which have a plot going through all of them — either an internal plot which allows for the main character to grow or an external plot which pushes the stakes story by story. Both types can be fun to read and have their advantages and disadvantages.
Episodic stories where there is nothing more than a collection of stories with the same characters have the advantage that you can usually read them in whatever order you wish. Each story can stand on its own, even if there might be a passing reference to a story that came before. A good example of this type of book would be most of the Sherlock Holmes canon, Solar Pons (see here), or the Father Brown stories. In all cases, the stories themselves are not interconnected and there is no rise in tension from the first to the last in the book. All stories feature the same main cast with some recurring side characters (such as the various Scotland Yard detectives in the Sherlock Holmes series), yet, apart from a few stories (“The Final Problem” and “The Empty House” from the Sherlock Holmes canon come to mind), all can be read in any order. There might be a theme in some of those books, but the stories themselves are in no way interconnected.
On the other hand, an episodic novel has stories which are interconnected to a degree and thus build more tension for the reader. Still, each story must stand on its own, but there might be references to earlier stories in the later ones. In “The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings”, for instance, each story is one case in which the hero and the villainess cross paths and swords. In the beginning, there is no retaliation for the hero’s actions, the villainess pushes them aside as ‘bad luck’ or something similar. Yet, after he’s stopped her several times, she takes actions directly against him, to the degree of dropping all pretence, cutting herself loose, and personally trying to kill him. Therefore, the big finale of the last story has high personal stakes for the hero and brings him into a deep conflict with the villainess. The tension is rising throughout the book (much better than in the similar story “The Sorceress of the Strand” by the same duo of authors) and it is necessary to read the stories in order to understand why it does so.

The main difference between a book with a collection of short stories set around the same characters and a book with an episodic novel in it is the interconnection of the stories.
Reading the Sherlock Holmes canon doesn’t require remembering the first story in a book when you reach the last one. Some characters turn up several times, such as Mycroft Holmes or the Scotland Yard detectives. Some characters are only seen once. Some are mentioned later on, such as having suggested Holmes to a friend or acquaintance who is now coming to seek help. Each of the stories can be reprinted elsewhere on its own.
“The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings” or my own story “The Lady of the Dead” don’t make much sense unless you read the stories in order and follow the rising stakes throughout. They are episodic in that each is an episode in the same narrative. Each story has their own beginning, middle, and end, but the end of each but the last story will influence what happens later.

Writing and reading episodic stories can be a lot of fun. I wasn’t even aware of how fun it could be to have these episodic stories at my disposal until I read “The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings” and tried writing something similar later on. It has also helped me put a few of my other stories caught in ‘plotting hell’ into a new perspective. Sometimes, it is much better to write an episodic novel where all stories converge in the end than to try and write a regular novel or construct a set of novellas. My own ‘Dark Universe’ idea, for instance, wouldn’t have worked as a regular novel and would have been challenging to write as several novellas. As a set of episodes which merge into a high-stake story in the last one, they will definitely work. Give episodic formats a look and see how they suit you — you might be positively surprised!