I had an idea, early in 2017, to write a book like a tv show.

The first thing everyone thinks of when I mention this idea is that it’s written in screenplay format.

I do not mean it’s written in screenplay format.

Let’s set aside books for a moment and think of movies and tv shows.

A movie is anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours.
A tv show is 40 minutes, maybe an hour.

A movie is generally standalone. It is a static sort of thing – this story in this world with these characters and that’s what you get. There are a few gigantic franchise exceptions (Marvel and Harry Potter and half Lord of the Rings (I mean 3 movies compared to eight or nine is less than half and is really one story sprawled across three movies, but I digress)).
A tv show is dynamic. You get the consistency of the world and the characters with an array of stories.

TV shows can be consumed in very manageable pieces of, let’s say an hour for simplicity, or 10 hours on a binge.

And so I wondered, many months ago, if a novel is like a movie, could I create a tv show equivalent?

Something not quite like the average short story (or any short story that I’ve read). More like when someone novelizes a movie – recording what played out on screen in a narrative format.

But rather than a whole movie or novel, episodes that can be read in about an hour.

With the pacing of a tv show that both moves the plot along crisply, balanced with intimate moments for the reader to get to know the characters. Structured with the arc of a season so that each story can be read individually or come together for a larger narrative. Serialized of course so that the reader gets to know this world and these characters but they change with each new adventure.

Perhaps such a thing already exists but I have not read it or heard of it, especially in the world of YA.

So, I began writing The Helion Chronicles.