Anybody who watched Game of Thrones knows that the final two seasons were … not it. Previous seasons all consistently had 10 episodes of 1 hour each. When they announced that season 7 would have 7 episodes, and season 8 would have 6, people immediately assumed it would be bad.
Many responded that this wasn’t fair. There’s a common principle among authors of “write a story for however long it stays interesting”. Whenever somebody asks if theri book is “too short” or “too long”, almost everyone responds to just “let the story be as long as it needs to be”. So, hadn’t the writers done the right thing? They saw they didn’t have enough material for more episodes, so they lowered the number of episodes. They decided to make the story as many episodes as it “needed to be”, right?
This sounds like a fair point. I, however, completely disagree.
It has always been my view that a restrictive structure, which you must obey each episode/season/book, will lead to more creativity and better story.
What do you mean?
And it’s funny, because when TV shows just started, this was the default. You had a fixed timeslot in the schedule. You had to include X commercial breaks. TV-shows were supposed to run for an entire season or two, airing a new episode each week. As such, every single episode had to be written around that structure.
Once streaming services popped up, writers were like “We have all the freedom in the world! Episodes can be however long we want! No more commercial breaks!” They rejoiced, wrote their next show, and then realized they hated it. Nowadays, more and more shows return to the more consistent format, and many writers are praising its advantages. How much easier it became to be productive and make decisions because of that structure in place.
One of the biggest pitfalls when creating story is to try and include too much. We have all these ideas, we want them all out there, so we try to shove them all in. (Or, in the case of bigger shows or film studios, we have meddling executives who want to shove in all these things.) Without any restrictions in place, you can let this sin roam freely.
Make one episode a full hour longer, who cares? At least you got your 5 convoluted subplots in!
Oh no, last season we crammed in too much and ended up with 13 episodes. This time, we don’t actually have much story or ideas, so let’s make a 10 episode season that moves at a glacial pace!
It’s messy. It creates inconsistent pacing. It removes any pressure on the writer to make their story more tight and cohesive, because they can just run as long or as short as they feel like.
The first few seasons of Game of Thrones, there were always 10 episodes, and they were almost exactly the same length. They had these tight restrictions and were probably forced by executives to follow them. Was the story worse for it? Did they have to cut a lot of things, or add unnecessary filler?
No, it was far better!
The writers (who adapted the books for television) were able to accurately pinpoint the highlights of the book. Some events were changed, merged, put in a different context just to fit this restriction. They added a few scenes and plotlines themselves, probably to fill some time or a hole in the plot, and they were great.
Why is this better?
Restrictions breed creativity. When you know your book has to wrap up in 300 pages, you can’t just use the very first idea you get, or the second, or any other “low-hanging fruit”. Because those are likely to run too long or too short. No, you need to think for longer, problem solve for a bit longer, until you find the best solution that will resolve the book in exactly the right number of pages.
I chose TV shows for the title of this article—and my first example—because it’s most apparent there. Before you watch a show, you know its exact number of episodes and episode runtime. When most people then see that a season suddenly has fewer episodes, or longer/shorter ones, alarm bells go off in their head. Something must be wrong! Maybe a writer’s strike halfway the season? Maybe those episodes were just too bad or boring and they could be cut entirely? Maybe they just didn’t have any inspiration anymore?
But the same is true for novels in a series, of course. If you’ve read some book reviews of mine, you know it’s probably the most common critique: later books in a series get longer each time, and that makes them slower and worse. Once an author has found some success, once they’ve hooked readers with the first book that was tightly edited and pretty short, they just dump aaaalll the ideas into the later books and make them thrice as long.
I’m not even saying those ideas are bad. I also don’t hate long books—in fact, the majority of what I read are doorstoppers. I’m saying that the overall story would benefit from being consistent with the length and structure of your novels. It feels more cohesive, it means pacing stays even, and it guards you against those pitfalls of doing too much or too little.
In every series where the later books became longer, I could easily point at a few subplots that could be removed entirely. They either had no effect, or they were just not interesting and should’ve merged with the more interesting core plot. (Perhaps after some creative reshuffling and finding a few clever solutions.) And if the author had done so, the book would’ve been the same length as all the others, and better for it.
House of the Dragon
And now I write this article because a recent TV show reminded me of all these facts: House of the Dragon. I thought the first season was great. Very strong writing, a good pace, doesn’t treat viewers like idiots (though sometimes perhaps too reliant on viewers puzzling things together), a return to the quality of Season 1 Game of Thrones.
Then season 2 came around. And it didn’t have 10 episodes of 1 hour. Instead, it had 8 episodes that varied a bit more in length, but were generally slightly longer than an hour.
I only learned this fact when the season was over :p I’d assumed it had 10 episodes! But then it suddenly felt like a finale, and I looked it up, and yeah, it was the finale.
Even without knowing this, while watching the season I felt that the pacing was off. One episode had too much happening, another felt too slow. Looking at the season as a whole, there was slightly too much build up, slightly too little payoff. Reading comments online, they all expected more to happen this season—but because it didn’t, the next season has to be jam-packed with huge events from top to bottom.
Because they had the freedom to say “let’s just do 8 episodes then”, they only created problems for themselves. Were they forced to stick to 10 episodes, they would’ve had to figure out creative solutions to neatly fit the timeframe. They would’ve made season 2 more in line with season 1 (and probably season 3). Things would’ve moved faster when needed, because more had to happen in this season. At the same time, some big events which were now rushed and tacked onto the dying seconds of an episode, could’ve received more time.
I have no clue what the books say (that GRR Martin wrote on this) or what their plan is. But I am certain that sticking to 10 episodes of exactly an hour would’ve made season 2 better. They’re writers, they’re creative, they would have used the restriction to figure out better approaches and more satisfying pacing.
For what it is, season 2 has way too little payoff to be worth 2 years of waiting. With the decision to do only 8 episodes, they basically decided to do a “filler season” or “in-between season”.
And now … we must wait another 2 years for a season that is likely going to be a breakneck pace through things we would’ve loved to see 2 years ago. And it all stems from that decision to think that an overall structure or set of restrictions on a story is somehow bad.
How do we solve this?
Instead, I would love to see more authors and writers stick to this. I would recommend you do too. Pick a format, write your first book/season/film that way, then keep the same duration or structure for all future instalments. No matter what it takes! :p You’ll end up with a consistent, clean series of individual pieces. You’ll end up with more creative approaches and no tendency to submit to your worst writing sins.
Just once, can somebody write a fantasy series where books do NOT grow progressively longer? If you have more story to tell, write more books. If your TV show is suddenly wildly succesful, do another season. But stay consistent with episode length and structure.
This is another reason why my modern projects (of the last ~3 years) have tight word counts or guiding principles.
- The Saga of Life: each story is 10,000-15,000 words. They must have a connection to the gods, somehow, and stay within the rules of their time period.
- Wildebyte Arcades: each story is 35,000-40,000 words. It takes place in one game and one game only, and Wildebyte must search/find/lose a single Lost Memory.
- De Laatste Piet (a bundle of short stories about a Dutch national holiday that I just finished): each story is 2,500-3,000 words. At the end, Saint Nicholas must have found a new member—with some new (magical) skill—to add to the holiday.
Do I sometimes hate the rules? Yes! Quite often, actually. I want to go on for longer, but the story has to wrap up. I have an idea for a story, but it lacks one of the rules (such as “connection to the gods”), so I must think a little longer.
The few times that I thought “screw it, let’s ignore the rules for once”, I still regret it. In the moment, it feels like you’re “free” and you “use that really good idea you just had! It’s great!” Then you realize the story is 30% too long, too convoluted, and feels like an entirely different genre than the other stories.
In the end, I feel like every “piece” of these larger projects became better and more cohesive thanks to these rules. And I became more productive, because I had a clear cutoff for when a story was done (or too short/too long).
I have a few more “series” planned. (As opposed to standalone novels or bundles of shorter stories.) And all of them already have their restrictive structure in place. A strict word count, one type of event that must happen in each, even a rule about chapter titles in one of them.
Conclusion
Those were my thoughts on why series—of books, of episodes, even games—should pick a restrictive format and stick to it. Like in the old days, when you had to include commercial breaks, or when specific types of book covers or number of pages were simply far cheaper to print.
I hope House of the Dragon gets a third season and it’s really good. But I’m a little less certain and a little less excited now.
I hope more fantasy authors just keep their books in a series the same length, from start to finish.
It leads to better stories and more creativity. It also makes fewer alarms go off in the minds of readers/viewers whenever they notice these messy discrepancies.
And I will be trying to implement my own advice with all upcoming projects!
Until next time, keep reading or writing,
Tiamo Pastoor