On Tonight's Episode: Fixing Episodic Chapters

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Sometimes, the first (or later) draft of a novel can feel like a lot of loosely connected scenes strung together. Instead of chapters that flow together and build off one another so the story reads like it's one seamless entity, it feels disconnected. Every chapter might work on its own, but the book reads choppy, there's a lack of tension, and readers don't feel like they're getting anywhere, even if the plot in advancing.

The story feels episodic.

An episodic-feeling novel often develops when you have a lot of point of view character, location, or goal changes and you lose the plot thread tying the chapters together. Things are happening, possibly even exciting "doing all the right story stuff" things, but information is being dropped out there and it's not really going anywhere. There's no cause and effect between chapters, even if there is within scenes. For example:

Chapter One starts with the hero going into a haunted house to prove she's not scared.

Chapter Two has her at school the next day dealing with a teacher everyone is sure is a witch and getting fellow classmates in trouble.

Chapter Three has her babysitting her little brother and hearing spooky noises outside and she has to protect her brother.

All of these chapters are probably leading to the core conflict, but aside from "scary" there's nothing connecting them right now, so readers can't see where the plot is headed. It's just a variety of events strung together that vaguely relate to the overall story. It's quite likely that they're details that don't matter much at this point in the story, but those details will be important later. Essentially, it's setup for the actually story.

(Here's more on the difference between good setup and bad setup)

To fix this, let's try adding the cause and effect.

Chapter One starts with the hero going into a haunted house with all her friends watching to prove she's not scared.

Chapter Two has her at school the next day, being cajoled into dealing with a teacher everyone is sure is a witch because she was so brave the night before, and this gets fellow classmates in trouble.

Chapter Three has her babysitting her little brother and hearing spooky noises outside and she assumes it's the kids she got into trouble paying her back.

Suddenly there's a story here. The events of one chapter have an effect on the events and character actions in the next chapter, and so on. You can see the narrative drive and actions moving the story forward.

(Here's more on narrative drive)

You Might Have an Episodic Story if:

You can shift chapters around and the plot doesn't change

This is a big red flag, because it indicates the scenes are self-contained and aren't affecting what comes after them. If six chapters can happen in any order as long as it's before the act one climax, odds are there's a problem there.

Every chapter has a different, unrelated goal 

While you want all your scenes to have a goal, if those goals aren't steps in the larger plot, they're not doing much to advance your story. Look at where those goals lead. Is the resolution of one setting up the next? Does the next chapter start with an event or decision created by the previous goal? Does it continue with that previous goal to somewhere new?

The early chapters are setting up later chapters 

Foreshadowing is good, but if you have a lot of chapters in a row that are there only to setup later events, you might make readers impatient. They'll want you to get on with it already and have a point. World building and backstory chapters are common culprits here, so pay extra attention to them if things feel slow or episodic. What happens in the scene doesn't really matter because the point is to show some aspect of the character or their past. The scene goal is just something to make the scene work since you need a goal.

(Here's more on the trouble with vague goals and plotting)

Getting Back on Track 

Luckily, reincorporating episodic chapters into a smoothly flowing plot isn't that tough. It usually just takes deepening the connections that are already there under the surface, and adding in a common thread that ties everything back to the plot. Try looking at:

• Goals: How might you connect the goals in these chapters? Can they trigger each other? Are there external events pushing your protagonist toward her decisions that can be connected?
• Internalization: Can your protagonist have a common train of thought that connects the chapters? Inner conflict can work to tie scenes together if the external conflict isn't linear.
• Stakes: Can the chapters all be ways to avoid the same stake? Different attempts to accomplish a similar task?
• Conflict: Can you bring forward a conflict that these chapters set up? A smaller version of a larger issue that can both foreshadow, and show the protagonist failing.

Episodic chapters can feel like random scenes, but there's a reason you wrote them, so pinpointing that reason is often all it takes to fix it. Look deeper at what's going on and pull out those connecting threads so readers can see the story building.

Have you ever gotten "feels episodic" feedback? Have you even read anything that felt episodic? 


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Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book.

She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy.

When she's not writing novels, she's teaching other writers how to improve their craft. She's the founder of Fiction University and has written multiple books on writing.

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