Whether you’re writing a novel series, tv series, or comic series, pull up a chair. As usual, I’m going to frame it within indie comics, but this series scope assessment applies to any medium.

One of the biggest missteps in comics for newer creators, is going too big.

Write up a 2000 page novel and pitch it… you’ll be laughed out of every publisher’s office faster than Han Solo dumping cargo at the first sign of trouble… Put together a television pitch demanding each season be broken up into 48 episodes and the doors will slam shut even faster.

In indie comics, without a network or publisher, the only one imposing constraint is the creator themselves. And for most newer creators ambition is the siren’s song… 

You throw together a concept, maybe a logline, a few character names, and a handful of roughed out scenes you’re excited to write later on. From that half to a page, the epic burns inside you.

You call your sprawling space opera at 30 issues of awesomesauce!

Worming their way into the black matter of your brain are the intrusive thoughts that this beast of a series is gonna be costly…

But epicness laughs at costly.

You’ll chip away at this one massively successful issue at a time. Laughing all the way to the bank alongside the likes of Kirkman, Moore, and Bendis.

And it’s from such beginnings, that the sweet melody of freedom throwing off the shackles of constraint, leaves countless comic creator ships wrecked at the bottom of the creative sea.

But now, at long last…

Avast me hearties, I be presentin’ to ya, the constraint ye been after!

I’m not even going to throw the big numbers at you.

Still, you might want to grab hold of some Rum before reading further…

	Low Budget $250/page	Medium Budget $500/page
1 Issue	$5,500	$11,000
4 Issues	$22,000	$44,000
12 Issues	$66,000	$132,000
30 Issues	$165,000	$330,000
Based on 22 pages per issue. Production costs only. Does not include printing, marketing, or distribution.

Ok, ok, don’t get your britches up in a bind, because this article isn’t here to scare you.

These uncomfortable numbers are a necessary evil, in what’s going to hopefully, save you… from yourself. Lifeline incoming.

So you’re convinced you’ve got the makings to some grand comic universe, or epic run series…

What do you actually have that justifies the series run you envision?

Literally, what’s sitting in front of you that says, this series is 30 issues… not 3?

Because if you’re like the vast majority of newer comic writers, the answer is usually, a feeling. A hope. Determination.

But nothing actually tangible.

Ideas and some rough notes may be a pitch… not a plan to enter production. And a pitch is worth a deeper look, not a second mortgage. And not recognizing all of this…

This is how you make a multi-thousand dollar investment toward a brick wall.

So, let’s fix that.

Assessing Series Scope

Well, my story takes place on mars… the aliens have 6 arms and the hero was once the captain of the royal navy, but now he pilots a garbage scow.

Well that’s great! But it doesn’t tell you anything about how much story you actually have.

And the reality is, the mechanics that define a series are more tangible than you might think.

You’ve heard the terms a million times before, primarily “Plot Driven” and “Character Driven.” In fact, I’ve got an article up about them.

The reality is, every narrative is driven by various forces at various times, whether they’re plot, character, concept, thematic, or others. Knowing who’s driving the dominant share across the narrative is important and practically useful, but in assessing the scope of your potential series, a more important question needs to be answered.

Remember the real measure of any story across any aspect, is change… so the critical question is;

How many major shifts does each narrative driver produce in your story.

Whether your initial series story material is a paragraph or a page, pull out every major shift you can identify across all five drivers (below).

Of course, each driver by itself is too broad to be practically useful. So we need to look at the core specifics of each driver, to actually identify what they rely on as a measure of change… and in turn, work to pull those specific elements out of your material.

Don’t worry, I’m going to break this down clearly in a second.

In the meantime, let’s go ahead and continue on with the process.

Instructions first. Assembly second.

So with your initial story material in hand, you pull out each and every driver major shift you can, making a simple bulleted list on a separate piece of paper.

The driver with your highest count of major shifts is your total story arc count. This is the maximum number of arcs your story holds.

But getting a handle on your total arc count, isn’t the only critical number you need to know.

The lower drivers tell you something just as important. Your support level.

The lowest count drivers reveal where support for the arcs stop. Or to put another way, how many arcs run on the narrative’s full strengths and maximum effectiveness, and how many (the rest) rely solely on genre convention to carry them.

Read that one again, it’s important.

An action series with 7 major shifts in the action driver, but only 2 shifts in the character driver, means you’ve got 7 potential action series story arcs, with two of those arcs supported by real character development. In turn, this means five arcs run where every episode/issue lives or dies on action alone.

This isn’t a death sentence for a series, readers and audiences follow pure genre for years. But it reveals the creative burden your dominant driver has to carry, and it tells you how good you have to be at that one thing, consistently, for the entire run. Because this right here is where series go to die, running strictly on genre mechanics where the writing grows stale, reptitive, and ultimately predictable.

• So you know how many arcs your series has.
• And the stronger arcs from weaker arcs (in quantity, not details).

When you’re writing a stronger arc, supported by multiple drivers, you have more creative flexibility. A weak action shift in arc four gets rescued by a compelling plot shift. A series running on one dominant driver with nothing behind it has no safety net. Every installment has to deliver on that single strength or the audience sees and feels the lack of depth.

Now here’s where it gets interesting…

If you totally whiffed your initial story material, you might not have ANY major driver shifts at all. This means, you don’t have an executable series. In fact, you don’t even have the fundamentals for a single arc.

Danger Will Robinson! Danger!

However, the far more likely outcome is that you’ve got a crapload of major driver shifts. Remember, your total number of arcs isn’t the total number all added together. It’s the highest number in the count.

But every single arc, represents a boatload of actual story. And this means your beastly 30 issue series, may be far more unmanageable than you ever imagined. 

THE TRUE SCOPE OF YOUR SERIES

In long prose, a complete arc is a novel, because the publishing industry says so.

In television, a complete arc is a season, because the network/streaming industry says so.

In main stream comics, a complete arc is 12 issues, because 60 years of industry tradition says so. 

And this is why I said, your series may be far more unruly than you imagined. Because only 5 driver shifts equals 60 comic issues.

Did you get more?

Is your 30 issue series really 90 issues in disguise? Because if the series engine sitting in front of you demands $500,000 to be fully realized, you probably want to know that know before you invest your first $10,000 into it.

Ultimately, latching on to 12, 24, 30 or any arbitrary issue count leads you into rough razor sharp rock infested waters. The only way to navigate through safely is to know the REAL scope of the series you have in front of you.

So before you pull 30 issues out of a hat, assess the scope of your series.

• Run your initial story material through all five drivers.
• Count the major shifts.
• Look at the ceiling (number of arcs) and the support (number of arcs fully supported).

And this is where the financial scope we started off with meets the narrative scope of your series. In indie comics, a complete arc is whatever you can afford to produce, because your bank account says so. And because a finished pilot on a bookstore shelf is worth more than an unfinished ‘epic script’ on yours.

And here’s the thing TV writers know that indie comic creator don’t:

It’s not a series until it gets picked up. Period.

And in indie comics, it’s the audience that “picks it up…” by buying your book and backing the production of your next arc, proving demand exists. But until that happens, you don’t actually have a series.

You have a pilot, a single proof of concept that you’re shopping.

So stop imagining a 30-issue series and budget the proof of concept that has the only chance to make the series a reality.

• Pick your strongest arc.
• Then compress it down to a partial season format you can afford to finish, publish, and put in front of readers.

The rest of your series isn’t going anywhere. But it doesn’t even get considered being made, until the pilot earns the green light.

Now, let’s break down the drivers, so you can figure out exactly how many arcs your series has inside it.

STORY ARC DRIVERS

Three Tiers

Before we get into each individual driver, let’s cover a concept that applies to all of them.

Earlier I said pull out the driver’s MAJOR shifts (changes). All narrative drivers can shift the story in major (big) ways that have the greatest impact rippling across the entire narrative. These are the shifts that define arcs and the ones you’re looking to count…

But when you pull out driver shifts from your initial story material, you’re likely going to catch some other shifts, like MAIN shifts. These are driver changes that have big ripples, but only across the main characters, not across the entire story landscape itself.

And then lastly, MOMENTARY shifts. These are shifts that only touch the Protagonist, without significant meaningful or impact. Important enough to notice in the moment, but without significant consequence on the story itself.

When you pull out your driver shifts, it’s fine to pull out all three levels. Firstly, because they all have value: the Major ones work for the series scope assessment. The Main and Momentary ones will help you plot and writer your individual episodes/issues/chapters. But secondly, because it’s much easier to pull out all the shifts first, then categorize them later. Trying to pull shifts out and only let the Major ones through into your bulleted list, is possible, but demands a higher memory capacity than most folks have.

Not the drivers…

Identify Don’t Document

The goal is to identify your Narrative Driver Shifts, not document them at length. This isn’t your outline. You’re identifying them to get a count. Get in and get out as fast as you can with each shift. If it takes 3 sentences for clarity, use 3 sentences. If you can do it in 5 words, use 5 words.

 

1) ACTION

Action is unique driver as it really tends to give everything it has upfront, all at once. While intensity needs to escalate at the episode level, the key indicator of change in action is DIFFICULTY. What situations, systems, or opponents raise the bar to a new (irreversible) plateau of difficulty?

In season one, Spider-Man can take on a junkie robber with a six shooter with maximum engagement and effectiveness, but once he takes on Green Goblin, Venom, and Doc Ock, the bar is raised and going back to a common thief doesn’t sustain the same impact.

But it’s important to remember, it’s not only about opponents. It’s about the difficulty of the “fight,” however that lands. It’s helpful to think of this as “experience.”

Resident Evil. A team of commandos enter the narrow white hallway in the Hive. The Red Queen’s defense system activates, sending out the blue death lasers that slice and dice. Alice watches her allies die from the other side of the door. Now, imagine movie number 2, where Alice and her replacement commando friends enter another corridor and find six static laser beams at ankle level. The beams are deadly to someone not paying any attention, a challenge to someone who’s never encountered hallway lasers before, but to Alice who survived a much more difficult version, this easier version is child’s play. 

Also note that in the Resident Evil the laser death trap itself is a Major Action Driver Shift. Before that moment, the Red Queen locked down the hive and gassed the staff. These latter points are somewhat mundane and passive. Have the key, you can open a locked door. Put on a gas mask, you can walk through the gassed room.

But active laser death systems, that react and adapt to threats is a totally different class of difficulty. And notice that unlocking that level of difficulty potentially applies to the entire story, the entire hive environment has that level of defense available. Major, story wide shift, not main or momentary.

Although the Resident Evil didn’t capitalize on that Action Driver Shift with further defensive traps, which in itself is a showcase of how the story didn’t even tap into its own available potential.

Daredevil (2015 Netflix):

Season 1: Starting difficulty. Street-level organized crime: thugs, corrupt cops, hired muscle. No one outmatches Matt. The difficulty bar is set at number of opponents and fight endurance, not capability.

Season 2: TWO ACTION SHIFTS.
Shift 1: The Punisher is not a street-level thug. He’s a fundamentally different class of combatant tactical, experienced, and well armed. Matt can’t rely on endurance and base capability to defeat him.

Shift 2: The Hand introduces supernatural martial artists. Matt goes from being the most skilled fighter in the room to being outmatched by every member in it.

NOTE: That season 2 offers 2 action shifts in one season. Season two is also noted by critics as being two independent storylines smashed together without real connection. The Punisher and Elektra/Hand storylines never really connecting. Widely considered a drop in season one’s quality, specifically because the split focus diluted the impact of both storylines.

Season 3: An opponent who matches Matt’s unique abilities almost to the letter, wearing Matt’s own suit for psychological attack, backed by Fisk’s criminal power. The difficulty bar raises above physical contest alone, into the weaponization of Matt’s own identity.

2) CONCEPT

The concept is the kernel idea. When the concept drives, the indicator are new HOOKS. Hooks are a break between cause and effect that manifests a question that must be answered. Hooks manifesting directly from the concept, reframe the concept in a new, unexpected light. So look for first how the concept reframes itself in a new light, the “cause.” Then look for the hook, not knowing the outcome it generates.

OR, fall back on a very classic, yet misplaced writing system tool… Pull out all the concept hooks first by asking, “what if?” Then reverse engineer the cause that connects to it.

While I refer to the cause as the shift in the examples below, it’s really both sides, the cause and question foreshadowing the effect that IS the actual shift. 

Westworld (2016):

Season 1:
Starting Concept: Theme park androids designed for human entertainment become sentient.
Hook: Can sentient androids be controlled or will they escape their designed confinement?

Season 2:
Shift: Beings with no context of self determination suddenly have to decide how to live.
Hook: What does freedom mean to something that was built to serve?

Season 3:
Shift: Sentient android technology escapes the theme park and reshapes the entire outside world.
Hook: If human behavior was already being predicted and controlled, were humans ever truly free either?

Season 4:
Shift: Humans live in scripted loops controlled by androids.
Hook: If humans can be programmed the same way androids are, what is the difference between them?

 

Let’s do another series, how about

Stranger Things (2016):

Season 1:
Starting Concept: A parallel dimension, the Upside down, exists right alongside our world, torn open by a child with psychic powers.
Hook: What is this place and what threats exist inside it?

Season 2:
Shift: The Upside Down is driven by malevolent intelligence.
Hook: If it can reach through into our world a little, what’s going to stop it from coming through entirely?

Season 3:
Shift: The gateway into the Upside down isn’t an anomalous accident, it’s reproducible technology.
Hook: If anyone can open a gate, who else has one and what do they plan to do with it?

Season 4:
Shift: The entity behind the Upside Down is a corrupted human child.
Hook: If a human created it, can a human destroy it?

3) DREAD

Ahh one of my personal favorites and a particularly hard one to master. When dread starts driving, primarily in horror, the indicator is a compounding deterioration of circumstance, things get worse. Or what I like to call, the DOWNWARD SPIRAL. Unlike Action where the bar raises and previous difficulty levels become mostly irrelevant, with dread they remain in effect… stacking and working synergistically for ever shittier outcomes.

From (MGM 2022):

Season 1: Trapped in a town where monsters attack at night. But talismans designate safe zones. You can follow the rules to survive but no one can leave.

Season 2: People fall prey to hallucinations, trances, psychological manipulations. Resources are attacked. The community frays. The rules start breaking down.

Season 3: Resources scarcity hits hard with threats of starvation. The monsters adapt. You can’t leave, the rules don’t protect you anymore and now, the resources to even survive start disappearing.

The fundamental condition of the character’s existence gets permanently worse.

Take note that three specific areas in horror are likely points that help define your indicator: the type of fear. From season 1 starts with a fear of the unknown, switches to a fear of psychological attack in season 2, to a fear of cyclical entrapment in season 3 and finally physical and psychological corruption in season 4.

The degree of helplessness and hopelessness. Whatever drives these deeper is pointing to your indicator in a big way.

And lastly, the progressive power increase of the MAF (Main Antagonistic Force). Monsters start out as physical beasts with sharp fangs and claws, then quickly progress to supernatural powers you simply can’t defend against. That’s a major downward spiral.

The Strain (2014 F/X):

Season 1: A parasitic vampire infection hits New York City. The city functions with all its faculties in place. 

Season 2: The parasites break containment. The CDC, police, continuity of local government all get overwhelmed.  

Season 3: The scale jumps from city to civilization with nuclear detonation. Everything from seasons one and two are still progressing, now with nuclear fallout and ramifications.

Season 4: Humanity lives under vampire rule. Infection, societal collapse, nuclear devastation become permanent conditions of daily life. The horror isn’t fighting against a threat, it’s everyday life itself.

Notice the stack. Nothing from any previous season went away. Nothing got better. Every season added a new layer of deterioration on top of everything before it.

4) PLOT

Probably the most difficult driver to deal with, requiring the most work/time, because plot is so vast it can touch on just about anything (except internal character development). The indicator of change in plot is context of the narrative’s SHARED REALITY.

Stick with me, this will be crystal clear in a second.

Let’s write a historical fiction story around 72 BC. You probably didn’t know this, but in this year China launched a massive campaign against nomads, while Egypt enjoyed relatively stability under Greek rule.

Well guess what, even though this was actually reality on Earth, we’re not interested in any of it. We want to write about the Roman Slave revolts. That’s right, Spartacus!

So it’s important to first recognize the core shared reality that’s actually relevant to our story.

We do this by writing a one-to-two-sentence summary of a story’s overarching paradigm that all characters of the story operate within. And in this instance we have something simply like:

“Roman slaves owned as property, surviving by killing for their masters.”

Notice, China and Egypt aren’t a part of our story reality, so they aren’t mentioned. If our story included China and Egypt, our Shared Reality definition would have to expand to a wider lens, maybe written as some sort of ‘Ancient geopolitical story, with opposing armies vying for world domination.’

Let’s look at the Reality Shifts of

Spartacus (2010):

Season 1: Roman slaves owned as property, surviving by killing for their masters.

Season 2: Free but hunted by Rome, slaves building a rebel army outside the system.

Season 3: Open war against Rome itself.

It’s important to note why we use the term Shared Reality. Shared implies “everybody.” Not China and Egypt, because they’re not in our story, but everybody actually in our story. The upper most level of inclusivity.

The MAJOR tier shift.

Other tier shift examples from Spartacus.

MAIN – In Season 3: Crixus splits from Spartacus to attack Rome directly. Amongst the main characters in the rebellion this is a significant change. But to the Romans, little has changed. They’re still fighting a slave rebellion.

MOMENTARY – In Season 1: Spartacus builds a romantic relationship with Mira. This has no direct bearing on the rebellion and certainly no direct bearing on the rest of Rome.

5) CHARACTER

Character is perhaps the most important driver of all, as the entire story itself hinges on the strength of the character’s arc.

Underdeveloped character arcs deliver underdeveloped stories, every time.

When character drives, the internal mechanics of the protagonist take control, the indicator of change being their PERSONAL RESPONSE.

A character’s psychological makeup stems from their Core Flaw (Core Merit). Everything about who they are in a story, what they believe, and how they act or respond, flows from this singular point; the thing that drives all their internal workings. With a standard transformational character arc, the Core Flaw is the basis for the character misreading, misjudging, or otherwise mishandling just about every situation the story puts them in. Without it, plot has to generate all conflict externally and that means your characters become totally interchangeable. Story seppuku.

If you want to go deeper into structuring Core Flaw and Belief systems across a series, my SCAR system was built specifically for this.

The Core Flaw also manifests into two other aspects that are usually pretty easy to spot from your source story material. The emotional throughline and the character’s key relationships.

Like the other drivers, the Major top tier level defines the shift of a season that occurs when the personal response shifts regarding anything essential to the character’s core personality, whether this is a condition of their personality itself, a belief system or most regarded relationship.

The Main tier is a personal response regarding anything important, but not not essential to their core personality.

And lastly, the Momentary tier response is that regarding anything in the character’s peripheral. Important enough to notice, but without any significant consequences.

Farscape (1999):

Season 1 (story start): Core flaw. Crichton is naive and trusting. He believes the universe is navigable through good faith and intelligence. His personal response to everything is open negotiation.

Season 2: Core flaw. Scorpius’s neural clone has compromised Crichton’s fundamental trust in his own mind. He can no longer be sure which thoughts are his. His personal response shifts to manic, paranoid self-preservation.  

Season 3: Emotional throughline. The neural clone is removed but the damage is done. Crichton has adapted into someone willing to be ruthless. His personal response becomes calculating and cold.

Season 4: Key relationship. Losing Aeryn removes the last anchor to who he was. His personal response becomes isolated, volatile, and disproportionate. The hallucinations, the wall equations, the willingness to threaten universal destruction, all stem from the loss of the one relationship.

Ok, let’s do one more, how about…

Breaking Bad (2008):

Season 1: Core flaw. Walt’s resentment has been suppressed for twenty years under passivity. The cancer diagnosis removes all restraints. His personal response is still passive but pointed in a reckless direction.

Season 2: Core flaw. The resentment awakens and actives. Walt’s personal response shifts to constant justification and compartmentalization. He constrcuts rational explanations for irrational choices.

Season 3: Emotional throughline. His justification defense breaks down. Entitlement replaces guilt. Walt’s emotional baseline shifts from shame to indignation. His personal response is to assert dominance and demand submission.

Season 4: Key relationship. The war with Gus. His personal response becomes purely tactical,  every interaction evaluated for strategic advantage.

Season 5: Core flaw. With Gus gone, nothing constrains Walt’s resentment. The flaw takes full control until Hank’s discovery strips everything away and he’s left with nothing but the truth he finally admits.

 

VERIFICATION

THEME

All genuine fiction is thematically driven, the indicator is the specific message. But Theme operates differently from the 5 main drivers above. Where the drivers define scope of the arc, theme defines unity.

Theme is the writer’s personal message to the reader. As such, it is not discovered in the story by the writer, but applied to the story by the writer. Each arc of the series carries its own thematic argument, its own specific message, that must meet two criteria to earn its place.

1. It must support, not compete or contradict, the overarching series Master Theme.
2. It must anchor directly to a character arc capable of delivering it. (again, what my SCAR system is designed to do.)

When you pull out your narrative thematic drivers, take note of any specific messages the story organically presents. While you likely find them all interesting, not all of them belong in the story. The ones that don’t serve your Master Theme or can’t attach to a character arc need to be cut.

A powerful message without a character arc to carry it has no way of validating itself inside the narrative to the reader. A compelling message that competes or contradicts the Master Theme, undermines your primary message.

DELIVERY (Not Used for Assessing Scope)

COMEDY

Not forgotten, but not directly relevant. Comedy is more accurately assessed as a mode of delivery not a driver in unto itself. Anything can drive with comedy in the passenger seat, but outside of the comedy itself, outside a story with a specific comical undertone, it can’t actually drive narrative.

SHOCK/SURPRISE

Is a second mode of delivery not a driver in unto itself. Shock/Surprise is even more versatile than comedy having stronger legs to land in any story without upsetting the story, but alone, it still doesn’t have the strength to actually drive narrative.

You can’t rely on shock value, without something else doing the real work.

Every series you’ve ever loved started as a pilot somebody had the vision, focus, and determination to produce.

This article gives you something you can’t find anywhere else, a way to finally see your story’s actual scope before spending a single production dollar. Run your source story material through the five drivers. Count your Shifts. Assess your ceiling and support. Then pick your strongest arc, compress it to what you can afford, and make a real proof of concept for the much larger, deeper IP you’ve created.

But for the love of God, stop calling your pilot a series. And stop chasing a million issues, a million volumes, or a million seasons, right out of the gate.

Series success lives or dies on its Pilot. ▪

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About the Author — 

If you found this article helpful, please share the direct link on your social media.

Nick Macari is a developmental editor and story consultant with near 30 years across comics, games, novels, and screenplays. He’s the author of Storycraft For Comics, the Working Writer’s Guide to Comics and the creator of the SCAR system referenced in this article.

If you’re developing a series and want a professional assessment of your project’s scope, structure, or viability, get in touch through the inquiry form or the direct contact info on the site sidebar.