This is number 144 in the blog series, “My Writing Life.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I’M DEVON LAYNE and I’m an addict. I admit it. I thought I could just try it a couple of times and see what the fuss was about. Then the opportunity came to just veg out and let my mind wander, so I tried it again. It wasn’t long before I was ‘using’ several times a day and I couldn’t stop!
I’m not talking about drugs or alcohol. This is far more insidious. It’s available twenty-four hours a day right in my own home. And it’s free! I’m talking about short dramas, the video reels that are in my Facebook feed, all over YouTube, on Instagram, and TikTok. And even though they are all essentially the same, there is something strangely captivating about them.
There was a time in my life—some fifty years ago—that I openly laughed at people who had to get home by 3:00 to watch As the World Turns or The Edge of Night or All My Children. Soap operas seemed to rule their lives. Miscellaneous fun fact, prior to As the World Turns in 1954, television serials were all just fifteen minutes long.
Now I understand.
Though today’s short dramas aren’t constrained by a broadcast television schedule, they are every bit as addicting.
So, what is this short drama I’m talking about?
Back in the olden days, if I could scrape together fifty cents to spend an afternoon at the movies, I didn’t get just a double feature of two-hour movies. They started with a cartoon, a newsreel, previews, and even an entertaining short subject—perhaps a Charlie Chaplin silent or another melodrama.
I don’t bring that up to emphasize the rising cost—$12-$18 for a crappy 80 minutes of computer-generated special effects—but rather to point out that the short drama has been around for a very long time. And we’ve all loved them! Think of The Simpsons when it started as a five-minute break on The Tracey Ullman Show thirty-nine years ago this month.
Today, we’ve progressed past television and even streaming podcasts to the mobile internet platform. Since they are made to be viewed on a smartphone, short dramas are recorded in a vertical format. They are episodic in nature with each episode lasting as little as a minute or as long as twenty minutes. And they are often elaborately produced with incredible settings and acting.
Some of the most beautiful performers in the world are known for their short dramas. I’m looking at you, Li Ke Yi. I know she looks twelve, but she’s twenty-four and has starred in nearly thirty short dramas in the past two years. She’ll probably still look twelve twenty years from now.
Short dramas tend to have simple plots and somewhat fewer characters than most big budget dramas. Armies of thousands are depicted by fewer than a dozen armored extras. Even though Chinese short dramas are the most popular (often AI dubbed or subtitled) there are versions in nearly all Asian countries—anime, K-drama, etc.—but it doesn’t end there. They have appeared in American reels, in western European dramas, in Hindi, and in nearly every culture that has a written or recorded entertainment industry.
That includes written serials on several platforms. My friend, MaryEllen Brady, releases some incredible serialized short dramas, even blending fantasy and the Wild West as in her series The Outsider. Addictive!
As I was writing this, I realized I’ve written short serials before. My most recent Halloween stories—The Key to Eve and Alienable Rights—are short serials. Chapters are somewhat shorter than my usual serialized novels, and the entire story is no more than twelve chapters. They both come in at far fewer than 50,000 words. And people liked both of them, even though most readers have a low tolerance for anything that involves politics, even satire.
It was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at deliberately writing a short drama, following the major structure and tropes of Chinese short drama, but set in the US with completely American characters.
Trial Balance is an introspective short drama that follows Cal, a beleaguered accountant whose life seems cursed by bad luck—and by the whims of an author who keeps killing him off and bringing him back. Cal’s journey is a rollercoaster of personal setbacks, from disastrous relationships and health crises to corporate sabotage and murder attempts. As he uncovers financial fraud at a major development firm, Cal’s awareness of his fictional existence adds a layer of humor and existential reflection. Surrounded by a cast of colorful characters—including his ex-wife, her scheming lover, and two strong-willed women who may be his salvation—Cal must navigate betrayal, danger, and the absurdity of his own narrative. Trial Balance delivers dark comedy and a fresh take on the drama genre.
My unedited first draft of this story is now posting three chapters per week as I write it, exclusively for my Sausage Grinder patrons. It will run through May. It’s a great time to be a Sausage Grinder tier patron. SOL readers will get it when it's been rewritten and edited.
The chapters are shorter than my typical works. Each could be read aloud in less than 20 minutes. Each has a complete scene and a bit of tease that will make you impatient to see the next chapter. The chapters have a lot of action, romance, and suspense. I’m working with a comprehensive outline that indicates there will be about twenty-five chapters all told.
Short dramas have a number of tropes that occur in piece after piece. There are some that I won’t touch in this story, and others that I fully embrace.
There will be no martial arts or supernatural abilities—like x-ray vision or prediction of the future or ability to heal. There will be no time travel of modern man into distant past where he uses contemporary science and technology to change the destiny of his character. There will be no ‘system’ that grants benefits based on a game-like program imbedded in his brain. No one will be drugged with an aphrodisiac. There will be no secret CEO pretending to be a beggar while building up their wife’s or husband’s business with his vast fortune. No one is going to get slapped.
There will be a scheming ex-wife who regrets her decision. There will be a rescue that creates bonds between the hero and the heroines. There will be a miraculous recovery from death. A hidden treasure will be revealed. One or more scheming partners or their children will try to take over the company. There will be circumstantial misunderstandings that gradually bring the main characters closer together. There will be a lot of blushing. There will be short term amnesia that changes the storyline when memory is recovered.
A less common theme that I’ll use is the main character’s awareness that he is in a short drama and a struggle for control between the author and the characters!
As the story begins, we look into the mind of the main character who narrates:
I get killed on page 18, but the author says not to worry because I’m alive again in the next chapter.
That’s not the only detail Cal reveals!
I expect serialization of the fully edited story on SOL sometime in July, probably while I’m on the road north, pulling my home behind me.