Course
Beginner-friendlyCanon and continuity: why big stories tangle
Work out what canon is and who decides it, why a story told by many hands over decades piles up promises it cannot all keep, the three ways a promise gets broken, and the four ways a franchise untangles itself.
4 chapters · 15 lessons · about 68 min in total
The shape of it
15 lessons
About 68 minutes in total. Your progress is kept on this device — no account, nothing sent anywhere.
Course complete
Put your name on it and print it, or save it as a PDF. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The lessons
Chapter 1What a long story is made of4 lessons · about 18 min
01A story with many hands
Work out who the author of a long story is when hundreds of people wrote it over forty years.
About 5 min
02Canon: the list of what counts
Tell apart what counts in a story from what a reader believes, and spot who decides.
About 5 min
03Continuity: every fact is a promise
Spot the promises a story makes without meaning to, and trace what each one ties the next story to.
About 5 min
04The promises grow faster than the stories
Work out how many pairs of facts a new story has to keep straight, and why that number runs away.
About 5 min
Chapter 2Why it tangles4 lessons · about 18 min
05The next sale comes first
Work out why a name sells more safely than a new idea, and what that does to the story.
About 5 min
06New hands, old promises
Trace what happens to a story's promises when the people who made them leave.
About 5 min
07A prequel rewrites the past
Spot why a story set before the first one changes stories already told.
About 5 min
08Spin-offs spread the story thin
Work out what a side game, a monthly comic and a weekly anime each do to one story.
About 5 min
Chapter 3The four fixes4 lessons · about 19 min
09The retcon
Spot a retcon, and tell what it keeps from what it throws away.
About 5 min
10The reboot
Tell a reboot from a sequel and from a remake, and work out what each one costs.
About 5 min
11The branch
Trace how a timeline that splits keeps two contradicting stories both true.
About 5 min
12The shelf
Work out what it means to declare that hundreds of stories no longer count, and who loses what.
About 5 min
Chapter 4Keeping it straight3 lessons · about 14 min
13The keeper
Spot the job of keeping a story straight, and tell it apart from refusing to have a story at all.
About 5 min
14What straight costs, and what tangled costs
Set freedom against trust, and work out where a franchise lands when each wins.
About 5 min
15One franchise, taken apart
Take a real franchise apart with everything in the course: the hands, the canon, the promises, the sale, the fixes and the keeper.
About 5 min