As of October 2026, a 60-episode AI microdrama season is a six-week job for a small team rather than a studio year: one week to lock the premise, beat sheet, and character bible, then five production batches of roughly twelve episodes each, each drafted cheaply and only the keepers rendered at full resolution. The work is front-loaded into the planning week, because once the story spine and the reference sheets are set, every episode after the first is the same loop repeated against a saved recipe. What follows is the plan, week by week, and a way to track all sixty episodes without a download or a spreadsheet you have to build from scratch.
The six-week season at a glance
The shape of the season is a short planning phase followed by five production batches, with the first ten episodes released free to pull an audience in and the rest paywalled. Here is the schedule, drawn so you can see where the time actually goes.
| Phase | Focus | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Premise, beat sheet, character bible | A locked story spine |
| Weeks 2 to 3 | Batch 1: episodes 1 to 10 | The free hook, rendered |
| Weeks 3 to 6 | Batches 2 to 5: episodes 11 to 60 | The paywalled run |
| Week 6 | Submission and launch | Episodes live on the platform |
Week 1: premise, beat sheet, and character bible
The planning week is the only week you cannot rush, because every later shortcut depends on it. Write the premise as one durable engine, a situation that can throw a fresh hook and a fresh cliffhanger every sixty to ninety seconds for sixty episodes, not a single idea that runs dry by episode eight. Then break the season into a beat sheet: one row per episode, each row carrying the turn that opens it, the complication in the middle, and the cliffhanger that makes the viewer tap to the next one.
Alongside the beats, build the character bible as reference sheets rather than descriptions. Save a reference for each recurring character and each recurring location once, so that it is passed into every generation for the rest of the season. A saved reference holds the same face and the same world across all sixty episodes, which a worded description cannot, and it is the single thing that keeps the season from drifting into a set of clips that merely share a title. Pair each character with one saved voice so the performance stays consistent too. Nothing here is trained; the references are simply reused.
Weeks 2 to 3: batch 1, the free hook episodes
Produce episodes 1 to 10 first and treat them as the shop window, because on most vertical platforms these are the free episodes a viewer watches before deciding whether to pay for the rest. They carry the heaviest load in the whole season, so they get the most direction. Script each episode against its beat-sheet row, generate the scenes against your saved references, add directed voice and sound, and assemble each cut on the Compose timeline, all in one workspace with nothing exported between steps.
Draft before you commit. Generate each shot at preview resolution to judge blocking, pacing, and whether the cliffhanger lands, and render only the keeper at full resolution once the cut holds. That draft-then-final habit is what makes a batch of ten affordable, since you are paying for the finished take and not for every experiment on the way to it. By the end of week three the free hook is live or ready to go, and you have proven the loop that the next fifty episodes will repeat.
Weeks 3 to 6: batches 2 to 5, the paywalled run
The remaining fifty episodes are produced in four batches of roughly twelve, and this is where the planning pays back. Save the episode sequence you settled on in batch 1 as a Workflow: the ordered steps from script to generated scenes to voice to assembled cut. For each new episode you duplicate that Workflow, swap in the next episode's script and beats, and run it, so you are reusing a proven recipe rather than rebuilding the process sixty times. The references and voices from week one carry straight through, so continuity is a setting, not a task.
Hold a review gate on every episode before it is called done. Check character consistency at full size, because drift is the one failure that reads instantly to a binge audience, and regenerate the few shots that slip rather than the whole episode. Keep the batches overlapping: while one batch is in review, the next is already drafting. The paywalled run is where volume lives, and volume is what the batch structure exists to make routine.
A batch episode, drafted then finaled
The same character, held across episodes
Week 6: submission and launch
The last week is delivery, not production. Export every episode to the vertical spec the platform expects, confirm the episode order and the free-versus-paid split, and stage the season so the free hook publishes first and the paywalled episodes follow on the cadence you have chosen. If you are releasing on your own channel as well, the same masters cut down into the clips you post to pull viewers toward the full series.
Treat launch as a sequence rather than a single drop. A microdrama audience is built by the release rhythm as much as by the story, so the plan that got you to sixty finished episodes should also decide how many go live per day and where the paywall falls. Hold back nothing that is finished, but publish on a schedule the beat sheet already implies.
Parallelising: who does what
A season this size is comfortable for a team of two or three and possible for one person with more weeks. The work splits cleanly along the loop. One person can own story: the premise, the beat sheet, and the per-episode scripts, which is the authorship the tool does not replace. A second can own production: running the Workflow per episode, drafting scenes, and assembling cuts. A third, or the same two trading the role, owns the review gate: consistency checks, voice and sound polish, and export.
Because every stage lives in one workspace and bills against one plan, the handoffs that usually slow a small team disappear. There is no export from one app and re-upload into another between the script and the scene, or between the scene and the cut, so a note on episode fourteen is a regeneration someone makes that afternoon rather than a round trip through three tools. Split the episodes across batches, not across people mid-episode, so each episode stays coherent under one hand.
Tracking the season
There is no planner file to download here, and you do not need one. Track the season as a simple grid you keep beside the work, one row per episode, and the status moves left to right as the episode goes through the loop. The structure is the same whether you keep it in a notes doc, a board, or the project itself.
| Column | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Episode | Number and working title |
| Beat | The hook and the cliffhanger for that episode |
| Batch | Which of the five batches it belongs to |
| Draft | Scenes drafted at preview resolution |
| Review | Consistency, voice, and sound checked |
| Final | Rendered, exported, and staged for release |
The only columns that matter are the ones that tell you an episode is truly done: a passed review gate and a final export. Keep the grid honest about those two and the season stays on schedule, because an episode that is drafted but not reviewed is not progress, it is work waiting to be checked. When you are ready to start, plan your season in Morphic and build the grid inside the project you will produce from.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
For a small team, about six weeks: one planning week to lock the premise, beat sheet, and character bible, then five production batches of roughly twelve episodes each over the following five weeks. The planning week is the one that cannot be compressed, because every later batch reuses the story spine and the saved references it produces. A solo producer can run the same plan over more weeks by taking the batches one at a time.
Produce episodes in groups rather than one end to end. Lock the per-episode loop once, from script to generated scenes to voice to assembled cut, save it as a reusable Workflow, then for each new episode duplicate the Workflow, swap in that episode's script, and run it. Keep batches overlapping so one is in review while the next is drafting, and hold a consistency gate on every episode before it is called done.
Two or three is comfortable, and one person is possible with more time. The clean split is story, production, and review: one owner for the premise, beats, and scripts, one for running the Workflow and assembling cuts, and one for the consistency, voice, and export gate. Because everything happens in one workspace with no exports between steps, a small team carries the volume without the usual handoff delays.
Release the first batch, roughly episodes one to ten, as the free hook before the paywalled run, since on most vertical platforms these are the episodes a viewer watches before deciding to pay. Produce and polish them first because they carry the heaviest load, then stage the paywalled episodes to follow on a set cadence. The release rhythm builds the audience as much as the story does.
Keep a single grid, one row per episode, with columns for the episode, its beat, its batch, and three status checks: drafted, reviewed, and finaled. There is no planner file to download, and you do not need one, because the two columns that actually gate progress are a passed consistency review and a final export. An episode that is drafted but not reviewed is work waiting to be checked, not a finished episode.
Put it together
A 60-episode season is not sixty separate productions; it is one planning week and one loop repeated against saved references and a reusable Workflow. Lock the premise, the beats, and the character bible, produce the free hook first, batch the paywalled run, and gate every episode on consistency before you call it done. The structure is what makes the volume routine and the continuity automatic. If you want the mechanics behind the loop, microdrama script structure covers writing the beats that carry a season, the microdrama pilot guide covers getting the first episodes right, and the microdrama production use case shows the end-to-end pipeline in one workspace.