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Alaric Saltzman: I think Stefan is a good guy. But at the end of the day, he’s still a vampire. (1.18, ‘Under Control’)

Rewind a moment back to 2008 when vampires were the hottest Hollywood commodity: Twilight has smashed out of the box office and skyrocketed Robert Pattinson into demigod status, deigning us mere mortals with his tousled hair and golden eyes. True Blood, a much more adult, darker and sexy take on the vampire myth, smoulders on the small screen, courtesy of HBO. Everyone was desperate to cash in on the vampire trend and it seemed there really couldn’t possibly be any more room for vampires on our screens, small or large – or could there?

Even Ian admits to being at first incredibly sceptical despite being able to instantly tell how great a character Damon was. Indeed, he could totally see where the cynics were coming from. ‘No – I mean, look, it was snicker-able,’ Ian told Vampire Diaries’ Source. ‘If you weren’t a Twilight fan or you weren’t into the vampire thing or you’re oversaturated with Twilight, and you saw this show coming out on the CW, which is basically more vampires, like Twilight, but on television… if you’re going to snicker, that’s what you’re going to snicker at. And there’s an interesting thing that by virtue of this vampire oversaturation of the market, I think what people fail to realise is that within this vampire genre there’s an immense amount of storytelling capability. There are a lot of great stories that come out of this; that’s why it’s so popular. So, to answer your question, was I surprised that people were snickering? No.’

Paul Wesley (cast as Damon’s rival brother, Stefan Salvatore) had his doubts, too. ‘There was some trepidation of, “Hmm, this could kind of go in a really cheesy direction and it could be riding the coat-tails of something,”’ he remembers thinking when he first read the script.

Yet, believe it or not, no one was more sceptical than the creator of The Vampire Diaries himself, Kevin Williamson. ‘In the beginning I didn’t want to be involved with it, because I felt like sort of a Twilight rip-off, no matter what came first,’ he told The Torch Online.

For him, there was also the little matter of that other vampire show: ‘The second season of True Blood was all it took to make me not want to do vampires, because it was my favourite show and I wasn’t about to jump into the fray.’

Still, he couldn’t altogether dismiss The Vampire Diaries’ proposal (thank goodness!). Williamson was on the hunt for a show… and had been for a long time. Having wrapped a short-lived television drama called Hidden Palms in July 2007, he was certain of just two things: first, that he wanted to do something completely different, and second, that he was keen to collaborate with his long-term friend Julie Plec. They just needed the right idea to get behind.

Kevin Williamson has built a career around writing for a teen audience and has a string of successful television shows and movies to his credit. Yet as a writer and director, he didn’t have immediate success. Born on 14 March 1965 in New Bern, North Carolina, he spent years working on film sets – sometimes as an actor, sometimes as an assistant director – any odd job he could be hired to do in that kind of environment. Yet behind the scenes, he was unhappy and sensed his career was stalling. ‘I was in a hard place, working as an assistant to someone here in Hollywood – a desk job, sort of in the wasteland of life,’ he told the New York Times. ‘I decided: I’ve got to do something. I’m got to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.’

Indeed, his unhappiness stemmed from high-school days when an English teacher ripped apart a short story he had written for an assignment: ‘She didn’t like me for some reason, I couldn’t figure out why. When you’re 15 or 16 you never know why the teacher is being mean to you,’ he told the New York Times. That teacher went on to say some damning words that were to hang over him like a curse: ‘She ripped [my story] up and said to me that I had a voice that shouldn’t be heard.’

All that changed, though, when an idea sparked in his mind. It was 1994 and he was watching Turning Point – a TV series (also known in America as a newsmagazine) featuring hour-long programmes on a single ‘real-life’ topic, often of a sensational nature – like the O.J. Simpson trials or the Manson Family murders. This time, the episode was covering Danny Rolling, also known as ‘The Gainesville Ripper’: a serial killer who murdered five college students in Florida. Morbidly fascinated, Williamson wondered what might happen if a group of teenagers, all well versed in the classic horror movie clichés, were pursued by a serial killer. Would they be able to thwart him or would they fall into the same traps?

Kevin knew he had struck a gold mine with this idea; he worked his regular job and came back home at night to write feverishly until the script was done. He remembers the anguish of those days, never sure if he was about to make his mark: ‘I always wanted to direct – that’s my passion. I was an actor. That went nowhere. I tried directing theatre. Nope. I wrote this movie called Killing Mrs. Tingle. Sold it. It sat on the shelf. My unemployment dried up. I couldn’t get work. I had borrowed money from all my friends. So, I wrote Scary Movie [later retitled Scream]. Just banged all it out, as fast as I could.’

Scream was picked up by Dimension Films and directed by infamous horror director Wes Craven (also responsible for terrifying audiences with A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hills Have Eyes, among others). It came out in December 1996 to massive audiences and much acclaim, was credited with rebooting the slasher-film industry and launched Williamson as king of the teen horror genre. He followed up this success with two more Scream movies and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), cementing his position. Meanwhile, the fascination with the Scream franchise still hasn’t died down and Scream IV came out on 15 April 2011.

The key to his success with Scream was the way he just understood teens. He spoke passionately about the respect he had for his young adult audience while writing the script: ‘You know, teenagers are so savvy and smart,’ he told Film Radar in 2002. ‘VCRs and the Blockbuster generation had surfaced. They know these films like the back of their hands. What if they used their knowledge of these films and found themselves in the same situation, what would happen? I sort of started with that kernel of an idea and just ran with it. That’s how it all came about.’

However, he wasn’t about to be pigeonholed as a horror specialist: Williamson already had another project up his sleeve. In 1995 Paul Stupin, a producer for the Fox Network, approached Kevin to see if he had a teen-oriented television series in him – they had just bought Beverly Hills 90210 (the original) and were looking for something similar. It turns out that Kevin did have something ready: a story about a group of high-schoolers growing up in a small town that pretty much mirrored his own upbringing. ‘Some Kind of Wonderful meets Pump Up the Volume, meets James at 15, meets My So-Called Life, meets Little House on the Prairie,’ was how he pitched it. Ultimately, Fox passed on the show but another network – The WB – were also on the hunt for a new show and gave him the go-ahead. Thus, on 20 January 1998, Dawson’s Creek was born.

The series was to be a landmark in television produced for teens. Apart from launching the careers of several young actors and actresses – Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, Michelle Williams and James Van Der Beek (to name a few) – it redefined how teenagers could be portrayed on screen. The show’s trademark was its sophisticated language combined with its smart, open approach to the complex, real-life crises facing teens in their day-to-day lives.

Dawson’s Creek had a love-it or hate-it premiere! Some critics saw it as brilliant (an ‘addictive drama with considerable heart,’ said Variety) while others thought it vacuous and too risqué (‘I can’t get past the consuming preoccupation with sex, sex, sex,’ said the Cincinnati Inquirer). Regardless of the critics’ opinion, teens totally got the show and they loved it. It became the defining television series for The WB (which later became The CW) and firmly established Williamson as the go-to writer for smart, sexy teen dramas.

Of course that doesn’t mean that everything he turned his attention to turned to gold. When you produce something as successful as Dawson’s Creek, often it’s hard to follow up straight away with equal brilliance. Williamson was always going to be judged by the success of that one show. His next small-screen endeavours included Wasteland (1999), which was about a group of struggling twenty-something actors in New York. ‘I think it’s maybe a victim of expectations,’ said the show’s director Steve Miner after it premiered to lukewarm reviews and ratings. Wasteland represented Williamson’s first attempt to break away from the teenage voice. ‘I don’t think of myself as the voice of the teenage era and I never have,’ he told Entertainment Weekly, back in 1999 before he had embraced the fact that actually, he is! ‘I’m growing up as a writer and I hope adults will accept Wasteland because my goal is to appeal to that late 20s to early 30s age range.’

When Wasteland wasn’t the success he had intended it to be, Williamson moved on to Glory Days (2002), which was also known as Demontown and not to be confused with Glory Daze, the 80s-set college fraternity comedy. It had a horror/mystery feel to it, and only ran for two months. The premise was about a successful novelist whose bestselling novel was based on people from his small hometown. When he returns to try and overcome severe writer’s block, the townspeople are none too happy to have him back and mysterious, unexplained events begin to happen around him. Despite a relatively strong viewership at the start, interest quickly waned and the show was subsequently axed. Another television venture was called Hidden Palms, again involving a murder-mystery, this time set in sunny Palm Springs. After its initial eight-episode run, it too was cancelled. Meanwhile, Williamson didn’t fare much better on the big screen, with follow-up movies to Scream including Venom, Cursed and his first-ever directorial debut, Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999) – the payback script for that English teacher who once eviscerated his writing. In fact, he had to rename his original script, Killing Mrs. Tingle, after a string of high-profile real-life high school murders made it inappropriate and even then it absolutely tanked at the box office.

No, what Williamson needed was this new project called The Vampire Diaries – and thank goodness he had his collaborator Julie Plec on hand to persuade him not to get distracted by the Twilight connection and to keep on reading.

Plec and Williamson’s working relationship goes all the way back to Scream. ‘I was [director] Wes [Craven’s] assistant on Scream,’ Plec recalls. ‘It was [Kevin’s] first movie that ever got made, my first movie. I was 22, just out of college. We were two kids in a candy store, up in Santa Rosa, California, on location, making a movie.’

Plec moved to Los Angeles almost as soon as she was able. She always knew that she wanted to work in the movie industry and never had a plan B. ‘I think that’s why I survived,’ she admits. ‘If I had a Plan B, I might not have stuck with it through the bad times as long as I did.’

Her first job was as ‘the second assistant to an agent named Susan Smith,’ she told NiceGirlsTV, but she quickly realised that being an agent wasn’t for her. It didn’t involve enough creativity and so she only lasted in the job for three months. Then a friend told her about an exciting opportunity to work for the notorious horror-movie director Wes Craven, as his assistant. She took the job and it was to change her life forever – she was even the one who managed to convince Wes to direct the fun, modern horror movie written by a nobody in the industry called Scream. It was like fate. All of a sudden, Plec found herself working with ‘every young hot star of the moment and a crew that became my LA family.’ Most importantly, she met and instantly connected with the young writer of the film, one Kevin Williamson.

The two became firm friends. ‘We used to sit up on night shoots [during Scream] and sing Kenny Rogers’ songs and talk about our future,’ she said. It was this friendship that was to become one of the defining threads in the fabric of her career. She would collaborate with Kevin on other projects – mostly movies like Teaching Mrs. Tingle and Cursed (their werewolf project) – while she worked on her own shows. Yet her career-defining show pre-The Vampire Diaries was without Williamson: a teen television drama called Kyle XY (2006–09). It was the first time she really got to showcase her writing skills and worked on building a show from the ground up.

Kyle XY was about a young boy who is found in the middle of a forest with no memory of life before that moment and strangest of all, no sign of a belly button. He is adopted into the Trager family and gradually discovers that he has extraordinary powers. When the show debuted on 26 June 2006, it was to lots of hype and solid reviews, but ratings steadily declined throughout the running time and it was eventually cancelled. The last episode aired on 16 March 2009, with many plot lines left unresolved. It meant that Plec and the rest of the Kyle XY team didn’t get to close out the show and wrap up the storylines as intended: ‘If I had any control over how and when Kyle XY ended, things would have been handled differently but I, like all of us involved with the show, had to stop when we were told to stop. It was disappointing, knowing that we couldn’t deliver a final chapter to our story,’ she admitted.

A special segment on the DVD called ‘Kyle XY: Future Revealed’ was included, in which the writers and producers talked about how they would have resolved matters, given the opportunity. Plec remembers the show with fondness: ‘I loved working on that show and the friends I made with the other writers, actors and producers are some of my strongest friendships still.’

Once Kyle XY had ended, she was at a loose end: she wanted another show, but she wasn’t sure what. She had been following the vampire trend – she was a die-hard fan of Twilight – and has a history of being drawn to the supernatural but then someone at The CW passed her a series of novels…

Just like the novels (read more about them on the Paul side), the idea for The Vampire Diaries’ show didn’t come from its creators, but from the network – The CW. The CW (‘C’ from CBS and ‘W’ from Warner Brothers, the two parent companies) was a relatively new network at that time, an amalgamation of TV channels UPN and The WB. UPN had aired shows such as America’s Next Top Model and Everybody Hates Chris, whereas The WB had hits like Dawson’s Creek, Smallville and Supernatural. Together, they had a mission to focus ‘intently on finding shows that would finally define The CW as a net for young people, especially younger women.’ (Variety). One of The CW’s first hits was with Gossip Girl (2007–), a connection that would lead to the network securing its biggest property yet.

The CW had bought the television option to The Vampire Diaries’ series in conjunction with Alloy Entertainment (who produced the novels) and were looking for the right writer/director/producers to bring the story to life on the small-screen. They told Plec: ‘We have a property that we’ve been dying to do. We absolutely want to do a vampire show, and we’d love for you to look at it.’ They wanted a vampire story as they hoped that the paranormal romance would prove the perfect complement to their already successful show, Supernatural.

Plec read the books first, and loved them. She told Williamson to, ‘Keep reading, keep reading!’ even when he felt inclined to stop. It was only once he had delved deeper into the series that Kevin realised the true potential of The Vampire Diaries: this wasn’t to be seen as simply a rip-off of Twilight because it was about more than just two young people in love. Of course, it was about two young people in love (and that was important), but also about the effect of vampires on a small-town community that has its own deep, dark history. Williamson admitted that a light bulb went off in his head when he realised: ‘this is [much more] than a story about a small town… [it’s] about the underbelly of a small town, and what lurks under the surface.’

‘I had to make myself believe that so that I could move forward and I talked myself into it, because I thought, “If I can just get past the pilot, which is Twilight – girl meets guy in school – and if I can get past that, I bet there’s a show here that I can add something to,’ he told the audience at PaleyFest. Between them, the two writers were up-to-date on all the latest vampire hits, with Plec being a huge Twilight fan and Williamson never missing an episode of True Blood.

Of course, neither begrudges the influence of Twilight and they are, in fact, ‘happy to ride the coat-tails.’ Much of the initial interest in and buzz surrounding the show comes from having a built-in, vampire-ready audience.

Still, there was no way the show would have survived had it not been able to differentiate from the sparkling vampires and prove itself a hit in its own right. For that, Kevin Williamson believed, they just needed to get audiences past the Twilight-esque pilot.