Читать книгу Writing the TV Drama Series 3rd edition - Pamela Douglas - Страница 12
ОглавлениеWHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT TV DRAMA SERIES?
Imagine the power.
Picture the whole world dotted with hundreds of millions of screens glowing with the light from television images. Inside each TV set, computer monitor, and mobile screen — your own, for example — visitors tell stories about their dreams and problems, loves and rages, their thrills and their losses. You care about them, probably more than you admit, and even talk about them when they’re not around — after all, they come as often as you invite them.
Sometimes they’re broiling over issues in the news. Or sick and scared about that, or lying, or brave. At one time they were attacked and fought back and barely survived. But no matter what, they’ll be back next time, your same friends, there with you in your most vulnerable places, at home after work and on weekends, on your phone while you wait alone for a plane, on your computer when you can’t sleep at night. Intimate.
Maybe one of them is Tony Soprano, the mob boss, asking Uncle Junior, “I thought you loved me,” and watching Junior’s lip quiver, unable to answer. Or Mad Men’s Don Draper hurrying home for Thanksgiving with his family after all, imagining them happy, only to discover they’re already gone. In The Good Wife pilot, you were reeled into the fraction of a second when Alicia, standing by her philandering husband, fixes on a bit of string on his jacket, as if removing it would put her life back in order. On House, you were drawn into a doctor’s moral quandary when he must choose between allowing the tyrant in his care to perpetrate genocide or killing his patient. On Treme, just months after hurricane Katrina, amidst destroyed homes and near-empty streets, you rooted for Chief dressing in his Mardi Gras costume of immense yellow feathers, dancing and singing with enough heart to bring back the dead and New Orleans. Joy and tears, up close and personal.
Think about the impact. Once you understand the way viewers relate to their favorite shows, you’ll get a feel for the kinds of stories that work and how to wield this awesome power.
THREE QUALITIES OF EPISODIC TV SERIES
Among the traits that distinguish primetime series (both dramas and comedies) from other kinds of screenwriting, three are especially significant for writers: endless character arcs, the “long narrative” for serials, and the collaborative process.
EPISODIC CHARACTERIZATION
In feature writing you were probably told to create an arc for your protagonist that takes him from one state to its opposite; the character struggles toward a goal, and once that is attained, your story ends. Someone who is unable to love is changed when a mate/child/friend appears and, through fighting the relationship, the character is finally able to love. Or someone who has been wronged seeks revenge and either achieves it or dies for the cause. All fine for movies that end. But series don’t.
So how do you progress a narrative without an arc? Well, you create a different kind of arc. Remember what I said about series characters being more like people you know than figures in a plot. If your friend has an extreme experience, you continue knowing him after the event. You’re invested in the process, not just the outcome.
But watch out — this does not mean the characters are flat. Your continuing cast should never be mere witnesses to the challenge of the week. On the contrary, characters who are not transformed by the plot need something instead: dimension. Think of it like this: instead of developing horizontally toward a goal, the character develops vertically, exploring internal conflicts that create tension. The character may be revealed incrementally within each episode and throughout the series, but viewers need to trust that Alicia Florrick and Walter White are the same people they knew last week. Does that mean those characters are without range or variation? Of course not, and neither are your friends.
THE “LONG NARRATIVE”
Episodic drama comes in three forms: anthologies, series with “closure,” and “serials.”
Anthologies are free-standing stories, like short movies, unconnected to other installments except by a frame. The Twilight Zone had a continuing host, style, and franchise, but the casts were different each week. As the precursor of today’s episodic television, anthologies flourished in the 1950s when showcases like Playhouse 90 presented literature more like stage plays. But anthologies are rare today, and we’re not focusing on writing them.
Series with closure have continuing main casts but new situations that conclude at the end of each episode; they close. This is especially true of “procedurals” like CSI, NCIS, any version of Law & Order, and in fact the majority of fare on the traditional broadcast networks. Syndicators and cable channels that run repeats prefer this kind of show because they buy large packages (the first four seasons, or 88 episodes, is typical) and sell them to local and overseas stations who may rerun them in any order. If the episodes have no “memory,” that is, no significant development of ongoing relationships, the order of the episodes isn’t supposed to matter. Or so the thinking goes.
Most series have some closure, even if they continue other storylines. But when a series is well developed, the writers and fans follow the characters and find it hard to resist their history as it inevitably builds over time. In its early seasons, The X-Files had a new alien or paranormal event each week, and though the romantic tension between Mulder and Scully simmered, it didn’t escalate. Then interest from viewers pushed more and more of a relationship and turned the partners into lovers by the end of the series. Most X-Files episodes can still be enjoyed in any order, but serial storytelling is beguiling.
Today, the best shows that close each episode also have ongoing dramatic stories. House and The Good Wife, for example, have built followings on their continuing characters. But from a writing point of view, they are constructed as procedurals (more about that term later).
Serials: Now, there’s a dirty word in some minds because it also describes “soap operas.” Daytime serials like The Young and the Restless and General Hospital used to have loyal viewers and succeeded according to their own aims. But primetime writers and producers don’t like to be identified with them because of the heightened melodrama (which is needed to drive the story enough to run five days a week), and the speed with which episodes are produced too often results in stereotypical characters, dialogue that lacks subtlety, and unbelievable situations.
Current heirs to soapy melodrama flourish in teen relationship shows, on the CW network especially. In the future, the inheritance may well be the Internet, where inexpensive, quickly-produced fare without known stars or elaborate production values can be made by anyone with a digital camera and editing software. And those episodes can run throughout the day and night.
Meanwhile, what about primetime serials that run on premium cable, basic cable, and broadcast networks? Decades ago, shows like Dallas and Knots Landing were described as “nighttime soaps,” and did have the overblown romanticism and hyperbole typical of their daytime cousins. But most primetime series aren’t like that anymore. Recent serials include award-winning dramas on HBO, Showtime, AMC, and elsewhere: Mad Men, Dexter, Breaking Bad, True Blood, The Wire, Treme, The Sopranos, Big Love, The Tudors, Boardwalk Empire, The Walking Dead. And most of the acclaimed series on networks and other cable outlets use serialized storytelling along with closed stories.
A serial is any drama whose stories continue across many episodes in which the main cast develops over time. It’s called the “long narrative,” the epitome of what episodic television can offer: not one tale that ties up in an hour or two, but lives that play out over hundreds of hours. Think about it — as a writer you have the opportunity to tell a story that is so rich that it expands for years. At the conclusion of NYPD Blue’s twelve-year run, the series produced around 250 hours of story. That’s not 250 police cases (actually two or three times that many because each episode included several cases); the significance is 250 hours of living with these detectives and their cares, 250 hours dealing with the consequences of twelve years of experiences.
As you watch television, look for the way closed stories mingle with the long narrative. Not only will that give you insight into the show’s construction, but also a larger sense of what a story can be.
The Sopranos
COLLABORATION
If you go on to write for television, you’ll never work alone. Series are like families, and even though each episode is written by one writer, the process is collaborative at every step. Writers sit around a table to “break” each story, then review the outline and all the drafts together. Sometimes a writer may be placing a long arc in many episodes rather than writing a single episode. On House and Nurse Jackie, medical consultants — some of whom are also writers — supply essential scenes. And sometimes one writer may do a revision or dialogue polish on another’s script. The image of the isolated artist creating his precious screenplay secretly in the night isn’t the reality of life on a series. (Though that’s not to say staff members don’t write their drafts privately, or that they aren’t artists — some are brilliant!)
You may have heard the comment that happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Television staffs are full of writers, so how normal can they be? Dysfunctional staff families abound, but so do creative mixes that are encouraging and inspiring. As a beginner, you’ll learn tremendously on a staff. Read Chapter Six for how staffs function and tips for getting along and getting ahead.
But first, if you’re going to write for TV, you need to dump some misconceptions.
FIVE MYTHS ABOUT TELEVISION
MYTH 1: TV IS SMALL MOVIES.
Not really, though that does seem to make sense on the surface. Both TV dramas and movies deliver stories played by actors who are filmed and shown on screens. And many filmmakers — writers, directors, actors, cinematographers, editors, and so forth — work in both theatricals and television. In fact, Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg were involved with TV veteran John Wells at the inception of ER. Action movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer does CSI. Alan Ball, who wrote the movie American Beauty, became executive producer of Six Feet Under and True Blood. Melissa Rosenberg, an executive producer at Dexter, wrote the theatrical hit Twilight. And Frank Darabont, nominated for three Academy Awards, including for writing The Shawshank Redemption, is producing The Walking Dead on AMC.
A funny experience on a series brought home how connected film and TV writing can be. My agent told me that several writers had quit the staff of a show I admired. I couldn’t figure out why — the series was winning awards, it was renewed, and the characters had plenty of potential. Not to mention the writers were making a bundle. Maybe the showrunner was a monster. But I met him, a bright guy, no crazier than anyone else in town. So I went to work.
Dexter
First day in my new cubicle, I waited to be called to a story meeting, or given an assignment, or a script to rewrite. Nothing. I read all the magazines in the waiting room. Second day, I observed everyone else writing furiously on their office computers. Why was I left out? Had I offended someone? My mind fell to dark ruminations.
Finally, I popped into the cubicle next to me — “What are you writing?” The writer looked up, wide-eyed — didn’t I know? Everyone was working on their features. “He wants to do it all himself,” my fellow staffer said about the executive producer. “He keeps us around to bounce ideas and read his drafts. But he thinks it’s quicker if he just writes the show.” There I was on a TV staff and everyone was writing a movie. Pretty soon the studio pulled the plug on our feature scholarships, and that was the end of that job. But that illustrates an axiom: a writer is a writer, whether television or feature or for any new media.
Still, the more you know about features and television, the more unique each is. People go to movies to escape into a fantasy larger than life with spectacular stunts, effects, and locations. At $10+ per ticket, audiences demand lots of bang for their bucks. And teenage boys — a prime target for features — relish the vicarious action that big screens do so well. If you saw Avatar rerun on television, or rented a summer blockbuster, the giants of Pandora became toys, and armies of thousands were reduced to ants. Some bubbles are not meant to be burst.
From the beginning, theatrical features grew out of shared entertainment — think of crowds watching vaudeville. Television didn’t intend that kind of experience. In fact, the parent of TV is more likely radio. A generation before television, families gathered around their radios for vital information, whether the farm report or the war. And radio dramas were character-driven; beloved familiar personalities scrapping and coping with each other, bringing someone (often women, hardly ever teen boys) to tears or laughter every day. Close, personal, at home.
And real. Before radio, people got their information about the world from newspapers. That lineage continues in what we expect of television. Television became fused with what people need to know and what they believe is fact. So it’s not an escape, not fantasy, but the fabric of daily life.
Oh, you’re saying what about Star Trek or Smallville, for just two examples — they’re hardly real. Well, I did a brief turn on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I can tell you the producers were interested in stories about people — people who lived in a distant environment with futuristic gadgets, yes, but the core was relationships among the crew, testing personal limits; and, at its best, the exploration wasn’t distant galaxies but what it means to be human. As for Smallville, the young Clark Kent is a metaphor for every teenager who struggles with being different, figuring out who he is and how to be with his friends. This is heart stuff, not spectacle.
Which is not to say you should write without cinematic qualities. The pilot of Lost opened with visually tantalizing images that drew the viewer into the mood and quest of the series. But even there, the focus was personal jeopardy: It began on Jack’s eyeball, then an odd sneaker on a tree, then a dog out of nowhere, and took its time placing us in a jungle before following Jack as he discovered were he was, moving without dialogue to the beach. Still tight in Jack’s point of view, only gradually do we see the crashed plane, and the first word from a distance: “Help!” Immediate, direct, close.
Screenwriting students are taught to write visually and minimize talk — “Play it, don’t say it.” Generally, that’s good advice, so I was writing that way when I started in television. Then a producer pointed to a chunk of description (which I’d thought was a clever way of replacing exposition) and said, “give me a line for this — they may not be watching.” Not watching? That’s my brilliant image up there!
But come back to the reality of the medium. It’s at home, not a darkened theatre. No one is captured, and the viewers might be eating, painting toenails, doing homework — you know how it goes. As the creator, of course you want to make the screen so beguiling they won’t turn their eyes away, but if the “viewers” have to get a point, put it in dialogue. People may be listening to the TV more than watching it. That’s not such a bad thing. Whereas viewers are distanced from the screen in theatrical films, voyeurs to other people’s stories, television drama has the effect of people talking to you, or at least talking to each other in your home. It’s compelling in a different way.
When students ask whether I advise them to write for features or television, after I tell them to try both, I ask about their talent. Do they have an ear for the way people speak naturally? Are they able to convey the illusion of today’s speech while actually writing tight, withheld lines? Can they write distinct voices for dissimilar characters? If they don’t have the talent for effective dialogue, I nudge them away from TV because action would be easier for them.
As you contemplate the differences between gigantic theatrical entertainment and what works on a family-sized TV or personal computer screen, take the next step: what sort of storytelling and filmmaking is likely to be successful on a screen the size of a cell phone?
So, no, television is not a small version of movies; it’s a different medium; and it’s bigger. Yes, bigger. The most successful features are seen by millions of people in theatres, and more when the movies are downloaded from websites, rented as DVDs, and rerun on TV. But even a moderately successful series, if it continues for enough years to go into syndication, is seen by hundreds of millions — all those lights glowing from screens around the world.
MYTH 2: TV IS CHEAP.
Well, I don’t think $5–$20 million to produce a single hour is all that cheap, or more than $100 million for a full season. Sure, when you compare that television hour to a two-hour feature whose budget is more than the GNP of several small countries, maybe it doesn’t seem so much. But at the high-end no one’s hurting in TV, and for writers, being on a series is a way to get rich (more about staff work in Chapter Six). Of course, not all series are on the high end, and the business side of television is more like a manufacturing company than an entrepreneurial venture. Pay scales (at least the floors) are set by guilds and unions, and a budget for the year is managed by the show’s executives. It’s a lot of money, but it’s all allocated. So toward the end of a season, some shows do tighten their belts. One showrunner gave me a single instruction as I joined his series: “It doesn’t rain in this town.” After he had sprung for high-profile guest stars, overtime shooting, and sweeps week specials, he couldn’t afford to make rain on the set for the rest of the year. You may have noticed another sign of overrun: the “wrap-around” episode — the one where the main character relives his previous episodes. Chances are, those memories were triggered not by nostalgia, but by the need to use clips instead of spending on production.
That said, series budgets are ample for what you want dramatically within the world of the show. As a writer, your investment needs to be in the quality of the story and depth of feelings you can elicit rather than production dazzle, so avoid: distant or difficult locations, special effects, extreme stunts, large guest casts, crowd scenes, and CGI (computer-generated images) unless those are part of your series. If you write them, they’ll probably be cut, and by tightening you gain focus on the main characters, which are the strength of television drama.
MYTH 3: YOU CAN’T DO THAT ON TV.
Come on, you can do anything on cable television — language, nudity, controversial subjects or lifestyles, experiments in ways of telling stories. However, broadcast stations are licensed by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), which obligates them to operate in the public interest. So local stations are susceptible to pressure from groups which might threaten their licenses when they’re up for renewal; and the networks, which also own stations, are sensitive to public mores — though those cultural standards change with time. Certainly, public norms have come a long way since the 1950s when married couples had to be shown fully dressed and sleeping in separate beds. Now even the least adventurous television is closer to real life. And none of this applies to HBO, Showtime, or other cable outlets.
The old days of censorship are past — but not entirely. In 2004, network censors stunned the creators of ER. It involved one episode where an 81-year-old woman is having a medical exam — an emotional moment in which the elderly woman learns about cancer, and some of her aged breast is visible. Essential for the dramatic impact of the scene, the show’s producers argued, but the network pressured them to re-edit the scene so the breast could not be glimpsed.
A new level of accommodation was reached when HBO’s bold drama The Sopranos was sold into syndication on A&E. Having planned ahead, HBO filmed alternate scenes and lines during the original production. While most of the “sanitized” episodes retain their power, some bizarre moments result, like Paulie (a tough gangster) cursing about the “freakin” snow while they go off to kill someone. That sort of thing drives some serious writers to cable where they can practice their art without interference… although, even there, Syfy Channel’s Battlestar Galactica made do with “frack.”
So, yes, on broadcast television some limits still exist. But here’s my advice: Don’t censor yourself as you write your first draft. Have your characters talk and behave the way people actually do today. Stay real. If a word or image has to be edited, fix it later, but keep the pipeline open to how people truly are, because that’s the source of powerful writing.
MYTH 4: ALL TV SERIES ARE THE SAME.
I once heard that statement from a producer who’d been successful in the era before audiences had unlimited channels and websites to surf. Now, with competition for fresh programming, a show that rests on formulas and conventional prototypes risks going unnoticed, cancelled after four episodes.
But television series do follow rules, and you’ll find a list of them at the end of this chapter.
MYTH 5: TELEVISION IS A WASTELAND.
In 1961, Newton Minnow, an FCC Commissioner, declared television a “vast wasteland,” and the epithet stuck. Minnow was referring to shows such as Bonanza, The Flintstones, and Mr. Ed in an era when three networks, each smaller than now, shared airwaves that were considered a scarce commodity, dedicated to informing or elevating the public. The talking horse just didn’t do it for him.
Well, half a century later, part of the wasteland has become a garbage dump strewn with fake jilted lovers beating up on each other on so-called “Unscripted” shows. The rest ranges from televangelists to pornography, political pundits to purveyors of snake oil, sports to scientific discoveries, wannabe singers to singing animals, and includes fiction of all kinds that may be funny, freaky, fascinating, or familiar. And some is brilliant literature, on a par with the greatest writing and filmmaking created anywhere. Those are the shows I focus on when teaching hour drama, because I believe that you learn best if you learn from the best. As to the wasteland — with a thousand channels and sites, and access to programming from every era of television history and from all over the world, television is whatever you choose to watch.
Nor is television monolithic, even within American primetime. I’ve heard people disparage TV as aimed at 12-year-olds. I answer Yes, TV shows are aimed at 12-year-olds — if you watch certain stations at 8 PM. Pre-teen and teen programming fills the early evening shows on the CW, Fox, and some cable outlets, attracting viewers whom advertisers believe are especially susceptible to their commercials. Beyond sales of acne medications and cosmetics, some of those shows even link to websites where viewers can buy the clothing styles worn by the actors.
I don’t recommend emulating those shows as you learn to write, but I do understand that very young writers may be more comfortable with characters close to their own age. If a student sincerely tells me that she hasn’t had enough life experience to deal with adult issues or relationships, but wants to learn the craft, I direct her to a well-written show with a young cast. Friday Night Lights was a perfect case of honestly observed high school students written with insight. So if you’d like to write teen television, go ahead. If you choose truth as your guide, your script will ring true at any age.
Traditionally, the primetime evening, from 8 PM to 11 PM, was divided into components:
8:00 PM — family sitcoms featuring children, “Unscripted” game shows and contests, teen melodramas.
8:30 PM — more sitcoms, though not necessarily with children, “Unscripted/Reality,” teen shows continue.
9:00 PM — sophisticated comedies, hour dramas that are thoughtful, romantic, inspirational, or teen.
10:00 PM — the most sophisticated hour dramas for adults; on cable, serious half-hour “dramedies;” historic miniseries.
At least that’s how it used to line up. Of course, now you can view anything at any time on demand or by recording the show, and cable reruns its programming throughout the week. Most networks stream their programming on the Internet, and if for some reason you still haven’t caught the show, you can buy or rent the DVD.
So you’d think that the traditional schedule is meaningless. Funny thing, though — despite all the alternate options, most people still watch shows at the time they’re broadcast. Programmers at networks still vie to “counter-program” their rivals, and “appointment viewing” is still the goal — making people feel it’s so important to catch the latest installment of True Blood that they will make plans to be in front of a screen at 9 PM on Sunday night, even though they could easily view it any day later.
Most talented writers want to work on the 9 PM or 10 PM shows, and in fact those are the ones I recommend learning. When you’re out in the business, though, you may find more openings at 8 PM and in less lofty outlets at first. That’s okay, you have to start somewhere, and in Chapter Six you’ll read about breaking in.
True Blood
THE RULES OF SERIES TV
• AN HOUR SHOW HAS TO FIT IN AN HOUR.
Actually, a network or basic cable hour is more like 45 minutes, plus commercial breaks, although pay cable may take the entire time. Usually, scripts for drama series are between 50 and 60 pages, though a fast-talking show like The West Wing sometimes went to 70 pages. On networks that break shows into five acts plus a teaser, writers are stuck with reduced screen time, and find themselves with 8-page acts and scripts coming in around 48 pages. Each script is timed before production, and if it runs long (despite the page count), the writer needs to know what to trim in dialogue or which action to tighten; or if it runs short, where a new beat could add depth or a twist, not simply padding. And you need the craft to get it revised overnight, which leads to the next rule:
• SERIES DEADLINES ARE FOR REAL.
Your show is on every week, and that means there’s no waiting for your muse, no honing the fine art of writing-avoidance, no allowing angst to delay handing in your draft. If you can’t make the deadline, the show-runner has to turn over your work to another writer.
From the time your episode is assigned, you’ll probably have one week to come in with an outline, a few days to revise it, two weeks to deliver the first-draft teleplay, a gap of a couple of days for notes, then one week to write your second draft — a total of around six weeks from pitch to second draft (although polishes and production revisions will add another couple of weeks or so). Maybe that sounds daunting, but once you’re on a staff you’re living the series, and the pace can be exhilarating. You’ll hear your words spoken by the actors, watch the show put together, and see it on screen quickly too.
It’s fun until the nightmare strikes. On a series, the nightmare is a script that “falls out” at the last minute. It may happen like this: The story seems to make sense when it’s pitched. The outline comes in with holes, but the staff thinks it can be made to work. Then they read the first draft and see that the problems aren’t solved. It’s given to another writer to fix. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Preproduction, including sets, locations, casting have to go ahead if the script is going to shoot next week. Tick tock. Another draft, and the flaw — maybe an action the lead character really wouldn’t do, or a plot element that contradicts the episode just before or after, or a forced resolution that’s not credible — now glares out at everyone around the table. Yet another draft, this time by the supervising producer. Tick tock. Or maybe it’s not the writer’s fault: the exact fictional crisis depicted has suddenly occurred in real life, so the episode can’t be aired. The script has to be abandoned — it “falls out.” Meanwhile, the production manager is waiting to prep, and publicity has gone out.
I once heard a panel discussion where a respected showrunner told this very nightmare. The cast and crew were literally on the set and absolutely had to start shooting that day for the episode to make the air date. But they had no script. In desperation, the showrunner, renowned as a great writer, commenced dictating as a secretary transcribed and runners dashed to the set bringing one page at a time. A hand shot up from an admirer in the panel audience, “Was it the best thing you ever wrote?” “No,” he laughed, “it didn’t make sense.”
• DRAMA SERIES HAVE AN ACT STRUCTURE.
Put away your books on three-act structure. Television dramas on networks have for decades been written in four acts, though many broadcast shows now use five acts, and a few are broken into six. You’ll learn more about that in Chapter Four, where a teleplay is analyzed. For now, think about what happens every 13 to 15 minutes on a traditional network show. You know: a commercial break. These breaks aren’t random; they provide a grid for constructing the episode in which action rises to a cliffhanger or twist (“plot point” may be a familiar term if you’ve studied feature structure). Each of the four segments are “acts” in the same sense as plays have real acts rather than the theoretical acts described in analyzing features. At a stage play, at the end of an act the curtain comes down, theatre lights come up, and the audience heads for refreshments or the restrooms. That’s the kind of hard act break that occurs in television. Writers plan toward those breaks and use them to build tension.
Once you get the hang of it, you’ll discover that act breaks don’t hamper your creativity; they free you to be inventive within a rhythmic grid. And once you work with that 10- to 15-minute block, you may want to use it off-network and in movies. In fact, next time you’re in a movie theatre, notice the audience every 15 minutes. You may see them shifting in their seats. I don’t know whether 15-minute chunks have been carved into contemporary consciousness by the media, or if they’re aspects of human psychology which somehow evolved with us, but the 15-minute span existed before television. In the early 20th century motion pictures were distributed on reels that projectionists had to change every 15 minutes. Then, building on that historical pattern, some screenwriting theorists began interpreting features as eight 15-minute sequences. Whatever the origin, four acts became the original template for drama series on the networks.
But as the value of advertising segments declined on traditional networks, more commercials began to be inserted to make up for the loss, leading to series written in five acts. These may also have a teaser (explained in Chapter Three) which is sometimes almost as long as an act, giving an impression of six acts, each around eight to ten pages long. On the other side of the spectrum, premium cable series like those on HBO and Showtime have no act breaks, and may be structured more like movies.
Despite the push to crowd more advertising into shows, the effort is doomed. Viewers recording on TiVo and other devices easily skip the commercials. Downloaded versions have ads, but not in a way that interrupts the story. So after several years swinging from four-act structure to five and six acts — between 2006 and 2011 — and an aversion to act break structure on premium cable, a surprising reversal has occurred. If you look at the writer’s first drafts of many hour dramas, ranging from House (which airs in five acts plus a teaser) to Breaking Bad to The Wire, you’ll see the four-act structure back again. From a construction viewpoint, it just plain works, even if it is adjusted in the final drafts later.
• EACH SERIES FITS A FRANCHISE.
Not Starbucks, although enough caffeine is downed on late rewrites to earn that franchise too. Some typical television franchises include police/ detective, legal, medical, sci-fi, action-adventure, and family. Each brings expectations from the audience that you should know, even if you challenge them. For series creators, franchises are both boundaries and opportunities. You’ll find more about how shows are created in Chapters Two and Five, and in “Spotlight On Writing Your Pilot Script,” but you can get a clue why franchises are useful if you ask how hundreds of stories can derive from a single premise.
The solution is to find “springboards” that propel dramatic conflicts or adventures each episode. Those catalysts occur naturally in most of the franchises: a crime sets the cop on a quest for the perp; someone in trouble beseeches lawyers who must mount a case; a patient is brought for a doctor to save. The hook for each episode is rooted in a specific world in which sympathetic main characters must take immediate action. In other franchises — family, workplace, high school and romantic dramas, for example — springboards are less obvious, relying on conflicts between characters rather than outside provocations. In these, a personal inciting incident (even if it’s internal) sets each episode in motion.
Decades ago, audiences expected the franchises to deliver predictable storytelling where any problem could be resolved within the hour, as many procedural shows still do. Take westerns, for example. The template was the frontier town threatened by bad guys (black hats). The good guy marshal (white hat) wrangles with weak or corrupt townspeople, gets a few on his side (room for one exceptional guest role), defends the town against the black hats, and rides off into the sunset.
With that old formula in mind, think about HBO’s Deadwood. Yup, there’s the bad frontier town of rough nasties. And it has an ex-marshal, a lead character who left his badge in Montana to forge a future on the edge of the abyss. But similarities to the franchise are superficial. Everyone in Deadwood is surviving any way they can in a world without an outside redeemer, struggling to make sense of life in a moral wilderness.
Clearly House, Grey’s Anatomy, and Nurse Jackie all use the medical franchise, where doctors (and nurses) must deal with new cases each week. But if you compare them to older examples, such as Marcus Welby, M.D., you’ll see how far House and the others have to stretch to reflect contemporary life. Welby, the kindly doctor, free of deep introspection, worked alone in his nice little office. But real doctors and nurses face ethical and legal issues as they treat both the victim of a gunshot and the man who shot him, and they cope with their own humanity — guilt, exhaustion, ambition, and the competing pulls of the job and the rest of life, including romance and self-doubt on Grey’s, addiction on Nurse Jackie, and a doctor’s deep psychological issues on House. To express today’s medical whirlwind, the form itself needed to change. ER developed “vignette” techniques in which multiple short stories flit by, some on top of each other, and Grey’s continued that layering.
From the moment ABC slotted Grey’s Anatomy to follow Desperate Housewives, the network mandated the tone: “Sex and the Surgery.” Executive Producer Shonda Rhimes responded in Los Angeles Magazine, “I don’t think of it as a medical drama. It’s a relationship show with some surgery thrown in. That’s how I’ve always seen it.”
Meanwhile, the family drama franchise is flourishing — like Big Love, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad. Some families. I suppose you could call True Blood a family drama too, because episodes emanate from relationships among the continuing cast (some of whom are related or “living” together) as much as external events. Not exactly Leave It To Beaver. Take a closer look and see if you can identify the elements that update the franchises on your favorite shows. Think about how you’d compare Mad Men to The Wonder Years — both character-driven shows of an era gone by. What has changed?
In the detective franchise, a light show like Monk on USA played out the traditional form: one detective gets one new crime mystery each week and, after investigating red herrings that fall mostly at the act breaks, cleverly solves it by the end of the hour. Though Monk’s obsessive-compulsive characterization was a fresh, entertaining element, structurally this was a basic “A” story series (more about A–B–C storytelling in Chapter Three). Check out the shows this basic cable channel mounted after the end of Monk to ride that popularity: quirky main characters in predictable plots.
This kind of imitation is hardly creative, but from a programmer’s viewpoint it’s safe, and if you find yourself in one of those formulaic shows, here’s my advice: use the formula, but inhabit it with people and their true feelings set amidst honest social concerns. If you fulfill the minimum expectations, executives may never notice how much further you’ve gone, and you’ll have a better writing sample for yourself (not to mention doing your soul some good).
On higher profile police/detective series, on both broadcast and cable, you’ll see mostly ensemble casts and complex intertwining plots that are propelled by issues in the news or social concerns. Some use cutting-edge forensic technology, as in CSI, Fringe, and several others, where the real star is science that engages the intellect. Detectives have always solved puzzles, of course, but the show’s audience seems fascinated with futuristic tools that try the bounds of human capability.
Series that rely on stories that are solved by investigative procedures are called “procedurals” and include forensics (CSI), detective work (Law & Order), and medical diagnoses (House) that follow clues to wrap up a new case each week. Procedurals will be discussed in depth in a Spotlight between Chapter Three and Chapter Four, including hybrid shows like The Good Wife.
Along with the many casually watched procedurals, viewers are following densely plotted novelized series with the kind of passion studio executives crave. Dana Walden, president of the 20th Century Fox Television studio, told The New York Times in October, 2006, “We were all having conversations about event drama, and an event drama is a serialized drama.”
But how many hours will people devote every week to intense serialized dramas? And if you miss the first few episodes, it’s like reading a novel beginning in the middle. Would audiences become commitment-phobic?
CSI
Several solutions exist: catch-up marathons (as all serialized shows on cable run), replays and streaming available on many Internet sites, and DVDs. In fact, sales of Lost after its first year validated the whole business of selling DVDs of entire seasons of series, which was just emerging at that time. On Showtime, Dexter, a character-driven psychological thriller, offers an interactive clues game on the Showtime website to hold its fans. Webisodes, going as far as parallel series produced solely for Internet distribution as were made by Lost and Battlestar Galactica, are now the norm.
Monumental history-based series such as Rome and The Tudors proved the staying power of dense storytelling, not just as “limited series” (which used to be called “miniseries”), but also across seasons similar to regular programs. Though history is necessarily book-ended by lives — Marc Antony and Cleopatra died, and so did King Henry, not to mention all those queens — and their long narrative is less than infinite, these shows are examples of developing depth of character in a societal context. After considering them, take a look at Treme, for a more recent, brilliant exploration of how to work stories through an extreme historic place and time.
Still, the broadcast networks find it prudent to fill their schedules with reliable procedural franchises. And yet, those are volatile too. For example, the action-adventure franchise that thrived in the days of easy bad guys like The A-Team and Starsky & Hutch has transformed to shows like The Closer, in which a character said “I’m in America observing an empire on its deathbed, a tourist doing charitable work among the addicted and sexually diseased.” In this context, Showtime’s Sleeper Cell was an ambitious attempt to dramatize a range of characters and motives that are unfamiliar to most Americans. The action and adventure in shows like those emanate from the terrain, rather than having the franchise itself control the story.
The Walking Dead
Nor could great drama like The Wire be defined by its franchise, though it obviously had cops and robbers. And obviously a family drama built on personal relationships among the ensemble. And obviously a spiritual quest built on confronting mortality and the will to survive, even in hell. It was all of those and more, which is part of what happens when creative possibilities are allowed to expand.
That’s evident in the range of science fiction — now there’s a genre that has boldly gone where science fiction hadn’t gone before on TV. While the Syfy Channel (owned by NBC-Universal) continues a predictable roll-out of fantasy adventures like Stargate SGI, Eureka, and any number of fright movies (Mansquito, anyone?), which serve its niche audience without extending it, the channel also lucked into the critically-acclaimed Battle-star Galactica, which was sometimes a more searing political allegory than even West Wing was, while venturing into contemporary relationships on the level of premium cable dramas. At the same time, Fringe, using a traditional science-fiction genre, became a network hit, attracting viewers who are not traditional sci-fi fans, and the adventurous programming on AMC is bringing not only Mad Men and Breaking Bad but also The Walking Dead — a quality drama about zombies.
If I had to guess the frontier of science fiction writing on television, I would look toward the characters. In 20th century sci-fi series, the leading edge was technology as used by fantasy heroes, usually “perfect,” in action-heavy battles between good and evil, which tended to play to children and adolescents. Though contemporary sci-fi/fantasy shows are as different as Lost is from Fringe or Battlestar Galactica or The Walking Dead, they all follow flawed human beings, and the questions they explore involve both relationships and serious issues about what it is to be a citizen of this planet; and they’re watched by wide demographics. With so much range in this franchise, if you’re interested in trying it, I suggest reaching up toward real dramatic writing, and leave cartoon-like thinking to the movies.
The vitality of 21st century television drama has re-interpreted traditional franchises. But that doesn’t mean they’ll disappear. When I was a beginner freelancing any show that would give me a break, I landed an assignment on Mike Hammer, a network detective series. At my first meeting, the producer handed me two pages of guidelines. The first was titled “Mike Hammer Formulaic Structure.” On the second were rules for writing Mike, for example, “Mike speaks only in declarative sentences.” To be a strong man, he could never ask questions, you see.
The formula went something like this: At the top of the show, a sympathetic character approaches Mike for help. At the end of Act One the sympathetic character is found dead. In Act Two Mike is on the trail of the killer, only to find him dead at the Act break, and yet someone else has been killed (proving there’s a different killer). In Act Three the real bad guy goes after Mike, and at the Act Three break, Mike is in mortal jeopardy. Act Four is entirely resolution, one-to-one, Mike against the killer. And guess who wins. As I started, I thought such a rigid form would be stultifying, but I discovered it was fun. Relieved of certain structure choices, I felt free to be inventive with the guest cast and the kinds of situations that could lead to the turns and twists.
Years later, an executive of the Children’s Television Workshop (makers of Sesame Street) asked me to develop and write a pilot for a children’s series, later named Ghostwriter, that would be structured like primetime network dramas, complete with long character arcs, parallel stories, complex relationships, among a diverse ensemble cast, and even references to controversial issues. I’d never written for kids, but I was intrigued. In forming the series with the CTW team, we began by identifying a general franchise — in this case detectives, because solving mysteries was a way to involve the whole cast and incite each episode’s quest. Beyond that, we stayed close to what human beings truly care about, how they reveal themselves, and what makes people laugh, cry, be scared, and fall in love — people of any age.
Ghostwriter was originally intended for kids around eight years old to encourage them to read. But CTW was astounded when research reported that the audience age range went from four years to sixteen. That’s not even a demographic. I think the show exceeded anyone’s expectations because the realistic characters rested on a franchise that was so robust it could carry not only a very young cast but also some educational content while moving the stories forward with high tension.
But when is a franchise not a franchise? Dick Wolf, creator of Law & Order, told Entertainment Weekly, “Law & Order is a brand, not a franchise. It’s the Mercedes of television. The cars are very different, but if you buy a Mercedes, you’re still getting a good car. CSI is a franchise — like certain restaurants. CSI is the same show set in different cities, while the Law & Order shows are all very different from each other.” No doubt CSI, which still competes head to head with Law & Order, which is in perpetual reruns, would describe itself as an even bigger car.
Large as CSI and Law & Order may be, the stretch-limousines of franchise enhancement belong to HBO. With the 2011 arrival of Game of Thrones, based on a quasi-medieval imaginary world, the question is if this show will do for fantasy what Deadwood did for Westerns and The Sopranos did for gangsters. Like Deadwood, The Sopranos, Rome, and Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones uses history and screen tradition only as a starting point to develop unsentimental relationships observed with such honesty they transcend the prototype. Bluntly realistic, Thrones can be seen as a reaction against fantasy clichés such as the struggle between absolute good and evil. Villains wrestle with scruples, heroes compromise, and moral rigidity will get you killed. It’s a complex narrative that continues expanding the possibilities of writing for TV.
When you’re ready to plan a script as your showpiece for a series, ask yourself what the underlying franchise is. Even if the show is innovative and evolved beyond the tradition, the franchise may give you tips for constructing your outline (more on this in Chapter Four).
READY, SET, GO!
Writing primetime TV drama series is an adventure into an expanding universe. If you rise above outdated ideas about television, and have pride in your talent so that you never write down, you can create for the most powerful medium in the world. In the next chapters you’ll find the tools you’ll need, so get ready to jump on a moving rocket!
SUMMARY POINTS
TV drama series have unique qualities:
• Characters continue over many episodes instead of concluding a dramatic arc as in a two-hour movie. Focus on depth of characters rather than looking for characters to change.
• Storylines may evolve over many episodes, especially in serials. Emphasize increments or installments of a series-long quest rather than tying up a plot. However, most shows have some stories that “close” (resolve) within an episode while other dramatic arcs continue.
• Network and basic cable drama series are written in acts marked by cliffhangers at commercial breaks, though premium cable shows may not have formal act breaks.
• Certain franchises offer springboards that suggest hundreds of stories from a show’s premise.
WHAT’S NEW?
Adventurous cable programming, new markets, and new delivery options have spurred growth and change in television, and provide fresh opportunities for writers. Examples from current shows and re-interpreted franchises demonstrate some of the possibilities.
SPOTLIGHT ON WRITING “DRAMEDY”
The best thing I can say about the term “dramedy,” which conflates the words drama and comedy, is that it’s better than the alternate: “coma,” although that might actually be a closer fit considering how unconsciously the label is applied to nearly everything on television.
The techniques of balancing serious subjects and humor go back as long as humans have told stories. I can imagine a cave person sitting before a fire relaying how Moog-The-Brave chased a rabbit around a tree until he fell down dizzy; I see the wise storyteller waiting artfully for the laugh from his audience, exactly before the reveal that while Moog was on the ground, the rabbit turned back, leapt for his neck and killed him. Humor set up the listeners to be shocked by the serious turn. Shakespeare was pretty good at that, I hear — creating a comic foil immediately before the most tragic scenes. All the great Shakespearean tragedies have some comedy. But do you really want to belittle them with the label “dramedy”?
The effort to define types of stories began with ancient Greek philosophers, who divided literature into tragedy, which ended with the death or destruction of a hero, while comedy focused on ordinary people and ended with their success. In later centuries the division was simplified into tragedy describing plays where people died at the end, and comedy where they didn’t. The word “drama” referred to all the action in the middle, funny or not.
Then came commercial American television with a need for promotional categories. By the 1960s, the system was codified by the networks: half-hours were situation comedies (“sitcoms”), and hours were dramas. The sitcoms usually had a live audience or laugh track so no one could miss the point that it was funny. Hours were unfunny genres dealing with police or doctors or western gunfighters, and later serialized soap operas. Even today, if you visit a network headquarters — and also many production companies and even talent agencies — you will see the architecture split. Often one side of the reception desk leads to the comedy offices with their own executives and staffs, and the other side are the drama people. You might pitch to the Vice President for Drama Development or the Vice President for Comedy Development, but not both.
Problem is, it doesn’t make sense any more, and hasn’t for a long time. The best half-hour comedies have emotional storylines and sometimes comment sharply on contemporary issues. Very few are filmed before live audiences, and no one would be caught with a 1970s type of laugh track. Meanwhile, both the Emmy Awards and the Writers Guild place various dramas in the comedy category even though they are an hour long because they are so light or because their intentions are comedic. It’s a slippery slope on both sides.
The idea of half-hours having to be funny has been ingrained in the public even if creators want to stretch. As a young writer in the late 1980s, I was on the staff of Frank’s Place, a half-hour in which the showrunner wanted to handle serious subjects. It was set in a funeral parlor in New Orleans and had a predominantly African-American cast (rare then and now) who dealt with stories that involved mortality, ethnicity, class distinctions, and regionalism. From the outset, it wasn’t going to fly.
The creator, gifted writer-producer Hugh Wilson, had a comedy background with success on the hilarious WKRP In Cincinnati and the Police Academy movies. How dare he attempt drama, the critics thought. And then there was the audience, who wrote letters — yes, actual letters because it was the 20th century — telling us the show wasn’t funny enough. Well, the episode when the old man died wasn’t intended to be funny. Heartbreaking, insightful, amazing, suspenseful, whatever, but it wasn’t supposed to be funny. Finally, the battle was lost. The series became a half-hour comedy. I’m not a comedy writer, and I was long gone before it ended. But to me it was an education in expectations.
So we’re free of all that in the 21st century, right? Uhhhh… well, currently there’s Nurse Jackie, Hung, United States of Tara, The Big C, Weeds, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Entourage, and previously Sex and the City among half-hours that are borderline comedy/dramas. Looking at the hours, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Glee, and previously Ugly Betty, Boston Legal, Ally McBeal, and Gilmore Girls are among hour shows considered comedies by the TV Academy and Guilds. Very little on either list is laugh-out-loud funny.
Generally the attributes of “dramedies” are these: continuity of character and storylines, including serialized episodes, depth of backstories, and development of dramatic arcs, as opposed to the setup/joke paradigm where laughs are expected at specified intervals. “Dramedies” may be light, but if they have laughs at all, they would be of a wry or ironic sort. As to why they are not pure dramas, on the other hand, the characters might be less deep — closer to caricatures — and might tend to zaniness, as in Weeds or The Big C, or focus on clever or jokey dialogue quips, as in Gilmore Girls.
So what? Parsing these definitions matters to you because you are entering a field where the boundaries are dissolving. A term like “dramedy” makes a show harder to write because it causes you to think of all shows flowing into an amorphous funny/serious heap. It helps to have something to hold onto — benchmarks in history and in previous shows and in expectations.
If you are writing the hour drama series, you will find yourself bringing some comedy to the table some of the time, especially in episodes where you’re building to tragedy. If you are writing something that intends to be funny, you must have a strong hold on the underlying dramatic elements. No one can get away with joke-to-joke writing in any form longer than three-minute webisodes. And outside of children’s adventures, no one can get away with unrelieved “dramatic” action that lacks a perspective of humor at times. In writing today’s TV drama series, you have to do it all. Hey, Shakespeare did okay.
GUEST SPEAKER: DAVID ISAACS
David Isaacs has multiple Emmy nominations for his writing on shows ranging from M*A*S*H to Mad Men. Having written a full spectrum of sitcoms before arriving at a drama series, I asked for his wisdom on the difference.
Pamela Douglas: What is it that makes something a comedy? What makes something a drama?
David Isaacs: Not to be glib, but the easy definition would be comedy is more situational. We’re watching the moment-to-moment foibles of regular folks as they stumble through their lives. Comedies tend to be structured around an identifiable premise like Everybody Loves Raymond, which is about a guy who is trying to strike a balance between the family he grew up in and the family his marriage has created. We laugh at that because we see ourselves in it — that’s my family or somebody’s family we know. That’s traditional.
The comedies we have now tend to be ironic, or snarky, such as 30 Rock or The Office, which poke fun at an institution. So it’s looking for the vulnerability of people and how we all laugh at each other’s mistakes and pain from a distance.
Drama, to me anyway, deals with human conflict on a much deeper level. Life, death, illness, malice, personal and family dysfunction. The stakes are profound. It’s no wonder that most of our filmed drama revolves around police work, hospitals, and the judicial system. They deal in humanity.
PD: Yet we can point to shows that have both, some that are a half-hour long and are awfully dramatic and hours that aren’t weighty.
DI: I think that has a great deal to do with the proliferation of networks. There’s just more room to experiment and cross over. USA Network has a whole set of series, Burn Notice and Royal Pains, for example, that are tongue-in-cheek dramas. On ABC, Desperate Housewives is a drama that satirizes drama. The HBO half-hours seem to be situational, but portray more inappropriate heroes, as in Hung, Entourage, or Eastbound & Down. The half-hours on Showtime seem to be darker, delving into traditionally dramatic topics: Weeds, Nurse Jackie, United States of Tara, The Big C.
PD: All of those are heavily character-driven more than situational and they tackle serious issues. How do they call themselves comedy?
DI: Well I’d have to give them their own category: Dark Comedies. I was thinking about M*A*S*H in comparison to those shows and I don’t think you could find something as dramatic, as filled with humanity, than war. What’s worse than young people destroyed for a cause that was tenuous at best? But M*A*S*H was so much part of its time. You’d call it edgy in 1975, but you wouldn’t call it edgy now. You’d have to do it in a more graphic way.
These cable half-hours are in that tradition. In my opinion Nurse Jackie is a progeny of M*A*S*H, but Jackie can go so much further in depicting some really grim stuff. She deals with the day-to-day madness in somewhat the same fashion as the characters in M*A*S*H. There is a steady stream of wounded and dying, it’s soul-wrenching work, and the healthiest people — Hawkeye, Trapper — realize that if they can’t poke fun at it, if they can’t laugh, they will go insane, they will lose it. Jackie’s not away in Korea, she has a husband and family, but she’s just as dedicated to saving lives. The steady glimpse into tragedy, though, takes its toll in any hospital, and so she’s starting to fall apart inside, using drugs, having an affair. You couldn’t have done that thirty years ago. So the edge is further out there.
Mad Men
PD: For years you wrote comedy and then you wrote for Mad Men. How is that different for a writer to change from comedy to drama?
DI: If you do television comedy like Cheers or Frasier, in front of an audience, it was very much about attitudinal conflict. So as a writer of comedies you’re writing in a world where there are no unexpressed thoughts.
Writing for Mad Men was suddenly about the subtext. It was about insular action, almost novelistic. That was a big adjustment. I had written movies and I understood we’re telling it a different way. However in traditional TV comedy, where I grew up, we were writing argument to argument until we hit the real conflict and hopefully the funny. With Mad Men there was very little reaching a flashpoint.
I’ll give you an example. In the midst of the second season of Mad Men we were dealing with the character of Pete, our entitled account exec. The build-up had been Pete and his wife trying to get pregnant, and failing that, adopting a child. And his wife was constantly pressuring him. There was the conflict too of Pete being in love with Peggy. None of it was being expressed, but the audience is certainly aware of what’s going on with Pete and the pressure he’s brought on himself. There was a scene where Pete arrived home and his wife was going to confront him about moving ahead with the adoption and it was going to blow up. We were all struggling with what should happen. Then I remembered something my father had done when I was little. He came home one night and was upset about something at work. My mother had cooked him something he didn’t want. We lived in a second floor apartment. My father took the food and threw it out the window. It was a shocking thing. No argument up to it, just all that unspoken backstory pouring out in this incongruous act — this uptight patrician couple acting so working class. And Matt [Weiner] said that’s great; that’s exactly what we should do.
PD: If beginning writers think they’re comedy writers but they want to write drama, what do they do with their talent? Can you do both in an hour drama? Clearly there are some hour dramas that are branded as comedies. The Television Academy and the Writers Guild didn’t know what to call Boston Legal — half the time it was judged in the comedy category for Emmy Awards and half the time as a drama. There are a lot of hybrids out there now.
DI: The short answer is you can do both. Matt Weiner, who created Mad Men, did only half-hours until he switched gears and wrote the Mad Men pilot as a spec. That script got him on The Sopranos, where he learned a whole different approach under David Chase. After The Sopranos ended, Matt got to make Mad Men as he had written it.
The key in all of this is character. It really is about character. Drama or comedy, or both, that’s what drives you through a story. Even in a procedural like CSI, you’re still invested in writing three-dimensional characters, characters with desires and personal flaws getting in the way of their work. You really have to approach a script through the characters, no matter how far flung the idea, no matter how high concept it is as comedy — something like 3rd Rock from the Sun — as wild and crazy as that was, the writers created a very definitive group of characters. They were from another planet, but there was a real family dynamic between them.
There’s no difference in that from watching The Wire, which may be the greatest television show I’ve ever seen. There you have a group of cops who are working together to counter the most base, despicable behavior by a group of people who themselves are being exploited by another group of people who are just downright evil. And these cops are thrown together and they all have their own problems. And yet somehow, they’re like family to the viewer. You’re wondering how this force they’re fighting against is going to affect their lives. What will be the fate? And plenty of funny things go on in that, humor on a level that is again very dark, but you’re laughing because it lightens the moment; it relieves tension.
New writers have to understand what creates character and how it guides you to tell a story. Real drama and real comedy are about some condition that people are afflicted by, or an obstacle in their lives, and you eventually find some way for them to deal with that dilemma.
