Writing the TV Drama Series 3rd Edition: How to Succeed as a Professional Writer in TV (25 page)

As you know, externalized actions are basic to any screenwriting. Just as in a feature screenplay, you plan your structure around things that happen. That sounds simplistic, and I wouldn’t bring it up but I’ve seen otherwise-sophisticated students become so involved with the psychology of TV characters they forget that character is expressed in a series of events on screen.

Finally, what do you bring to the party? Of course, you’ll consider ongoing relationships among the cast; those kinds of continuing stories are called “on series,” and are fine to write, but be warned: the large turns in a season’s arc are planned by the showrunners. It would be naïve to spec an episode where Don Draper of
Mad Men
goes for a sex change, or an episode of
House
where the character is nice to everyone, or a
Friday Night Lights
where the Coach realizes he hates football, or where the cast of
The Wire
breaks into a Bollywood dance routine. Don’t do episodes that change the central characters or the course of the show.

Instead, think about incidents you know (or know of), and then play them out in the world of the show. If that’s scary, you’re not alone. Even Aaron Sorkin, creator of
The West Wing
,
Sports Night
,
Studio 60
, and movies including
A Few Good Men
, sometimes has difficulty beginning. He confided at a Writers Guild Foundation seminar in 2004: “It’s bad enough trying to have ideas. When you really start you’re trying to get one. Every day you’re flipping through instantly dismissible ideas, so my head is like the worst movie you’ve ever seen. Horrible, horrible ideas that go nowhere. It’s like being bludgeoned with your own inadequacies.”

One way to break the logjam is through research. Some writers maintain files of clippings from quirky magazines and small town newspapers; others hit the Internet or books. For example, if you were planning a
CSI
, you’d be smart to investigate scientific clues that can be visualized under a microscope, especially if they might reveal a personal secret. If you were researching for
Big Love
, dig up little-known events in Utah or find a fresh angle on running a Home Depot-type store. For a
Law & Order
, you might come across a topical issue on an op-ed page, but come at it with an unexpected interpretation of the law. Now, none of that means you should rely on gimmicks. Clever bits of information do not make stories. But they might turn your own creative wheels.

And here’s how they turn: Make your subject live and breathe through the experiences of your continuing cast. That’s key. The most common error is to tell the story through guest cast. I’m going to repeat that in other words because it’s so important: Don’t write a story that can be told without your continuing cast. If your story could work as a movie without your show, then you haven’t made it work for your show.

Here’s an example of wrong and right ways to approach your story. Let’s make believe you’re planning an episode for a series about Jane and Sally, who are detectives, and you’ve come upon an item about a woman cat burglar who scales tall buildings to steal Manolo Blahnik shoes.

A
wrong
log line would go like this: Portia Pedi, a former rock climbing champion, attempts to scale the Trump Tower at night to acquire the world’s most expensive stilettos, but her clever plan is foiled when she’s caught by Jane and Sally.

A better approach to an episode log line would be more like this: Jane confronts her fear of heights on a ledge of the Trump Tower at night when she must rescue Sally, who has been taken hostage by a woman cat burglar, and together Jane and Sally foil the plan to steal the world’s most expensive stilettos.

See the difference? In the wrong version, the guest cast drives the action of the show and leaves the main cast as mere witnesses or pawns of the guest. In the second version, the challenge, jeopardy and viewpoint belong to the main cast, whose decisions create the turning points.

Once you’ve identified a subject for your spec episode, write it as a log line. (Log lines are discussed in
Chapter Two
, in case you want to refer back.) That’s easier said than done, because in order to state your story in a sentence, you need to know the whole dramatic arc. I understand that’s difficult, but I advise you not to skip ahead. Once you’re clear about your story’s conflict you’ll be secure you really do have a plot, not only a premise.

If you’re working on an “A”-story series, you can move on as soon as you have a single log line, though you’ll need to make sure your one story has sufficient substance for around 28 scenes. If you’re doing a show with three or more stories, you’ll need separate log lines for the “B,” “C,” or other stories, and you do have to figure out each one. With that done, you’re now ready to get to work.

B
REAKING
Y
OUR
S
TORIES

“Breaking a story” means identifying the main turning points. On network TV it involves structuring the episode so strong cliffhangers occur at the act breaks and the story engine runs all the way from the inciting incident in the Teaser (or the beginning of Act One) to the resolution in Act Four or Five.

It’s not a process to take lightly, and even experienced writing staffs wrestle with stories for hours, even days. In addition to placing the act breaks, apply these two basic dramatic tests:

(1)
Credibility:
What would real, normal people do in the situation? Are you forcing the plot twists by contriving actions that stretch believability, or do the actions and responses of the characters follow naturally from the jeopardy or conflict? What’s honest here?

(2)
Rooting interest:
Do you care whether the characters succeed? Are the stakes clear enough and high enough to make an audience root for your protagonist? Will people be emotionally involved?

Once you’ve settled on your essential stories, you can sneak up on the structure by figuring out some tent-poles. The easiest may be your opening because the event that propels the episode is often what attracted you. But even with the most obvious story, you’ll have options: Do you want to open with the guest cast who will present the challenge, or with an internal problem for one of your main cast, or with a goal for one of your main cast which becomes subverted once the guest cast arrives?

Aaron Sorkin told the Writers Guild Foundation seminar how he starts: “I have an idea for the first page and a half for
The West Wing
— which, by the way, no joke, if I know what the first page and a half is of something, I don’t want to say I’m half way home, but I can see the house.”

Whatever it takes for you to see the house — the voice of a character, picturing a place, coming upon a crime scene, getting a case, or confronting a conflicted relationship — close your eyes and make that come to life. Then you’ll be centered in your show’s world, which makes it easier to be real about what happens next.

The second easiest tent-pole is probably the ending. When you chose this subject the final outcome might have been inherent. The body is found at the beginning and the real killer is the one who reported it, or the nice witness, or the secret lover, or whatever. Your challenge is how to arrive at that ending through the main character’s process of discovery or growth, not mainly to solve a crime or cure a disease or manage to survive. So even when you know the ending, you have to get to it, and therein lies the craft of storytelling.

The third tent-pole occurs at the end of Act Three. It’s the “worst case.” Remember, in drama, the worst event is whatever opposes the protagonist’s goal (or the triumph of the antagonist), not necessarily bad stuff that happens. For example, in the hypothetical show about detectives Jane, Sally, and Portia the shoe burglar, the worst case might be that Jane, who is afraid of heights, is forced to venture out on a ledge to rescue Sally. The jeopardy here is not only to Sally, who has been taken hostage, but that Jane has to confront her darkest demons in making herself climb out, and is shaking so badly because of her fears she’s going to blow her one chance at the rescue. That’s the cliffhanger before the Act Three break.

Here’s another example: A doctor fears his wife doesn’t love him anymore and is struggling hard to win her back. During the episode, he has a patient who needs surgery. At the same time it’s raining outside. From a dramatic viewpoint, the worst case is that the wife rejects him, not that the patient dies or the rain turns into a flood, though those circumstances could certainly complicate the character’s quest.

When you know the Act Three “worst case” you’ve nearly solved your basic structure because you can begin figuring backward to how your characters arrived at this crisis. Even if you can fill in no more than one or two beats prior to the act break, you’ll begin to feel the progression.

Now you want to pin down the cliffhangers at the ends of Act One and Act Two. Developing the antagonist might give you some clues. Often (but, of course, not always) the second act is where the opposition that began in Act One gains strength. You know that at the end of Act Three this opposition will appear to have won, so see if you can come up with two surprises. You might discover that the protagonist underestimated the antagonist in the first act but is forced to fight back after a reveal at the end of Act One. In Act Two, maybe the antagonist is not exactly what was expected, or your characters follow a red herring, or they even believe they’ve won, when the antagonist (or problem) re-asserts itself at the Act Two break.

Using our make-believe Jane and Sally show, you might introduce the challenge that someone is stealing shoes in Act One and reveal at the Act One break that the culprit is a woman cat burglar who scales skyscrapers — and that brave Jane is paralyzed by this case because she’s afraid of heights. So in Act Two Sally has to go it alone as Portia becomes more and more bold, endangering many shoes. In fact, Jane’s inability to work on the case leads to Sally being taken hostage at the Act Two break. As the jeopardy deepens through Act Three, it becomes urgent that only Jane can save Sally, and that she has to go out on that ledge or all is lost at the Act Three break. Act Four is pure resolution, and would emerge naturally from the “worst case.”

Of course, that’s a silly story, but I’m trying to give you a broad sense of how to find the big bones of your structure. Your writing is more subtle, more complex, and doesn’t rely on cartoon-like action, right? Still, these “tent-poles” can help you plan:

T
HE
G
RID

Yep, here it is again, doing an encore since the last chapter. This time, though, you’re not noting the various stories of someone else’s script. Now, you can use the grid for your own rough ideas by filling in the major beats I’ve just described — opening, ending, worst case, Act One break, and Act Two break.

The grid is something I’ve created for myself because it helps me see the entire hour at a glance in the earliest stages of figuring it out. If this doesn’t help you, don’t worry about it. The grid is just a planning tool because everybody has to start somewhere, and a blank page might be daunting. Make copies and play with it if you’d like, and vary it for five or six acts if that fits your show.

Chart 4.1 Basic Four-Act Grid

T
HE
O
UTLINE

The first step of writing involves listing the scenes in your script. This process has several names in addition to “!@#$%^&*()+,” which is what you might want to call it when wrestling down the structure. Actual names include “outline,” “step outline,” “beat outline,” “beat sheet,” and “treatment,” but they all amount to figuring out the order of events in your teleplay.

“Treatment” has a specific definition, usually observed only in the breach, and it’s not a word you’ll hear much in television. Technically, a treatment would be a half to two-thirds the length of a finished script written in prose (not screenplay form) that includes every scene in the order it occurs, as well as tone, style and descriptions, and is virtually the entire script lacking only dialogue. Believe me, nobody writes treatments like that. If someone asks you for a “treatment” of your story what they really mean is a few pages that summarize it. Even for full length features, I’ve heard the term “treatment” apply to a three-page pitch. Don’t bother with it unless you’re asked.

A “beat sheet,” as used by some producers, is midway between a treatment and an outline. It parses your show into acts and describes the big story elements, though it doesn’t spell out specific scenes. So we’re talking about seeing the dramatic turns, not a diagram for writing.

“Beat outline” is sometimes used interchangeably with “outline” because it’s a list of what’s actually written in the teleplay, and usually those “beats” are scenes. On one show where I worked, the producers asked writers for a very full outline (like a treatment with numbers), but when the staff met, they would reduce the narrative in the outline to a more skeletal list they called a beat outline so the construction could be analyzed.