The Calling Card Script

by Paul Ashton

  132 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  on so that no other clones after him will have to endure a meaning less exis -

  tence – even though they may never have realised it was meaning less, like

  the other clones before him. It is the depth and extremity of the character’s

  vulnerabilities in the middle that make this story so powerful and so

  engaging in character terms.

  On a less earth-shattering level, the chinks in Frank Gallagher’s thick

  armour are on show in any given Shameless episode in which he looms

  large as a character. Whether it’s the chink that is failing to resist temp -

  tation from his son’s girlfriend, or failing to keep his opinionated mouth

  shut when his daughter kidnaps a child off the street and Frank becomes

  the mouthpiece of the outraged mob, or failing to say anything paternal and

  useful when Debbie is under pressure to lose her virginity and all eyes are

  on him to say something useful. Despite being an extreme and perhaps gro -

  tesque character, the chinks in Frank’s armour are the kinds of things that

  might make any of us vulnerable. When he fails to say anything useful to

  Debbie, he is in much the same position as any man for whom having a

  conversation with their teenage daughter about losing her virginity is just

  about the last conversation in the world they would ever wish to have. The

  thicker the armour, the more ironically susceptible is the heel that remains

  exposed where the plates of armour do not overlap. It is in the middle of the

  story that the plates are pulled apart and the heel begins to be truly exposed.

  DEVELOPING RELATIONSHIPS

  The journey of character is not simply about the depth of the vulnerabilities

  and wounds in their personality that threaten to gape open further. Moon

  is a rarity in its singular character focus. Depth of character is not simply

  an inward-looking phenomenon, but also outward-looking – to do with the

  relationships and the social journey of characters.

  In some stories it is most obviously about just this. Love stories,

  wherever they sit between the rom-com and tragic extremes of the spect -

  rum from Four Weddings to Closer to Romeo and Juliet, are primarily about a relationship between two (or more) lovers.

  But relationships can have infinite variety: families ( Fish Tank),

  friends ( Shifty, Pulling), peer groups ( Skins, Misfits), colleagues ( Casualty, Auf Wiedersehen Pet), neighbours ( Coronation Street, EastEnders), enemies ( Coriolanus), flatmates ( Being Human, Withnail and I), siblings ( Shameless),

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  husband and wife ( Nil by Mouth), locals and outsiders ( The Wicker Man),

  warden and ward ( Children of Men).

  A mistake some writers make is they have a conveyor belt of people

  passing through a character’s story without any one relationship develop -

  ing interestingly or meaningfully. Another mistake is that some writers

  wish to tell a story about loneliness and isolation and do so by simply cut -

  ting characters off from other people – when in fact they might dramatise

  it better through contact and relationships. A man alone in a cabin in the

  woods is remote; a man alone in a city constantly surrounded by people is

  perhaps more poignantly lonely and isolated by virtue of that proximity (Ed

  Hime’s radio play The Incomplete Recorded Works of a Dead Body bril-

  liantly explores this as Babak journeys further into himself the more he

  ventures out into the alien city of London).

  So what is the journey of the character’s relationship? What is the

  muddle that they face once a road has been embarked upon at the start?

  A character journey isn’t in isolation – it is usually relative, contextual,

  social, associated with the journeyings of other characters.

  JOURNEY TOWARDS AWARENESS

  Whatever kind of journey it is – whatever unique combination of physical,

  emotional, psychological, social, political, religious, intellectual elements –

  dramatic characters travel in some way towards a sense of awareness about

  who they are, what they are doing, why they are doing it and what it all

  might mean. In ancient Greek tragedy, this position of insight and aware -

  ness is called the anagnorisis. It is the moment or point at which the

  character is able self-consciously to reflect at the very least momentarily on

  what has changed about who they are, given the journey they been on. In

  Oedipus Rex it is the moment where the hero realises he has unknowingly

  killed his own father and married his mother, and embarks on the irrever -

  sible punishment of stabbing out his own eyes.

  If the characters reach anagnorisis – their sense of understanding and

  clarity – too soon, then the ending is reached too soon. There may be mo -

  ments of false awareness, presumptuous understanding, mistaken clarity,

  deceptive insight, and these are part of the character’s journey through the

  middle. It may be that there is no clarity whatsoever in the middle about

  what the true anagnorisis might be. But if your character never reaches

  134 THE CALLING CARD SCRIPT

  any form or sense of anagnorisis then the dramatic journey has failed

  because it has no meaning, the change has no purpose, the story has no

  point. In the middle the characters must be journeying towards awareness,

  whether fighting to get there or kicking and screaming to avoid it.

  CONTRADICTION

  This journey towards awareness does not mean that points of clarity along

  the way need be clear and simple. Far from it. The complexity that comes

  from contradiction is crucial as the characters make this journey. As they

  try and fail, as their personalities are tested, as their vulnerabilities are

  exposed and as their relationships develop, the picture that will emerge

  should be contradictory because they have not reached an ending yet, and

  therefore have not reached the point of true clarity about what their actions

  have led them to – resolution, disaster or somewhere between the two.

  For the deepening character, contradiction is an ever-present danger

  precisely because they have stepped beyond their comfort zone and are try -

  ing to achieve something that was previously beyond their capability or

  experience. If the path forward is too simple, straight, linear and non-

  contradictory, then what you will offer the audience is the sin of all story -

  telling sins: predictability and tedium.

  Hamlet is full of contradiction between the grief of the beginning and

  the vengeance of the ending. Every step offers the possibility that Hamlet

  will contradict himself because he always has opposing wants and needs and

  thoughts and feelings. This is probably the reason why it is a role craved by

  so many actors and a play so popular with audiences ever since it first

  appeared at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It offers seemingly

  endless variations and possibilities of interpretation because there is so

  much contradiction and complexity and depth of character along the way.

  SURPRISING THEMSELVES

  Although some form of true awareness should come at the end, the capacity

  to realise – to display – new facets, whether good or bad, can come all the

  way thro
ugh the middle. A useful way of using this to make the story sur -

  prising and compelling is to make the characters surprise themselves along

  the way – whether for better or for worse. Billy Elliot may surprise himself

  THE MIDDLE 135

  with his dancing capacity, but he also surprises himself with his failures,

  faults and follies. Sam Tyler, in particular in the earlier episodes of series

  one of Life on Mars, is in a constant state of surprising himself – not only

  by the things he is no longer able to do and achieve due to the lack of

  accustomed technology, but also by the things he is able to achieve in this

  1970s world when he sets his twenty-first-century mind to it. Sam can tend

  to find himself in sticky situations due to the mind-set and policing prin -

  ciples that he has brought with him, yet he is able to surprise himself by

  finding ways to resolve or circumvent those situations without just ditch ing

  his convictions and morality.

  Characters surprising themselves can mean a series of small moments

  of awareness and recognition along the way, but with the real truth and big -

  ger picture not coming clear until the end.

  CHARACTER AND ACTION

  Some characters fade in the middle of the story, as though the plot has

  taken them over and their purpose is simply to people it rather than drive

  it forward. But the plot takes over like this when the character has lost

  purpose and lost their way. When they are not trying to get through the

  muddle – but have simply stopped moving meaningfully altogether. Again,

  it is all about failing better – it is trying and trying, again and again, with

  success never coming easily that keeps the muddle active.

  In Memento, the hero may not remember where he has just been or

  what he has just done – or anything since the traumatic event that he seeks

  to avenge – but he always knows what he’s searching for and that drive

  forward intensifies the more he searches and the closer he believes he is

  getting. The less he continues to remember, the more he must tattoo across

  his body as a record of his investigations and the more complex and mud -

  died and muddled the journey and story and plot become – but his drive to

  find the man he believes took away his life cuts through it.

  CHARACTER AND STRUCTURE

  So remember that character action must keep on coming before plot. It is

  the continuing, developing and changing sense of character that continues

  to drive story, plot and therefore structure. More on structure shortly – but

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  if you are losing your way with plot in the middle, you need to go back to

  character and make them lead us through the gloom towards the ending.

  When the middle sags and wanders it is not because the plot has gone

  wrong, but because the character has failed to sustain the story.

  THE ‘MIDDLE’ IN SERIES AND SERIALS

  This stuff is all well and good when your characters exist in a single, finite,

  one-off story that ends at the end. But what about series and serials for TV

  (and radio)? Some series never end – so how do you conceive usefully of the

  middle?

  Since I don’t think writing a calling-card script for a new soap is

  remotely a good idea, I’m not going to dwell on the difficulties of managing

  short-, medium- and long-term arcs for soaps and continuing drama char -

  acters. Other than to say that you need three things: arcs across the short

  term (the length of an episode), one for the medium term (the length of a

  story strand) and one for the long term (the char acter’s life in a show). In a

  sense, until they either leave or are killed off, soap characters are in a near-

  perpetual state of muddle in the middle, a pattern only broken by the

  conclusion of an episode, or strand, or ultimately their life on a show. And

  even then, some characters end up effectively coming back from the dead

  (like Dirty Den), so even the end isn’t necessarily the end.

  RETURNING SERIES

  In a returning series the relentless demands are somewhat less daunting

  in terms of volume but no less difficult in terms of quality. But you need to

  make a similar distinction between the kinds of middles that you are layer -

  ing and balancing.

  There will be the middle-of-the-episode story, which is crucial but not

  necessarily as life-changing as that in a single drama – otherwise the char -

  acters’ lives could well seem like an unconvincing stream of extraordinary

  moments. The muddle must be relative to the episode story. For crime

  shows, it will be crime-driven but also have some greater impact on the

  characters’ lives than just being an ordinary day in their working life. For

  Frank Gallagher, it will most likely mean dealing with the messy fallout of

  his messy actions on the Chatsworth estate. For Merlin, it will involve

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  averting some level of extraordinary disaster or misfortune about to befall

  Camelot by secretly using magic – because the Saturday early-evening

  audience expects that level of jeopardy every week.

  Then there will be where exactly the episode sits in the wider series

  or season. For your calling card script it’s most likely you will write (and

  people will want to see) the pilot episode, so you probably won’t yet be em -

  broiled in the mid-season muddle. But be aware that if you aspire to write

  series TV then it’s a conundrum you are likely to encounter at some point

  (if you are very lucky).

  Then there will be where the characters are at the end of the show.

  Unless you are the creator of a show being made, then you are unlikely to

  end up having to write this. But if you are creating a new idea and world

  in the act of writing your pilot episode, then that sense that the characters

  will spend much of their life in the middle for the duration of the show yet

  reach an ultimate ending eventually needs to be there somewhere. We need

  to know what the middle will feel like for them, and your pilot should show

  that. In episode one of Life on Mars, we had a clear, palpable sense of what

  every episode and week will feel like for Sam Tyler. Same with Merlin.

  Same, in its own way, with Being Human. And Shameless. And Skins. And the list goes on.

  SERIALS

  And then there are the serials – in which you will have a less defined sense

  of episode story structure reaching a conclusion, but a wholly finite and

  defined sense of a not-too-distant ending. So the characters are not in a

  near-perpetual state of middle-ness, rather they are in incremental story

  stages that are reaching a climax only a few episodes away. What this does

  tend to mean is that those moments of false clarity, momentary awareness,

  craven resolution, mistaken endings will probably sit at the end of your

  serial episodes as a way of concluding the instalments, while also propelling

  them on to the next stage along the way towards the overall ending.

  This is the big challenge that faces series /serial writers and distin -

  guishes what they do from what anyone writing singles does. It’s not just

  about writing a great pilot. It’s about writing a great pilot that shows t
he

  potential ongoing state of character being and character becoming that

  each new episode will bring. If this quality and depth and potential of

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  character is not there, your script and idea will run out of steam even before

  the end of your pilot episode.

  ABSTRACT ALTERNATIVES

  I have already mentioned Moon and Memento – the oeuvre of story where

  the notion of the journey in the middle is given unique, unusual, strange,

  maverick, abstract, heightened, or surreal expression. This is perhaps easier

  to conceive in a high-concept single drama, whatever the medium. It’s more

  common in theatre, where the artifice of space and experience can lend

  itself well to abstractness of experience – as in plays by Beckett, Ionesco,

  Pirandello, Pinter, Kane, Crimp and others.

  But are abstract alternatives therefore random, non-consequential,

  without dramatic logic? Not as much as you might presume. In Moon the

  hero meets a new version of himself – yet the story has a wholly conse qu-

  ential, logical dramatic movement through the muddle. As also in Memento –

  even though the construction feels bewildering.

  In Pinter’s The Birthday Party, the narrow and claustrophobic world

  of Meg and Petey’s guest house is heightened, odd and increasingly menac -

  ing. It is in many ways abstract, and plays out in abstract ways. Yet at the

  heart of its defiant uniqueness and seeming inscrutability is the story of

  Stanley, a self-aggrandising loser who, like a petulant child, bemoans his

  situation yet also craves Meg’s overbearing mothering. When Goldman and

  McCann arrive to find him out and take him away – for what reason we will

  never know – his small world is turned inside out and he tries to resist

  them, but he cannot. His failure turns Meg, Petey and even Lulu’s worlds

  inside out for the time we watch them. And when it’s over, we’re not sure

  whether they in any conceivable way live on beyond the lights up and lights

  down at beginning and end. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t gone on a

  journey with them through the middle to the end.

  Charlie Kaufman’s films can be a weird and unique take on character