by Linda Venis
Consider how Boardwalk Empire oscillates between gritty drama and gallows humor. When Nucky makes jokes, they tend to be morbidly ironic understatements. When World War I veteran and tortured soul Richard Harrow attempts suicide in the remote woods, a stray dog wanders in from out of nowhere, steals his prosthetic half-faced mask, and runs away. When Richard puts down his gun and gives chase, it’s all things morbid and funny.
Sometimes access to humor and irony is essential not only for the audience and show but for the writers as well. Battlestar Galactica probed human nature in the face of annihilation and was contoured to capture some of the tones of 9/11, but the show’s subtle humor and irony gave us staff writers the freedom to tell authentically dark dramatic stories by balancing the bleakness of the subject matter. A prime example of how this dynamic worked was in the character of Dr. Baltar, a destructive, repugnant superintellect and the major culprit in the downfall of humanity, who, at the same time, was an oversexed coward and a prisoner of his own vanity.
Creating the Story for Your Spec
Time Slot, Outlet, Procedural Versus Character-Driven, and Genre
Now that you know how to break down all the dramatic elements of your show, there are several “must know” aspects of the sprawling TV landscape that will inform your story choice and help you stay within the show’s established parameters: time slots, outlets, categories, and genres.
Time Slots
With the exception of Fox, with its limited prime-time hours, few hour-long dramas air at eight P.M. and nine P.M., primarily because many children watch TV at this time. While the ability to record shows has liberated viewers from scheduled viewing habits, the networks still must abide by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, which designate eight and nine o’clock as family viewing hours. The more adult-themed dramas are required to air at ten o’clock.
Outlets
The programming outlets themselves offer a way to gauge how “family or adult” in tone and style your story needs to be and what demographic it should serve. To offer a few examples: Among the free networks, CBS’s demographic tends to be a little older and gravitates toward shows like The Good Wife, which has a relatively slow pace and a protagonist dealing with midlife issues in a realistic way. The CW, on the other hand, caters to teen and tween girls who want to see shows featuring young adult girls. That’s why the CW, from back in the day, has aired shows like Gilmore Girls, Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, and Ringer. By contrast, Fox’s main target audience is boys and men, as indicated by flagship programs like 24, Prison Break, Alcatraz, Terra Nova, and Fringe.
Categories
Knowing the two main categories of shows—procedural shows and character shows—is another tool to help you zero in on the key elements that your story must have to be successful. While the programming on free networks combined with that of cable channels runs the gamut of audiences, styles, tones, and settings, there are two main categories that all TV shows fall under: procedure-driven shows, or procedural shows, and character-driven shows, or character shows.
Procedurals are always driven by the protagonist’s singular dramatic function: to solve the crime. We get to know very little about the main characters beyond the execution of this task, which follows a routine professional procedure—hence the term “procedural show.” Law and Order is a perfect example of a procedural show, and the CSI and NCIS franchises, Cold Case, and Without a Trace all fall under this category.
In most instances, procedural shows, by the end of the hour, have answered all the questions and solved all of the problems pertaining to the premise of the episode. This type of episode design is called a stand-alone, which means that everything the viewer needs to know about the story and characters is self-contained within the one-hour time frame. On rare occasions, procedurals are serialized, meaning the viewer needs to see the whole series over a season to have a complete dramatic understanding of it; 24 is an example of a serialized procedural.
The second category is the character-driven show, in which we get to know a great deal about the protagonists. The central characters are motivated by something they desperately want or need on a personal level. This want or need is sometimes satisfied by the end of a single episode but is more typically part of the characters’ ongoing quest throughout the season—or even for the entire run of a series. Boardwalk Empire, Damages, Revenge, and Boss are among the many one-hour character-driven dramas, and all feature protagonists who impose or externalize what is driving them internally (i.e., what they want or need) upon the world. How they overcome obstacles, coupled with the consequences of their actions, dramatically shapes each episode of the show.
Character-driven shows are almost always serialized. Even if all questions are answered and all the problems are solved within an episode, new questions and problems will be introduced. Unlike stand-alone shows, viewers screening a random episode of a serial show will find it difficult to follow. Imagine watching a single episode of Lost; you’d be just as lost as the characters.
Hybrids
Hybrids of character-driven shows and procedurals also exist. In Homeland, CIA agent Carrie Mathison copes with unrequited love, extreme loneliness, and paranoia. She also hides a mental disorder that both helps and hampers her professional efforts to use a procedure to track a terrorist. Carrie is driven by her internal wants, which are interlaced with high-stakes procedural goals. In The Shield, corrupt detective Vic Mackey cracks street-crime cases using a procedure, while lining his own pockets with stolen money by double-crossing gangs and organized crime. He does all this while struggling to keep his twisted brotherhood of cops and family together.
At this writing, the trend is for procedurals to be aired on the free networks, while character-driven, experimental-niche, serialized, and period pieces tend to reside on cable. For example, Mad Men, Hell on Wheels, and Boardwalk Empire would likely not be developed for the free networks. Likewise, Homeland, Weeds, and Californication, with their mature subject matter—including nudity, graphic violence, and profanity—and heavy focus on character would not be welcome on the free networks. Basic-cable networks such as FX allow limited profanity, while premium cable channels like HBO allow profanity as well as nudity. A writer would be remiss to not consider the audience for his spec script based on such segmentation.
TV Genres: A Quick Tour
Between them, procedurals and character-driven shows house the full spectrum of every type of TV drama; a TV show’s type is known (as it is in all kinds of dramatic writing) as its genre. The most prominent TV drama genres are cop, crime, law, medical, fantasy, sci-fi, half-hour dramedy, action-adventure, and nighttime soap. Nighttime soaps are characterized by long story arcs about relationships, love, betrayals, and revenge. In particular, the nighttime soap is often combined with one other traditional genre to create a hybrid. For example, while Grey’s Anatomy, Battlestar Galactica, Boardwalk Empire, and Game of Thrones are in the medical, sci-fi, crime, and fantasy genres, respectively, they are also nighttime soaps. Other such hybrid shows include Gossip Girl, 90210, and The Vampire Diaries.
The exercise of categorizing shows cultivates your feel for their dramatic nature and helps you assess which one speaks more to your sensibility, and if possible, knowledge base. Think of it as another way to kick the tires on a car as you walk around in the showroom of a dealership.
Harvesting the Idea for Your Story
The most accessible way to discover the premise for your story is to start with subjects that appeal to you politically, psychologically, or emotionally, and then figure out how you might embellish these interests to make them “TV dramatic.” Keep in mind that challenging your own philosophical, political, and even religious views can be fertile ground for dramatic circumstances. We tend to embrace our outlooks and principles as if they’re sacred virtues, but with respect to writing, virtues mean little until they collide with a challenge head-on.
While working on an episode for Falling Skies, I ponde
red what the dramatic circumstances would be for a doctor who, in the midst of a fallen society, struggles to remain a pacifist. What would have to happen to her so that she not only starts toting a gun but begins to like it? The doctor’s character arc did not parallel my own politics, and that very fact made it stimulating to explore. Never be afraid to have your protagonist do something that might run counter to your own philosophy. If you maintain a logical path on the evolution of the character’s principles and virtues, the drama will emerge.
There are a few spec story premises that are definite “don’ts.” No characters should have birthdays, be raped, be seriously injured or killed, become pregnant, or have a long-lost relative show up. Perhaps you saw one or more of these events on the very shows you’ve been researching, but that doesn’t give you, the new writer, permission to do the same. The writers who work on those shows are free to explore those situations. You, however, are on the outside, trying to join the club, so it’s in your best interest to generate a fresh premise.
Whatever Your Story Idea, Know It Deeply and
Maintain Its Credibility
Whatever elements you introduce into your story, be sure to make them credible. If you’re writing a cop show and set the crime at a comic book convention, immerse yourself in that world. Read articles, watch YouTube videos, and if possible, attend a comic book convention. Know the demographic of its attendees: How do they dress, act, and interact? What are their quirks and patterns? How might their behaviors and dispositions help or hinder the investigation, or open them up to suspicion? This knowledge, combined with what you have learned about the structure and story elements of the show, will elevate your writing and demonstrate your willingness to work hard for the sake of writing a great story.
The Balancing Act: Respect the House Rules
While Maintaining Your Authenticity
Fitting your authentic story into a one-hour drama’s repetitive structure with its own creative rules can be a challenge. Think of writing a spec as being allowed to throw a big party in someone else’s house while she’s out of town. You can do almost whatever you want, so long as you maintain the owner’s level of cleanliness and leave her furniture in the same place.
With respect to your spec, that means no cliffhanger endings and no marrying or killing off characters. If it’s already been established that a character is coping with an ongoing problem, be it internal or external, you cannot resolve it. For instance, if the protagonist is a substance abuser in denial, your spec can’t break the house rules and have him enter a rehab program. Even so, you have choices: You can show him indulging in or exhibiting the results of the substance abuse. You can also explore the addiction itself, introducing a fresh manifestation of the problem and how it impacts the protagonist in a way not previously dramatized.
Shows ranging from House M.D., Nurse Jackie, and True Blood to The Wire, Californication, Battlestar Galactica, and Breaking Bad all feature characters struggling with addictions, so it is possible that the protagonist of any current show you choose to spec will have one or more of them. On a more general level, any deeply rooted flaw, be it substance based, behavioral, or sexual, requires a skillful approach, and the best strategy is for your spec script to end with the same problem alive and well. An addiction remains an addiction; allies remain allies, and the same goes for enemies.
Research Your Show Once Again—
This Time to Build a Modern Classic
When you watch an entire season of even the best-written shows, three or four episodes usually stand head and shoulders above the others. Zero in on your show’s most memorable episodes and screen them multiple times with these questions in mind:
Are there any common elements in the areas of tone and theme?
Do the circumstances at play impact the protagonist on a more personal level?
Do they reveal something about the protagonist that was not previously known?
Does each classic episode involve the same character?
Are there any underserved second-tier characters? If so, do you want to use them in the lead position of your B story (secondary story)?
Are the stakes in the classic episodes much higher than in the others?
What are the aspects that differentiate them from the run-of-the-mill episodes?
Imagine people at work gathered around the watercooler discussing the classics. What would they be saying?
Write Your Story
Assuming your mind and gut tell you that your story possesses many qualities of the classic episodes, it’s time to finalize it. Write up your story in four sentences or so (one small paragraph, maximum), with a beginning, middle, and end. Now you are ready to outline.
Create Your Outline
The Beat Sheet
The first step in developing an outline from your story idea is to create a beat sheet, which lays out all the events in a broad, logical order. The most important of these events are beats, also called plot points, which are those specific events that drive the dramatic action forward. Think of your beat sheet as the skeletal wood-beam structure of a house. There are regular beams, and then there are the all-important support or weight-bearing beams; if any of those are removed, a large portion of the house will collapse. The events are your story’s regular beams; the beats are its support beams.
Here’s an exercise using a fictitious show, John the Cop, to illustrate how to identify beats and distinguish them from events:
While off duty and suffering from a hangover, John accidentally knocks over the milk. As his baby girl throws up on him, his wife tells him that it was the last of the milk. John forgets his gun and goes to the store. Gunmen enter to rob the place, and John, unarmed, uses his wits to thwart them.
Can you find the beats? The baby throwing up on John is an event but it does not drive the story; therefore, it’s not a beat. Likewise, John’s hangover, while a character detail, doesn’t drive the story and is not a beat. However, John’s spilling the milk and gunmen entering to rob the store are definitely beats, because if you remove either, the rest of the story falls apart.
Fleshing Out the Beat Sheet
A plot point on a beat sheet consists of no more than one to two sentences and doesn’t contain any scene description or, as is present in some outlines, dialogue. This lean structure makes it easy to see if each beat propels the protagonist through the story and yields a change in him, and if a compelling plot extends through the entire story.
Plot Points and Character
Let’s pretend you’re a writer on the above episode of John the Cop and I’m your showrunner. I ask you, “How does this situation affect John in his gut, in ways he doesn’t want to talk about? Why do we care about him?” You’ll ponder the impact the events are having on John and then pitch me an idea: John’s hangover is part of a drinking problem that he’s in denial over. It’s what made him forget his gun and hesitate in a moment that led to the gunmen murdering a hostage. Yes, he saves the day, but his guilt over that casualty makes him throw out all his alcohol and go to rehab. This leaves John a changed dude at the end. You have taken a small character detail, the hangover, and generated a character arc.
Dramatic Acts, Plot Points, and Structure:
“Building Progressively”
Teleplays are made up of dramatic acts, which are segments or units of drama, within which the featured characters take action. The number of acts that make up a one-hour drama script can have either five or six acts, and each act contains an escalation of action and dramatic consequence.
Accordingly, plot points must be arranged to build progressively, making the story more and more complicated and interesting all the way to the end, and in addition, the last beat in each of the acts should leave the protagonist with a question, complication, cliffhanger, or revelation. These beats are called act outs or act breaks. Each act break should be more dramatic than the previous one. Hence the idiom “and the plot thickens,” which is exactly the kind of structure in an o
utline that will make your spec hot.
By the way, an easy way to cultivate an appreciation for how one act transitions to the next is to note how network television inserts commercial advertising between acts. A more challenging way to study act structure is to screen shows on the commercial-free premium channels such as HBO, where the act progressions tend to be more subtle.
Here is an exercise I do with my students to illustrate the “building progressively” principle. Once again using our trusty fictional show John the Cop, we start with a two-beat story. Plot Point A: A baby’s kidnapped. Plot Point B: John the cop, dressed as a clown, captures the kidnapper and rescues the baby. As a group, we make the story longer, more exciting, logical, and satisfying. We retain Plot Point B as our conclusion and then create a series of events that relate logically to each other between points A and B. Remember that the events you insert as beats must drive dramatic action and build to a conclusion.
Break out some paper and give it a try. Start with Plot Point A: Someone kidnaps a baby. The original Plot Point B is moved to be the conclusion. My new Plot Point B: The parents get a ransom note from the kidnappers demanding cash. If the police are called, they’ll never get the child back. New Plot Point C: After some debate, the parents decide to alert the police. New Plot Point D: John the cop is on the case and finds a clue from the scene of the kidnapping. New Plot Point E: The clue leads John to a shady character, whom he works over to get a tip on the kidnapper’s identity. New Plot Point F—Formerly Plot Point B: John, not revealing that the police are involved, disguises himself as a clown in the park, where he captures the kidnapper and rescues the baby. If you removed any of the beats, the plot and the story would collapse.
Return to a Produced Episode of Your Show One Last Time
After you have established a few beats to support your story, put them in sequential order. This next step may seem repetitive, but trust me, after all you’ve done, you will see how it pays off for your own beat sheet and outline. Screen one more episode of the show you’re working on. This time as you view it, keep track of the plot points. Write a beat sheet, a one-or-two-sentence listing of every beat that occurs within the teaser (a show’s first sequence of scenes, which leads into a commercial or opening credits) and throughout each listed act. Now take this beat sheet of a produced episode and use it as a guideline for your own story, making sure to have the same approximate number of beats per act. You’ll then be better prepared to compose an outline.