The TV Showrunner's Roadmap

by Neil Landau

  Case Study 4: Game of Thrones

  Lesson: Your characters don’t all need to be invincible at the outset. Major character traits evolve, and can, and often should, be hinted at, and rolled out slowly over time. Draw your characters in extremes early in the series to give them somewhere to go.

  Game of Thrones is an epic fantasy airing on HBO and created for television by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, adapted from a series of novels by George R. R. Martin. In it, seven noble families fight for control of a mythical feudal land.

  In this scene from late in the pilot, we are at the wedding of a seemingly weak and frightened girl, Daenerys “Dany” Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). Despite not speaking the language, or having ever met her soon-to-be husband, she is marrying Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa), the fierce leader of a tribe of nomadic warriors called the Dothraki. Dany is being forced to marry Khal Drogo by her older brother, Viserys (Harry Lloyd), who needs the Dothraki to be his army and help him take back the throne which his family lost fifteen years ago.

  From an external plot development standpoint, the scene is really about delivering a few key pieces of information: showing us how weak Dany appears and that the Dothraki are very fierce warriors, reminding us how and why Viserys wants them on his side, and introducing the dragons’ eggs that she is given as a gift.

  However, this scene is rich in layers. Over the next several seasons, the dragons’ eggs hatch, allowing Dany to become the “Mother of Dragons” by growing into a compassionate, strong, and smart Dothraki leader. The seeds of all that are in this one scene.

  The scene opens with Viserys being told by his advisor that Khal has promised him a crown and will go to war when the omens favor it. We then see the Dothraki women doing sensual dances and the men sexually taking them. Dany is not in her little sheltered world anymore. Two men want the same woman and fight to the death for her. Everyone cheers. Dany looks scared and uncertain. As the advisor speaks to Viserys, we get exposition—a Dothraki wedding is considered dull without at least three deaths. Who are these people? We feel sympathy and compassion. Dany is the weak, frightened innocent beauty being forced to marry a man who is seemingly a barbarian. She cries on her wedding night like a lost little girl. We fear that this will not end well. It is not until a few episodes later that we begin to see her act like the queen she is meant to be.

  Case Study 5: The Good Wife

  Lesson: There is no such thing as a small or unimportant scene. Every scene gets better with layers and strong visuals pointing to deeper emotional subtext.

  Police, medical, and legal procedurals have been the go-to shows of networks for decades. The Good Wife is a legal drama that first aired in 2009 and was created by Robert and Michelle King. The show has been nominated for more than twenty Emmy awards during its first three seasons.

  The pilot features a terrific, but atypically lengthy, sixteen-page teaser. The first five pages of this opening introduce us to our lead character, Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), a former lawyer turned stay-at-home mom. She stands beside her husband, Peter Florrick (Chris Noth), a former state attorney, as he faces the cameras and a swarm of reporters regarding corruption charges, including sex with prostitutes and conspiring to cover it up. But our eyes are magnetically drawn to Alicia’s face: a stoic mask belying her pain and humiliation. She’s trying to “stand by her man,” but this is hard. He chose a public life of scrutiny; she didn’t. She did nothing wrong, and yet now she’s ensnared in his scandal. She wants to bolt out of there, but needs to keep up appearances for the sake of their kids. She can’t even think about what the future may hold for her family. And that’s when she sees it: a tiny loose thread on his suit jacket. She is the woman who cleans up his messes. Keeps him going. In this moment, her inner world collides with her outer circumstances. In slow motion, she reaches her hand out to remove the stray thread. But before she can grasp it, time speeds up again, the press conference is over, and she and her husband are ushered out of the pressroom. Once alone, she can’t even look at him. All he can muster is a feeble, “Are you all right?” And she hauls off and slaps him across the face, turns on her heels and walks away—down the hall toward the waiting throng of reporters and flashbulbs. Then we cut to six months later, and the series is off and running.

  She’s trying to reboot her life, and re-enter the workforce after more than a decade as a stay-at-home mom. Only she’s waiting for her very first meeting on the wrong floor. Perfect. But, what I want to look at is the very last scene. Just over a page. On its surface, a simple scene. The major thrust of the pilot and its storyline threads have been all wrapped up. The template for the show has been set. Alicia will have her case most weeks. She’ll work to solve it, leading to a courtroom verdict. She’ll usually win. That will be the A story. But she will also have all of the personal issues she is dealing with. That’s what sets this procedural apart.

  In this final scene of the pilot, Alicia has just finished her first new case. She won. And, as she walks back to her office, late at night—she is on her cell phone with her mother-in-law, Jackie (Mary Beth Peil). The external action is as simple as it gets. The mother-in-law wants to know what time Alicia’s coming home because she cooked. That’s the external event: “When are you coming home?”

  But Alicia doesn’t answer right away. She laughs. Not at her. At herself. At life. And tells Jackie that she’s laughing because that’s the call she always used to make. She was the one always asking her husband when he’d be home. She’s self-aware. And, we are getting a sense, a reminder of how far she’s come in this single network hour. What she’s enduring. She’s moved from loyal wife standing beside her husband, to this take-charge attorney. But she’s only beginning. She’s still going to have to try to make it all work—and will need to rely on her judgmental mother-in-law to do it.

  Eventually, Alicia tells Jackie that she’ll be home “in about an hour.” However, the scene doesn’t end. Even though the external event has been answered. Alicia has a new desk in a new office. Her office is in order, for the first time in the episode. Files put away. She is starting to feel like she belongs. We get all of this in the visuals, how she looks around. What she sees, the neatly ordered shelves. The nice, new chair. The pictures on the wall. We had a scene earlier to set up the office—everything in boxes and disarray. This demonstrates her change through visuals.

  And she tells Jackie “thanks for stepping up.” She has been her. She gets it. She will keep needing her. And Jackie tells her, “of course she would.” And says “she’ll see her at nine.” They are in this together. Two women who understand each other. Future stories—what I like to call story tentacles—are suggested with this scene.

  Then, Alicia’s new boss, Will Gardner (Josh Charles) shows up. Her onetime boyfriend from way back. The guy who got her this job. And he tells her that she’s made second chair on his case and has to be in court early tomorrow morning. She is in the mix of things. With her new love interest active and present. Tomorrow’s another day. We are left knowing and wanting more. That’s great writing. That’s a great page.

  Great television scenes:

  Reveal and deepen character dimensions by allowing us to see their major dominant traits, and then by challenging them.

  Explore, complicate, and challenge relationships between main characters.

  Present an “event” or “question” of the scene that moves the plot forward in some meaningful way.

  Entertain; surprise; withhold information and play it out in ways that are both unexpected and inevitable.

  Follow structure; great scenes have an arc; they start with a bang and end with a button, with complications and twists in the middle.

  Interview: Jason Katims

  Jason Katims Credits

  Best known for:

  Parenthood (Executive Producer/Writer) 2010–2012

  Friday Night Lights (Executive Producer/Writer) 2006–2011

  Emmy Award Winner (Writing) 2011

  Em
my Nominated (Drama Series) 2011

  Humanitas Prize 2009, 2011

  WGA Nominated 2007–2011

  Peabody Award 2006

  Boston Public (Executive Producer/Writer) 2003–2004

  Roswell (Executive Producer/Writer) 1999–2002

  My So-Called Life (Writer) 1994

  NL: I’d like to begin with your approach to developing characters particularly on Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. I think a lot of people can create plot lines and stay on the outside, but you’re able to continually dig deep into your characters and surprise. Do you start off with a sense of all this complexity or do you discover it along the way?

  JK: My first job in television was on My So-Called Life, which was created by Winnie Holzman with Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick as executive producers. I had been writing plays before that and had never written for television at all. In fact, I never thought I would be writing for television, but if I did, I thought it would be for a half-hour sitcom. It was a surprise to end up on a drama, but My So-Called Life was essentially my graduate school, and their approach to storytelling, has had a huge influence over how I have approached writing since then. One of the things that they tried to do was to set out to tell as little story as possible, so that you could focus on the nuance and have time to develop and get underneath the story. I remember there was one episode of My So-Called Life called “The Zit,” which made me think, “We’re going to do an episode about a pimple?” Angela [Claire Danes] wakes up with a zit, and that’s the inciting incident for the story, but it became a story about beauty and what our idea of beauty is. We expanded it to include Angela and her mom [Bess Armstrong] by coming up with this idea of a mother–daughter fashion show as a way in to talk about all of these ideas. It was fascinating as a beginning television writer to see how they developed story. It became the foundation for me—and that’s what we try to do in the writers’ room which is where all of these ideas are developed into stories.

  To me, it’s always about, “What is the story about? What are we saying?” When we’re struggling with a plot, I always stop and say plots aren’t that hard. Particularly for us, we’re doing ensemble shows with four or five storylines, so we’re talking six beats—which is not a lot to do. So, if we’re struggling with a plot, maybe it’s because we don’t know what we’re trying to say or accomplish with the story. When something feels both real and intimate and gets underneath the skin, that’s what I’m always focused on as I’m telling the story.

  NL: Some of this, as in “The Zit,” example speaks to theme. Is that an approach you take? Are you thinking about a thematic for A, B, C, and D stories?

  JK: Theme is important of course, but I also try not to let it get in the way. Everyone has different ideas about this, and sometimes I wish I did more episodes where every storyline was thematically tied to the others. But, I’m much more interested in the evolution of character and the evolution of these individual storylines over time. Sometimes thematically people are in different places, so I try not to force them together too much. The joy of a show like Friday Night Lights is that the episodes seem like continuing chapters to me. I think of the way Dickens used to write novels where each chapter would be a weekly installment in the newspaper. Friday Night Lights has a similar feel. What I’m most interested in is how the character is evolving over time, week to week, season to season. When a unifying theme emerges in an episode, I think of that as icing on the cake. Certainly there are themes within each storyline, but for an episode, I don’t feel that story needs to connect into one theme.

  NL: How many episodes do you tend to arc at one time? Do you map out the full season in terms of: I know I’m going to start this character here and this is where I want to end up? Or, do you do it six or seven episodes at a time?

  JK: Parenthood and Friday Night Lights are the two shows I’ve done most recently. And, although they look like two completely different shows, to me, they’re very similar. They’re large ensemble dramas that are ultimately about family. In Friday Night Lights, it’s largely about surrogate families and Parenthood is about extended family, but they’re both about family. I approach them in a similar way. Basically what we do at the beginning of the season is that we spend a little time talking about our characters in broad strokes. Talking about where they are—where they left off from last year and what’s going to happen to them this year. We map out in very vague terms—and by the way nothing is written down—whatever their journey is going to be. Of course, you have your fulcrum characters like Coach [Eric Taylor as played by Kyle Chandler] and Tami [Connie Britton], and that family is certainly at the core of it, but all the characters are important. When we do that, it starts to suggest story, and we start to put up some cards. Again, it’s still very vague, but we’re starting to think about tent poles of where something is going to start and where something might end up by the end of the season. I hesitate to get too specific. It’s nice to have a roadmap, but you don’t want to have it tied up too much or put you too far ahead. Some stories suggest all the twists and turns even from the beginning and some don’t—and that’s okay. As long as you feel like your characters are on the road, and you have a vague idea of where it might lead, I think that’s good.

  Then, from that point, it gets real. We break them usually into movements by groups of episodes. And, they’re usually four or five or even six episodes where something big is happening over the course of those episodes. For example, during the first season of Friday Night Lights, in the pilot episode, the star quarterback gets injured badly—and the big question that this incident suggested to me was: “Will the town of Dillon survive the loss of Jason Street [Scott Porter]?” In a way, you can look at that as a question for the whole season, but, I really looked at it as the question for that first movement. Because you have this coach who came in with an expectation from the town and the crazy boosters that he was going to bring home a championship, but then the guy that he had to do that with is now gone. So, how is this coach going to pull it together? Then, there was the question about this second string quarterback, Matt Saracen [Zach Gilford], who is now this deer-in-the-headlights kid: Is Saracen going to be able to step up? Then, there’s the question of what is going to happen to Jason Street? Is he going to be able to come back to the team? You don’t know. It’s TV after all—and three episodes later, he could be playing again. So, when you find out that he is paralyzed, the question gets even more interesting then because now you’re wondering what’s going to happen to this guy? This kid who was expecting to go to the NFL. Is this kid going to be okay? And, that led to the triangle between him and Riggins [Taylor Kitsch] and Lyla [Minka Kelly]. The question of Matt Saracen also led to the introduction of this quarterback that Buddy Garrity [Brad Leland] was trying to recruit from New Orleans named “Voodoo” [Aldis Hodge]. It became a question of who was going to be the quarterback, and then ultimately, as I recall, I think that movement ended in the rivalry game in the fifth episode. You resolve who’s going to be their quarterback and what’s going to happen with this team. You get to a certain point of resolution and then you start to raise new questions—which begins the next movement. That’s the way it works for us.

  NL: So, you might have some vague ideas in those early discussions about where the end of the season is going to lead you, but you’re open to where it might take you?

  JK: The beautiful thing about a show like Friday Night Lights is while you don’t have closed-ended stories, since you don’t have a mystery to solve, you do have a season of football, so you can break your season of television around your season of football. You know there’s going to be a certain point where playoffs start. Do they make it to the playoffs? How far do they get in the season? On a good year, there’s also State. It’s a nice way to help you with structure. On Parenthood, we don’t have football, so what we try to do is come up with bigger storylines that will give you movement over a whole season. For example, building a business one season or plan
ning a wedding. In the first season, you have this incident where Max [Max Burkholder] is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome which grounded you in the show and gave you something to go along with for the season—and even the entire series. These bigger ideas help you get from place to place. Basically, I try to break the arcs down in terms of movements, I try to know where I’m going and be flexible. Again, this is something that dates back to when I worked with Ed and Marshall, you want to be able to let what you’re doing evolve. It’s a very collaborative form, and my feeling about that is to embrace the collaborative nature of it—instead of just saying, “Well, I’m dictating every single thing.” Because what will happen is that you’ll put a script out and suddenly the directors and actors have ideas that I never would have thought of, and it makes me learn things about the characters I never knew. That’s the exciting part. And sometimes, things that you pictured as interesting ideas, aren’t as exciting as you thought, so that maybe that movement will just be three episodes instead of seven. And, then there are other things, where you’re like, “Wow, we want to explore that.” My feeling is that I want to leave room to let myself be influenced by what the actors are doing, how the directors are directing scenes—all these things are exciting. It makes it fun to do TV. The single greatest thing about doing television is that the show evolves and gets better over time. With movies, you’ve got a hero…

  NL: It’s finite.