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CHARACTER-DRIVEN DRAMA
ALL ABOUT CHARACTER
In the same way plot-driven dramas are about the story, character-driven dramas revolve around characters.. That isn’t to say that you don’t have to worry about finding a great, dramatic story for the characters — you do. But the driving force of that story will be the characters. We tune in each week because we love these people, we hate these people, we can’t wait to see what’s going to happen to these people. We can’t get enough of these people, their worlds, and their emotional lives.
“My friend Claire Dobbin, who runs the Melbourne Film Festival, has a great name for the quality that I think is essential to good drama — and comedy for that matter: she calls it ‘the ache.’ ‘The ache’ is that emotional connection we have as audience members to an insightful moment, scene or gesture that makes us identify with the struggle of the main characters — heroes and villains alike — and become deeply invested in what happens to them. Too often in reading a script or watching a film I find myself saying ‘Why do I care?’ because nothing rings emotionally true or gives me an insight into the character’s internal lives. Once you have connected with something essentially human, honest and vulnerable in a character, it becomes difficult not to care what happens to them.” — Oscar-nominee David Magee, Life of Pi, Finding Neverland
SERIALS
Serials may be all the rage right now, but they aren’t new. In fact they can be traced all the way back to literary giant Charles Dickens who introduced them to huge fanfare in the 1800s when his novels were published in weekly or monthly installments. In the 1900s people gathered around radios and listened to soap operas. One soap, The Guiding Light started on radio in 1937 and successfully transitioned to television in 1952. Soon, daytime television was crowded with so-called “soaps.” As for prime time, a serial called Peyton Place was a popular evening serial in the 1960s. But, primetime soaps/serials exploded in the 1980s with mega hit shows like Dynasty, Knot’s Landing, Dallas, which is often credited as creating the end of season cliffhanger with an episode that had all of America waiting anxiously through the summer to find out who shot J.R. (played by Larry Hagman).
In today’s world of television drama, serials rule the roost with shows like The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey, Mad Men, and House of Cards — to name just a few. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that shows with continuing storylines are much harder to write than those shows where the stories are more self-contained — meaning for the most part they start and finish in the same episode. For writers, one of the challenges when doing a serial is to end one storyline while introducing a new storyline(s). When done well, this appears seamless and the audience doesn’t notice or care.
“Serialized dramas let writers tell stories across multiple episodes and (hopefully) many seasons. Creating those long arcs is a lot of fun, but don’t underserve each script as a stand-alone story, especially a pilot. The brilliance of the best serialized dramas, like “The Sopranos,” is that they manage to tell a multi-year saga, but also deliver amazing, self-contained hours of television each week.” — Jason George, executive story editor, The Blacklist, Nashville
I am often asked if it’s even possible to write a spec serialized drama. The answer is yes. After that, the big question seems to be, how do you make your episode fit in with the show’s storylines which are constantly changing and when you have no idea what direction the writers will take. To answer that question, there are a couple schools of thought. I will lay them both out for you and you can pick the one that works best for you.
First off, you can write what I call a “generic” script. By generic, I don’t mean bland and nondescript; rather, I mean that you should choose a story that could be inserted into the show as it exists today. This means you aren’t changing anything or making any assumptions about what is to come down the road. This is a safe way to go. If you write for the show as it stands today and things change, it won’t matter. Producers will understand that you wrote your spec during a certain timeframe, and as long as you have everything right in terms of the characters and what was going on at the time you wrote the script, you will be fine.
The other way to go — and this is actually the way I would recommend — is to just be bold, pick a show you like and write the very best episode you can. The reason I prefer this route is because it presents a better platform for you to showcase your talent and storytelling skills. Don’t worry if you write an episode and then the show goes in a whole other direction. As long as your spec looks like an episode of the show you are writing for, producers who read your script will be looking to see that you have grasped the characters and the overall flavor of the show. They’ll also be looking for your take on the show, your unique voice, and your ability to tell a compelling story.
“When Lost was on, people did Lost specs. Writing a serial show can indicate how well you know that show’s characters. So let’s say Lost was going into Season 4 and you wanted to write a Season 4 Lost spec script. As long as you watched seasons one through three you could then pick a story and write a spec script as long as it’s in the universe within the tone, within the style, within the voice of the show. You have some leeway. But you can’t do Lost on the moon.” — Michael Azzolino, senior vice president Jerry Bruckheimer Television, producer, Hostages
When writing serialized dramas, keep in mind the idea of addictive television. Serialized dramas are the shows that people most often binge view. So you must write a script with multiple twists, strong Act Breaks, and an ending that wows. I often read drama scripts, where not a ton is happening. I ask the writer the painful but honest question, which is, “would someone watch this episode and then immediately want to get to the next episode?” If the answer is “no,” the writer has work to do.
This goes without saying, but I am going to say it anyway. Be sure to write dramatically. The same way comedy scripts have to be funny, drama scripts must be dramatic. So get out the thesaurus. Make your writing pop by choosing the exact right verbs and adverbs that deliver character emotion through action. In short, bring us to the edge of our seats.
HOW STRUCTURE FOR CHARACTER-DRIVEN DRAMAS DIFFERS FROM PLOT-DRIVEN DRAMAS
On the surface, scripts for plot-driven dramas and character-driven dramas look very much the same. Both are written single-camera film-style, and both have four or more acts. Most come in at around 55–59 pages. Structurally speaking, however, these scripts are as different as night and day. As we discussed, plot-driven drama usually starts with an inciting incident and builds one scene on top of the other until its conclusion. There is rarely a “B” story in plot-driven drama and “C” stories are all but unheard of. In character-driven drama, this isn’t the case. In many ways, character-driven is structured more like comedy in that there is usually a definitive “A” story and “B” story. Because drama is an hour, there is almost always a “C” story and, depending on the show, a “D” story. These stories are inter-cut with one another. As with comedy, each act should begin and end on the “A” story.
Perhaps the easiest way to structure your character-driven drama is to create each story individually. That way, you can really see each story laid out, beginning, middle, and end, along with twists and turns in between. Once you are confident that all of your stories are working, you can then look at how you want to inter-cut them. It is much harder to look at the script as a whole, and to try to inter-cut stories before you are even sure exactly what direction they will take.
A key to inter-cutting character-driven drama is to take each scene up to a point where something dramatic or interesting is about to happen. Raise the stakes, introduce something new, ask a question. Then, immediately cut away to another story. This helps heighten the tension and keep the audience hanging, desperate to see what happens next.
WHY COLORED INDEX CARDS ARE KEY
Colored index cards in character-driven writing can be quite useful, as you can assign one color to each story. Say you choose blue index cards for your “A” story. Now, jot down one or two quick sentences that describe the main action that happens in each scene. Then, choose another color of index cards for your “B” story and do the same. Follow suit for your “C” story, and if you have one, do the same for your “D” story.
Just as you did with the cork board, start to tack the scenes up according to how they happen, act-by-act. By using colors, you can easily see if you have been away from a story too long, or if you are spending too much time on one story and need to cut away to another. You will be surprised how this color-coded system makes any kind of structural errors really stand out much more so than if you just started typing scenes into your computer.
To show you just how important these colored index cards can be, if you have a newer version of Final Draft, the program allows you utilize the index cards on your computer. So you can lay out your story electronically, and save a few trees in the process.
EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE ISN’T FIT FOR THE SCREEN
Since character-driven dramas are about people, as with comedy, you can use personal experience to come up with unique stories.
While some of the best drama may in fact be born out of personal experience, I feel the need to warn you that everything that’s ever happened to you isn’t worthy of being placed in a TV script. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own lives that we think nothing is more interesting than that which happens to us. This may or may not be true. Frequently, people tell me stories about themselves, adding at the end, “wouldn’t that make a great episode of Parenthood?” Often, the things they are talking about are not exactly must-see TV. They are more like snapshots, moments in time that are so small, they would not be able to sustain an audience through commercial breaks. These moments feel bigger than they actually are to the person telling the story because they happened to them. So, before you take personal experience and automatically start to build a story around it, ask yourself if the story is really big enough. If not, you may need to make it a “B” story or a “C’” story.
The other big problem in adapting real-life drama to the screen is that sometimes the stories aren’t in line with the characters on a particular show. Every story isn’t right for every show. If you are going to translate personal experience, it must be relevant to the show’s characters, or your script will fail miserably. Also, there are some dramas where personal experience probably wouldn’t be relative. Take period dramas, for example. Let’s say a drama is set in Pompeii, six months before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It’s probably safe to say that the story of what happened to you over Spring Break — no matter how dramatic it might have been — wouldn’t be relevant because it wouldn’t match the show since young people probably didn’t go on Spring Break back in 79 AD.
Another trap that some writers fall into when incorporating personal experience into a script is that they believe it has to play out in the script word for word, action for action, precisely as it did in real life. This too, can have disaster written all over it. The secret to incorporating real-life experience into drama is to take the seeds of what actually happened and let your imagination run wild. Get inside your characters’ heads. You know how you reacted when the incident happened, but how would your characters react if the exact same thing happened to them? They might do things differently than you did, and this may cause a whole new chain of events to occur. As a writer, you must be open to these possibilities. If you adapt real-life experience to a script correctly, it is likely that by the time you are finished, the story will only have minor similarities to the actual real-life events.
“Imagine your story. Imagine your scene. Now, imagine what the absolute WORST, most horrifically upsetting version of that scene would be for your characters, and write THAT. Because if you temper it, if you write the ‘lesser’ version of what that scene could be, then you’ve just sold yourself short.” — Stacy McKee, co-executive producer, Grey’s Anatomy
HOW TO DRAMATIZE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
After writing what I hoped were two solid comedy specs, I decided to try my hand at a drama script so I would be fully prepared in case an opportunity ever arose for me to get work as a drama writer. I decided to do a spec Picket Fences, which in its time was a hot show.
If you aren’t familiar with Picket Fences, it’s one of David E. Kelley’s more brilliant creations. The series takes place in the small town of Rome, Wisconsin, and is centered on small-town sheriff Jimmy Brock and his wife, Dr. Jill Brock. Like most of Kelley’s work, it’s all about quirk. Things in Rome are rarely as they seem. After studying the show, the first thing I did was to think about specific themes I wanted to explore. The dark side of human beings is something that has always fascinated me. I am constantly intrigued when the image that people project publicly is in sharp contrast to who they actually are privately. Once I decided that this was the area I wanted to work with, I needed to find a concrete story. Because I grew up in a small town like Rome Wisconsin, where things aren’t always as they seem, I decided that was a good place to start hunting for stories. So I began to call old friends to see if they could throw me any small-town bones that might make a good story for my script. I hit the jackpot with a high school friend, Sara. Here is her story, and it’s a beaut:
One day, Sara arrived home with her two small daughters. I should mention that because she lives in a small town and has a false sense of security, she never locks her doors, even when she goes out. On this particular day, as she pulled in to her driveway, she noticed that the 16-year-old boy who mows her lawn was coming out of her front door. When he saw her, he immediately did an about-face, went back through the house, and slipped out a side door. Sara didn’t think much of it until her husband came home a short time later, went into their bedroom, and discovered her underwear drawer dumped in the center of their bed. They knew instantly that they were dealing with a teenage panty thief.
Since this was a quaint and quiet neighborhood with lots of kids, Sara and her husband decided to call the police. When police went to the teenager’s house, they confiscated a trunk from his bedroom filled to the brim with ladies’ underwear that he had stolen from virtually every woman on the block. Two male cops hauled the trunk to Sara’s house, dumped it at her feet, and told her to pick out what was hers. As she did, she realized that she could mentally all but match up underwear to neighbors. She pulled her own underwear out of the trunk, handed them to the police officers, who promptly placed them in a see-through plastic bag, wrote her name across it, and hauled it away as evidence. Several months later when the trial was over, a different set of male cops knocked on Sara’s door, plastic bag in hand, there to return the evidence. The ultimate humiliation for any woman.
An underwear thief loose in Rome, Wisconsin, seemed like a perfect fit for Picket Fences. But there was no way I could write that story exactly as it happened. While the real-life version was interesting — amusing even — it was not nearly dramatic enough for the small screen. In order to make it more dramatic, I would have to use both the show’s characters and my imagination.
When I sat down to hammer out the story, the first order of business was to decide who the thief was going to be and build the story from there. I went through all of the show’s characters, but decided that it really couldn’t be one of the regulars. Someone who breaks into people’s homes, steals ladies underwear, and hides them in a treasure chest has certain, shall we say, character flaws? As a freelance writer, I could not assign these traits to one of the regular characters without altering that character, which, as we have discussed, is a big no-no in spec scripts.
Thus, I realized my thief would have to be an outsider. But, who? Admittedly, my own dark side was intrigued by the idea of a teenage panty thief. So, I decided to keep that part of the story. But, I changed the teenager’s character. Instead of being just a nondescript kid who mows lawns, I made him the clean-cut high school hockey star who was admired by everyone. That opened up possibilities, as he could then hang out with the sheriff’s son who, on the show, also played hockey.
Once I decided who the thief was, I now had to figure out the rest of the story. I asked myself questions about how the sheriff would go about catching him and what the town would do with this kid once he was caught. I put myself inside Sheriff Brock’s head. Based on his character, how would he react? What would be his first move in catching the thief? Was there any way to make the story personal to him, which would raise the stakes and make his drive to solve the crimes all the more urgent? Next, I looked around the town of Rome to see which characters Brock might naturally consider to be prime suspects. On a previous episode, Father Barrett, the Catholic priest, nearly lost his parish when it was discovered that he had a fetish for women’s shoes. So wouldn’t it make sense that he also might have a thing for ladies underwear as well? Therefore, the rectory would definitely be one of Brock’s first stops.
Do you see where I am going? This is how you take the seeds of a story and develop them to a specific show. You have to look at who the characters are, where they are today, and also what they have been up to in previous episodes.
You must also look to heighten the drama. When I looked at how the real teenage thief was caught, it wasn’t that terribly dramatic. The cops went to his house, scared him into a confession, and he handed over the goods. In a nutshell, here is how I escalated that drama for my spec script.
Act One opens with Jill Brock, discovering that someone has broken into their bedroom and made off with some of her underwear. This is the latest in a string of robberies where the thief is only after one thing. The women of Rome and their husbands are putting huge pressure on Sheriff Brock to catch this creep. Now that the bandit has hit his house and violated his wife, it’s become personal. Brock starts to question suspects, beginning with Father Barrett. Meanwhile, the star of the high school hockey team has become good friends with the sheriff’s son. The boys hang out a lot — so unbeknownst to Brock (and the audience), the guy he is looking for is right under his nose.
Act Two continues with Brock tracking the thief, who eventually reinvades the Brock home — this time to get some treasures from Brock’s teenage daughter. Stealing personals from Brock’s wife was bad enough, but violating his daughter escalates the tension. At the end of Act Two — and remember, this is the most important Act Break — the hockey star is driving the sheriff’s son home from a game. In the center of town, they get rear-ended at a stoplight. The car trunk pops open and out pops a box, filled with ladies underwear, which is now strewn all over the main street.
At the beginning of Act Three, all the women of Rome, including the sheriff’s wife and daughter, are lined up at the police station, identifying that which belongs to each of them. The evidence is tagged, bagged, and eventually brought to the courthouse and admitted into evidence. Throughout the rest of Act Three and Act Four, the teenager is brought to trial.
While I have obviously left out a lot of the details of my script, the quick version should give you an idea of how I took the seeds of a true story and made it completely fictional by adapting it to the characters on Picket Fences. In the first act, the sheriff is drawn in because the crime is personal. The stakes are raised by the townspeople, who put pressure on him to solve the crime. The tension escalates even more when the thief returns to the sheriff’s home to steal from his daughter. The end of Act Two features the car accident and the women’s underwear strewn all over the street. See how this is much more visual and dramatic than the cops knocking on the door and the kid simply forking over the goods?
Of course, you don’t have to use real-life stories when coming up with character-driven drama. You can just as easily look at the characters on the show and create stories that evolve from their characters. Or, you can think of themes that you’d like to explore and adapt those to the characters. You just have to make sure the story works for both the characters and the show.
CHECKLIST FOR CHARACTER-DRIVEN DRAMA
● Have I come up with a story that’s appropriate for the show?
● Have I added twists throughout my stories?
● Have I included a cold open if the show uses one?
● Do I have a clearly defined “A” story?
● Are my “B,” “C,” and “D” stories equally well-defined?
● Have I inter-cut my stories in ways that will heighten the tension and suspense?
● Do I have strong Act Breaks, especially at the all-important half-hour mark?
● Are all of my acts relatively even in length?
● Have I used all of the show’s main characters in all acts?
● If my story is based on personal experience, is the story big enough to carry an entire episode?
● Have I adapted my personal experience to fit the characters and the show?
THE DIRT ON SOAPS
It seems we’ve come full circle in this chapter. I started out talking about the popularity of serials of which, for decades, daytime soaps were a big part of the equation. Now, I am going to tell you soaps are on their way out.
This is ironic, seeing as where the primetime serial is hotter than hot. But in recent years, daytime television has swung away from soaps and gravitated more toward reality television with talk shows and programs like the ever popular Judge Judy or The People’s Court. Of course you can still find some soap operas on the air, but most industry insiders think they’re living on borrowed time.
If you cannot imagine yourself writing anything but a daytime soap opera (and some people can’t) no worries. The good news is that many of these canceled soaps like All My Children and One Life To Live have made a comeback and found new homes in places like Hulu and iTunes. This model is fairly new, but I expect it to continue.
And here is some more good news. Unlike writers in primetime, daytime drama writers don’t have to live in Los Angeles (or New York). Writer meetings are held via conference call. It is usually only the head writer and the script editor that will go to the set on a regular basis. Outlines and scripts get e-mailed.
If writing for the soaps is something you think you might want to try your hand at, the best way to break in would be to try to get some kind of entry level job on one of the shows. An ideal job would be working in the writers’ office on script continuity. That would not only give you the opportunity to learn directly from the writers, it would put you in a position to possibly be given a script. While this is not guaranteed, sometimes when one of the regular writers goes on vacation, new writers will be given a shot at a script. This can lead to more regular work and also to an agent. Breaking in from the outside by submitting a spec script is much, much harder to do.