Writing the TV Drama Series 3rd Edition: How to Succeed as a Professional Writer in TV (8 page)

The formula went something like this: At the top of the show, a sympathetic character approaches Mike for help. At the end of Act One the sympathetic character is found dead. In Act Two Mike is on the trail of the killer, only to find him dead at the Act break, and yet someone else has been killed (proving there’s a different killer). In Act Three the real bad guy goes after Mike, and at the Act Three break, Mike is in mortal jeopardy. Act Four is entirely resolution, one-to-one, Mike against the killer. And guess who wins. As I started, I thought such a rigid form would be stultifying, but I discovered it was fun. Relieved of certain structure choices, I felt free to be inventive with the guest cast and the kinds of situations that could lead to the turns and twists.

Years later, an executive of the Children’s Television Workshop (makers of
Sesame Street
) asked me to develop and write a pilot for a children’s series, later named
Ghostwriter
, that would be structured like primetime network dramas, complete with long character arcs, parallel stories, complex relationships, among a diverse ensemble cast, and even references to controversial issues. I’d never written for kids, but I was intrigued. In forming the series with the CTW team, we began by identifying a general franchise — in this case detectives, because solving mysteries was a way to involve the whole cast and incite each episode’s quest. Beyond that, we stayed close to what human beings truly care about, how they reveal themselves, and what makes people laugh, cry, be scared, and fall in love — people of any age.

Ghostwriter
was originally intended for kids around eight years old to encourage them to read. But CTW was astounded when research reported that the audience age range went from four years to sixteen. That’s not even a demographic. I think the show exceeded anyone’s expectations because the realistic characters rested on a franchise that was so robust it could carry not only a very young cast but also some educational content while moving the stories forward with high tension.

But when is a franchise not a franchise? Dick Wolf, creator of
Law & Order
, told
Entertainment Weekly
, “
Law & Order
is a brand, not a franchise. It’s the Mercedes of television. The cars are very different, but if you buy a Mercedes, you’re still getting a good car.
CSI
is a franchise — like certain restaurants.
CSI
is the same show set in different cities, while the
Law & Order
shows are all very different from each other.” No doubt
CSI
, which still competes head to head with
Law & Order
, which is in perpetual reruns, would describe itself as an even bigger car.

Large as
CSI
and
Law & Order
may be, the stretch-limousines of franchise enhancement belong to HBO. With the 2011 arrival of
Game of Thrones
, based on a quasi-medieval imaginary world, the question is if this show will do for fantasy what
Deadwood
did for Westerns and
The Sopranos
did for gangsters. Like
Deadwood, The Sopranos
,
Rome
, and
Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones
uses history and screen tradition only as a starting point to develop unsentimental relationships observed with such honesty they transcend the prototype. Bluntly realistic,
Thrones
can be seen as a reaction against fantasy clichés such as the struggle between absolute good and evil. Villains wrestle with scruples, heroes compromise, and moral rigidity will get you killed. It’s a complex narrative that continues expanding the possibilities of writing for TV.

When you’re ready to plan a script as your showpiece for a series, ask yourself what the underlying franchise is. Even if the show is innovative and evolved beyond the tradition, the franchise may give you tips for constructing your outline (more on this in
Chapter Four
).

R
EADY
, S
ET
, G
O
!

Writing primetime TV drama series is an adventure into an expanding universe. If you rise above outdated ideas about television, and have pride in your talent so that you never write down, you can create for the most powerful medium in the world. In the next chapters you’ll find the tools you’ll need, so get ready to jump on a moving rocket!

S
UMMARY
P
OINTS

TV drama series have unique qualities:

•  Characters continue over many episodes instead of concluding a dramatic arc as in a two-hour movie. Focus on depth of characters rather than looking for characters to change.

•  Storylines may evolve over many episodes, especially in serials. Emphasize increments or installments of a series-long quest rather than tying up a plot. However, most shows have some stories that “close” (resolve) within an episode while other dramatic arcs continue.

•  Network and basic cable drama series are written in acts marked by cliffhangers at commercial breaks, though premium cable shows may not have formal act breaks.

•  Certain franchises offer springboards that suggest hundreds of stories from a show’s premise.

W
HAT’S
N
EW
?

Adventurous cable programming, new markets, and new delivery options have spurred growth and change in television, and provide fresh opportunities for writers. Examples from current shows and re-interpreted franchises demonstrate some of the possibilities.

S
POTLIGHT
O
N
W
RITING
“D
RAMEDY
”

The best thing I can say about the term “dramedy,” which conflates the words drama and comedy, is that it’s better than the alternate: “coma,” although that might actually be a closer fit considering how unconsciously the label is applied to nearly everything on television.

The techniques of balancing serious subjects and humor go back as long as humans have told stories. I can imagine a cave person sitting before a fire relaying how Moog-The-Brave chased a rabbit around a tree until he fell down dizzy; I see the wise storyteller waiting artfully for the laugh from his audience, exactly before the reveal that while Moog was on the ground, the rabbit turned back, leapt for his neck and killed him. Humor set up the listeners to be shocked by the serious turn. Shakespeare was pretty good at that, I hear — creating a comic foil immediately before the most tragic scenes. All the great Shakespearean tragedies have some comedy. But do you really want to belittle them with the label “dramedy”?

The effort to define types of stories began with ancient Greek philosophers, who divided literature into tragedy, which ended with the death or destruction of a hero, while comedy focused on ordinary people and ended with their success. In later centuries the division was simplified into tragedy describing plays where people died at the end, and comedy where they didn’t. The word “drama” referred to all the action in the middle, funny or not.

Then came commercial American television with a need for promotional categories. By the 1960s, the system was codified by the networks: half-hours were situation comedies (“sitcoms”), and hours were dramas. The sitcoms usually had a live audience or laugh track so no one could miss the point that it was funny. Hours were unfunny genres dealing with police or doctors or western gunfighters, and later serialized soap operas. Even today, if you visit a network headquarters — and also many production companies and even talent agencies — you will see the architecture split. Often one side of the reception desk leads to the comedy offices with their own executives and staffs, and the other side are the drama people. You might pitch to the Vice President for Drama Development or the Vice President for Comedy Development, but not both.

Problem is, it doesn’t make sense any more, and hasn’t for a long time. The best half-hour comedies have emotional storylines and sometimes comment sharply on contemporary issues. Very few are filmed before live audiences, and no one would be caught with a 1970s type of laugh track. Meanwhile, both the Emmy Awards and the Writers Guild place various dramas in the comedy category even though they are an hour long because they are so light or because their intentions are comedic. It’s a slippery slope on both sides.

The idea of half-hours having to be funny has been ingrained in the public even if creators want to stretch. As a young writer in the late 1980s, I was on the staff of
Frank’s Place
, a half-hour in which the showrunner wanted to handle serious subjects. It was set in a funeral parlor in New Orleans and had a predominantly African-American cast (rare then and now) who dealt with stories that involved mortality, ethnicity, class distinctions, and regionalism. From the outset, it wasn’t going to fly.

The creator, gifted writer-producer Hugh Wilson, had a comedy background with success on the hilarious
WKRP In Cincinnati
and the
Police Academy
movies. How dare he attempt drama, the critics thought. And then there was the audience, who wrote letters — yes, actual letters because it was the 20th century — telling us the show wasn’t funny enough. Well, the episode when the old man died wasn’t intended to be funny. Heartbreaking, insightful, amazing, suspenseful, whatever, but it wasn’t supposed to be funny. Finally, the battle was lost. The series became a half-hour comedy. I’m not a comedy writer, and I was long gone before it ended. But to me it was an education in expectations.

So we’re free of all that in the 21st century, right? Uhhhh… well, currently there’s
Nurse Jackie, Hung, United States of Tara, The Big C, Weeds, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Entourage
, and previously
Sex and the City
among half-hours that are borderline comedy/dramas. Looking at the hours,
Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Glee
, and previously
Ugly Betty, Boston Legal, Ally McBeal
, and
Gilmore Girls
are among hour shows considered comedies by the TV Academy and Guilds. Very little on either list is laugh-out-loud funny.

Generally the attributes of “dramedies” are these: continuity of character and storylines, including serialized episodes, depth of backstories, and development of dramatic arcs, as opposed to the setup/joke paradigm where laughs are expected at specified intervals. “Dramedies” may be light, but if they have laughs at all, they would be of a wry or ironic sort. As to why they are not pure dramas, on the other hand, the characters might be less deep — closer to caricatures — and might tend to zaniness, as in
Weeds
or
The Big
C, or focus on clever or jokey dialogue quips, as in
Gilmore Girls
.

So what? Parsing these definitions matters to you because you are entering a field where the boundaries are dissolving. A term like “dramedy” makes a show harder to write because it causes you to think of all shows flowing into an amorphous funny/serious heap. It helps to have something to hold onto — benchmarks in history and in previous shows and in expectations.

If you are writing the hour drama series, you will find yourself bringing some comedy to the table some of the time, especially in episodes where you’re building to tragedy. If you are writing something that intends to be funny, you must have a strong hold on the underlying dramatic elements. No one can get away with joke-to-joke writing in any form longer than three-minute webisodes. And outside of children’s adventures, no one can get away with unrelieved “dramatic” action that lacks a perspective of humor at times. In writing today’s TV drama series, you have to do it all. Hey, Shakespeare did okay.

G
UEST
S
PEAKER
: D
AVID
I
SAACS

David Isaacs has multiple Emmy nominations for his writing on shows ranging from
M*A*S*H
to
Mad Men
. Having written a full spectrum of sitcoms before arriving at a drama series, I asked for his wisdom on the difference.

Pamela Douglas:
What is it that makes something a comedy? What makes something a drama?

David Isaacs:
Not to be glib, but the easy definition would be comedy is more situational. We’re watching the moment-to-moment foibles of regular folks as they stumble through their lives. Comedies tend to be structured around an identifiable premise like
Everybody Loves Raymond
, which is about a guy who is trying to strike a balance between the family he grew up in and the family his marriage has created. We laugh at that because we see ourselves in it — that’s my family or somebody’s family we know. That’s traditional.

The comedies we have now tend to be ironic, or snarky, such as
30 Rock
or
The Office
, which poke fun at an institution. So it’s looking for the vulnerability of people and how we all laugh at each other’s mistakes and pain from a distance.

Drama, to me anyway, deals with human conflict on a much deeper level. Life, death, illness, malice, personal and family dysfunction. The stakes are profound. It’s no wonder that most of our filmed drama revolves around police work, hospitals, and the judicial system. They deal in humanity.