Relationships
I worry that if I stare it all right in the face it will eventually be too much.
Or worse, that I’ll become numb to it.
That I’ll start to care a little less every time.
But, I know there are people counting on exactly that.
Looking away isn’t an option.
So I compartmentalize my despair.
A survival mechanism in modern America.
Putting the newsletter together this week was an attempt to do that for a few hours. This isn't "moving on" or "carrying on like nothing happened." Just giving my psyche a rest by focusing on some stuff I love.
I feel compelled to acknowledge it, so there you go.
I was thinking about how often I write "take care" at the end of emails without giving it any actual thought. There's no moment of genuine reflection where I think, "I hope this person will actually take care of themselves and the people around them."
But I am thinking about all of that as I write this to you now.
Take care.
Relationships
I wrote the first draft of my play REPLICA in 2013. I workshopped it and rewrote it over the next five years until the world premiere at Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston in 2018. I haven’t had a great idea for a play since then, partly because so much of my creative energy is spent coming up with new ideas for film and television.
Late last year I wrote a short story about a mysterious billboard that appears near a small town and begins broadcasting the deepest, darkest secrets of its citizens. I thought it might make for a scary, propulsive play but I wanted to shake myself out of just a straight adaptation. I wanted to approach it like an outsider taking apart someone else’s work, so I did a little research and found a book called Page to Stage: The Craft of Adaptation by playwright and director Vincent Murphy.
There’s a bunch of useful information on how to approach an adaptation that directly corresponds to coming up with a take on IP for an OWA in film and television. He gives six building blocks of the process, one of which is, “Identify principal characters and relationships.” I found this section incredibly helpful recently, not just with adapting but in my original work as well.
One of the first notes I got on the BARBARELLA format was, “Tell us more about the relationships she has with the other members of the team. What are the dynamics?” Who was fighting? Who was falling in love? Who was she leaning on? Who was leaning on her? This is all stuff that I knew. I’d been light on it in the pitch and hadn’t given much more weight to it in the documents. But it’s exactly the stuff buyers want to know because it’s one of the major elements audiences tune in for, especially in television.
Two of my favorite recent shows, PEACEMAKER and YELLOW JACKETS, do a masterful job of establishing relationships early on and taking you on a journey of those relationships in series. Immediately, I’m thinking of Natalie and Misty. I’m thinking of Peacemaker and his father, Peacemaker and Harcourt, Peacemaker and Vigilante. He had specific and sharply drawn relationships with each one of those other characters and each one had a full and satisfying arc by the end.
These relationships don’t exist in the margins of the plot — they’re central to the story. In some cases they ARE the story. That seems like common sense but it’s something I still struggle with all the time. I love a good, propulsive plot. I can come up with cool characters and twisty, turny mechanics all day long but I have to work much harder at laying the foundation for deeper, richer relationships with long-term story potential.
I think part of the reason I struggle is that I don't take enough time to just get very specific about what these dynamics early in the process. They kind of get muddled in throughout. Sometimes they get grafted on after the fact, which has rarely been successful for me.
Fortunately, this book got me thinking about them through a slightly new prism this week. It made me more purposeful from the get-go.
Take this quote:
“Most relationships have discernible patterns of behavior that reveal what holds the two people together, what they want from each other, what they love about each other, or at least what they need from each other. What holds them in the relationship when conflict pushes at its seams? To dramatize these patterns, there are two significant methods for constructing a relationship. The first is by analogy: what is the relationship like? A mother-child relationship might be like (a) a wrestling match, (b) a strict teacher and an undisciplined student, or (c) a beautifully danced tango. Any of these parallels would unlock revealing behaviors that can be extrapolated into what the women play with each other.”
And this:
“What makes the relationships in each story unique is not only their epoch and circumstances but also the vocabulary of expression the playwright or adaptor uses to communicate their specifics. As you look for the threads that tie your characters together, be alert to the specifics of their language with each other that establish their unique relationship. Also pay attention to any nonverbal patterns between the characters that establish their unique connections to each other. Behavior is theatrical vocabulary.”
Excerpt From: Vincent Murphy. “Page to Stage.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/page-to-stage/id1230132955
In an earlier section he tasks the writer with boiling down the theme into a single word. I remember our drama teacher giving us the same assignment in class. Each pair of scene partners had to discuss and come in with one word to describe the theme of the play their scene was from. My friends Josh and Steve were doing a scene from SPEED-THE-PLOW and they’d gone a step further. They didn’t need a whole word. Just a symbol: $
I took Murphy’s exercise and applied it to the core relationships between my main characters, writing a one-word description (or a few at the most) to describe their initial dynamic. “Tense.” “Skeptical.” “Antagonistic.” “Mentor/Mentee.”
Then I asked, “How am I establishing this dynamic in their very first scene together? If I’m doing it in dialogue, how much can I do via subtext? Can I do it non-verbally, through body language? Is there an opportunity for a visual metaphor that conveys it?"
At some point this weekend I'm going to do a mind-map of all the relationships using those answers so I can visualize them easily. I'll put the main character in their bubble, link out to bubbles of the other characters. I'll describe their dynamic and give examples of how they could show it in language, behavior, or visual metaphor. It's a simple reference guide.
There's a famous example of the visual metaphor from BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID in the scene where Butch and Sundance are hanging out with Sundance’s girlfriend, Etta, on her porch. Sundance and Etta were sitting outside, together, while Butch is looking on from inside the house. That bit of staging told the story of that three-way dynamic in a deeper way than just the dialogue.
A few months ago I wrote about how Rod Serling talked about a character's nature and how the journey of a story is getting them to something that goes against their nature. I default to thinking about individual characters that way. But when two people form a relationship they create a third separate entity which is who they are together. That entity has its own nature and if you want to go against that nature you have to tell the story of how and why it changes.
Otherwise it looks like the characters are just being yanked around by the writer's need to service the plot.
I always love it when a book unlocks some new tools and new (to me) perspective. Check it out if it sounds like it might be up your alley!
Read the YELLOW JACKETS pilot!
Read the first ten pages and you'll see why this show ROCKS. Great ideas conveyed with a voice that tells you right away these people know what they're doing. They're not just communicating information, they're letting you know what every scene FEELS like, effortlessly guiding you through it. Adult Shauna's introduction is one of my favorite character intros ever.
It Starts On The Page: Read The Script That Started It All For Showtime’s ‘Yellowjackets’ — deadline.com Read the pilot script for 'Yellowjackets', written and created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson.
Two Great Podcasts This Week
Loved this week's episodes of The Screenwriter's Rant Room from Hilliard Guess and The Writer's Panel from Ben Blacker.
406: KELLY EDWARDS - The Executive Chair by Hilliard Guess' Screenwriter's Rant Room In this episode, Hilliard, Lynelle and Tracy chop it up with writer and former TV executive, Kelly Edwards to talk about her rise from assistant to casting, to executive, to producer… and then, years later, how she reinvented herself as a screenwriter after hiding this secret for decades. A few months into 2020, Kelly sat down and wrote the amazing book THE EXECUTIVE CHAIR - A Writers Guide to TV Series Development and soon after, staffed on the Fox series Our Kind of People with Showrunner Karin Gist! Kelly’s book is a must read or (Audible) book for aspiring writers and young execs trying to gain a foot in the industry. Her book is filled with inside baseball kinds of stories from an executive POV that are designed to help writers and filmmakers have a better understanding of how execs think, how to find value in your personal story, how to learn industry ropes, how to manage yourself in development, how to pitch with your personal story, how to better position yourself for success and so much more! Check out the ScreenWriterRR website at www.screenwritersrr.com for information, merch, or our Pateron! Support the show via the Patreon link. Remember support is love! We invest countless hours per week to deliver the actionable content that goes into this podcast. Connect with Us: Chris Derrick on Twitter Hilliard Guess on Twitter Kelly Edwards on Twitter Kelly's Website: www.KellyEdwards.com Tracy Grant on Twitter Lynelle White on Twitter The Screenwriters Rant Room on Facebook The Screenwriters Rant Room on Twitter
THE WRITERS PANEL | Linktree — linktr.ee Ben Blacker talks to leading TV & Film writers about their craft and careers.
Bonkers TV Story From Will Harris's Newsletter
Will Harris interviews Jeff Astrof about the insane, shot-out-of-a-cannon making of the KING JOHN sitcom pilot, starring John Leguizamo:
Pilot Error: "King John" (2014) - by Will Harris — willharris.substack.com Starring: John Leguizamo, Andrea Savage, Elizabeth Peña, Ariela Barer, Luke Ganalon, and Troy Garity
SPRING AWAKENING documentary
Lastly, I want to share the link to this trailer for a documentary on the SPRING AWAKENING reunion concert. There are some fantastic stories about the creative process and a reminder that so many of the things that seem obvious now were the product of experimentation, failure, and enormous leaps of faith.
It all started when the book writer and lyricist was wandering around a book store and stumbled upon an old copy of the play. The pic at the top of the newsletter is one I took while wandering around Lost Books in Montrose. It was so much fun browsing around the used books, no algorithm to point my curiosity. I left with a book that sparked a new idea I never would have come up with had I not stopped in that day.
Wander. Wonder. Stay curious.
The doc is inspiring, especially if you're a fan of the show:
Spring Awakening: Those You've Known | Official Trailer | HBO — www.youtube.com Together again, at last.Fifteen years after the Tony-winning Broadway run of Spring Awakening, the original cast and creative team reunite for a spectacular,...