Speaker 1: Film Courage Questions one should ask themselves about writing a TV show. Are there certain things? Stephen Ward Okay, there's nine questions I always ask when I'm first talking to someone about their TV show. First of all, what does TV do? It gives us a great world. We need a great world because we're going to be in it for 150 episodes, right? So what's a great world? I would do an exercise where I say to you, you give me a great world and don't tell me it's New York City. I want to know a specific neighborhood of New York City. What's the great world? Because great television is always about a great world. If you want to talk about New York, then give me a specific world in it. There's a show called Billions and this show is brilliantly written. It's probably the best television out there right now. And it's all about billionaires, how they make their money and how they live their fascinating lives, right? Another fascinating world, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, that was a Versace fashion world in Miami. And then this guy who became a serial killer, his world, I've never seen it before. So Carbon Black is this really cool sci-fi show. It's about a cooler future where people can change bodies, right? So they have sleeves, they call it. So your world, you want to ask yourself, what is the world of your show? Atlanta is probably the coolest show on television right now. And it's all about this African-American milieu of middle class, lower middle class Atlanta and this sort of slacker guy in it and how he's going to survive in this slacker world. Never seen it before, Stranger Things. That's the world of the 80s and that's big nostalgia for kids that are 20, 30 right now. People on their bikes without helmets. Fashion sets that were tubes with rabbit ears. So the world there is absolutely about the nostalgia, yeah? So big question, what's your world? That's what we want to see. Fantasy continues to be big. I hate it but zombie is a world that just continues to be true. True Blood, Vampire's Romance continues to be good. Black comedy world of Shameless, White Trash. So worlds are extraordinarily important in your show. The next question I ask is do you have a theme that matters? What do you want to say about the world in your television show? For instance, a show like Essence of Anarchy which is a great world of motorcycle show. The theme is if you have a bad mom or dad, you're going to be screwed. You need to have a good parent. You need to be mentored. Well, he's not. And that means the entire show is about how the hero of the show fails because he doesn't have a good mom and dad. His dad is dead. His mom is horrible. And so this truth about life is often what hipsters ignore when they're writing a story. They're like I want to write this story. I call it the Weedon Speed. It's going to be about motorcycles and violence and razor blades and people smoking crack. And I'm like okay great. 10 minutes. I'll love it. Then what's the truth about life you're saying? Sons of Anarchy. Kurt Sutter is a brilliant writer. Why? Because he's got a theme that this hero who drives a motorcycle, who's tough, who does all the things that you're saying you want to see. The violence, the sex, the motorcycles, all that stuff. But every episode is about this guy struggling with the fact that he doesn't have a dad. How do I live my life without a dad or a mom? And he never figures it out. And he's screwed because of it. So theme answers the question. In ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK which is a brilliant show, what's the theme? Well you better know yourself. Piper doesn't know if she likes girls or boys. And the whole show is about do I like guys, do I like girls? I don't know. Who am I? I don't know. So that's a great theme, too. So DOWNTON ABBEY has a theme which is that the lower class is rising and we have to understand how it's rising. That's the theme of every episode of DOWNTON ABBEY, okay? So theme is in the WIRE which is probably the intellectual's wet dream of a show. David Simon in his story bible and that's something you should also have when you're pitching a story. His message is this. This story, I want you to read this because this is in the front page of the story bible. This story is about the human condition, it's not just a police show. It's a show about how we have taken the urban underclass and have jailed them and tormented them and torn them apart in our stupid drug war, okay? That's his theme. It's a social theme and that motivates every one of those episodes. So if you don't have that and it works even in a sitcom, you're not going to have a show that works. So what are you passionate about? What do you believe in? I ask my students this sometimes. What do you believe in? Like I don't know. That's not important. I'm going to write a hip story. No, you're not. You're going to bore us. The next question is why do we want to watch the show every week? Every week we've got to watch a show, 100 episodes. So you need a great question, right? In BREAKING BAD, what's the great hook question? Every week. How bad is WALTER going to break? What's he going to do this week? Oh God, he's going to be even worse, okay? MAKING A MURDERER. Hey, did he do it or not? That's a pretty good question, yeah? Every week we get that. ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK. Is Piper ever going to figure out if she likes girls or boys? No, she's not going to. But this question continues. It's the hook. It's the great question of the show. MR. ROBOT, can Elliot take down the big corporation? GAME OF THRONES, which family is going to win? Every episode is about that, right? And what's the theme of GAME OF THRONES by the way? It's kind of important. The theme is do you have to be evil to be a great leader? That's the whole question for every episode, right? So that's an important question. So the next one is genre. Let's not go into that because I teach that. It's a structural thing but you need to stick in your genre. What parents are your show like? In television if you're going to write a TV show you've got to ask yourself what are the parents of the show? What shows are like this that you've seen before? And my HIPP students are like Ah, Peter, I don't want to…my show is like nothing else ever on. It's like okay, well then it's not going to get on. Even if you want it to be completely different from everything, we need to understand what you're reacting to. What did you hate? You've got to have parents for the show and it will help you build your show if you do. So then the next question and this is super important is…how do I say it? What is the question that torments the hero forever that will never be resolved? What's the unsolvable dilemma for the hero that will never, ever be solved? And that is in MADMEN it's I am unlovable and the things I do to make myself lovable make me so uncomfortable that I run away. Don Draper seduces woman after woman after woman in MADMEN but every time they fall in love with him, they always do, he runs away because he hasn't solved his basic dilemma which is I am unlovable. So that is the unsolvable dilemma. Even in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER it's I just want to be an alpha bitch and be in high school and be popular. No you're a vampire slayer. I don't want to be a vampire slayer. 150 episodes of that unsolvable dilemma. Breaking Bad, Walt's dying, he's got to take care of his family. How does he do it? He becomes a drug dealer and destroys his family. So the thing that makes him want to take care of his family, the way he does it destroys his family. TRUE DETECTIVE, Rust knows the world is meaningless, Marty believes there is a lot of meaning in the world. How do they resolve that? Well they do in the end because remember it's a mini-series, it's like a movie. So in the end they do both believe the world is a great place but that's not classic TV. So will Walt protect his family or destroy it? Will Rust view? How can good prevail in a world that is surrounded by the strongest? That's GAME OF THRONES. How can we have a world where there is a good leader when it's the worst people who always win? Right? Unsolvable dilemma. Maybe in the end the two people with the IKEA rugs on their back, they're going to learn how to do it. But for the whole seven, eight years they don't have it. So what is the irreconcilable conflict in your show? What is the dilemma that will never be resolved that will keep people coming back? And obviously that has to do with their core wounds. So the next question is what's the big core wound in your hero? How does that work in your television show? And there's many different ones and it's always about that unreconcilable dilemma. Madman, I'm unlovable. Tyrion in GAME OF THRONES, I'm unlovable. Everything he does is because of that. WALTERS is I'm weak and my father used to say never corner a weak man, they'll turn out to be really strong. WADE IN DEADPOOL by the way because this is true also in movies is I'm ugly. RANDALL IN THIS IS US which is a great serial show we haven't talked much about. RANDALL is I'm not part of this family, right? My skin color is different, I'm not really part of this family. PETE IN SNEAKY PETE, I'm not part of a family. Great core wound. JESSICA JONES IN JESSICA JONES, I'm not safe. This villain can get me, he'll always get me. So core wounds are the nuclear reactors of your show, they really are. And Daenerys' core wound in GAME OF THRONES is I'm powerless. And we see the entire first season for Daenerys she starts out as this little sex slave for her brother. She's given to this warrior as a sex object. By the end of the season she's walked through fire and hatched dragon eggs. So her powerlessness is beginning to go away but it will continue through the entire run of GAME OF THRONES. I'm powerless. Is she getting powerful? She's beginning to but that will take a long time. So these are just the beginnings of the questions that I would ask. There's many others but this is a start when you're writing television and they are different from film but when I would start talking to someone about their TV show, these are the questions I would ask them at the beginning.