OTHER JOBS ACT 1 HAS TO DO
Apart from providing the teaser and the Inciting Incident, there is plenty of other work for Act 1 to do...
Who is it about?
Remember your logline – that one sentence that crystallized your idea – it included the who. In the first ten pages you need to establish who the hero is and our way in. Is your story about a ghost, werewolf and vampire (Being Human) or a hostage negotiator (Kidnap and Ransom) or a woman released from prison after a 15-year sentence (Unforgiven) or a pair of identical twins (Ringer) or as group of lottery winners (Syndicate or Winners and Losers).
We need to see who they are and…
What they are up against
The Inciting Incident indicates the problem your hero or heroes face: the need to solve a crime; the need blend into society and hide; the need to deal with becoming rich; the need to save the human race. From that you can infer who they are up against, namely, the enemy. The enemy could be an invading force, a kidnapper, a murderer, the public, the police, family, friends or even themselves.
The world
You have created the world of your drama but now you have to establish it in the first ten pages. Not only the world of the character as a police detective, hostage negotiator or doctor but also the geographical world they inhabit. It could be a space station, a particular city or particular building.
The when
You need to establish the when of your world. Is it in the past, present day or the future? Is it historically true or generic? For example, Game of Thrones is arguably a medieval tale but is not set in a documented historical time and place.
The rules
The rules of the world need to be established quite quickly, particularly if there is a twist to that world. In Grimm the twist is that the present-day world is occupied by fairy-tale characters in disguise. In Being Human the twist is that ghosts, vampires and werewolves live and prey among us. Fringe is based on the concept of alternate universes and that differences apply depending which universe the episode is set in.
What type of show is it?
You will need to make clear what kind of show it is. What genre is it? What is the show’s tone? If it is a thriller, the first ten pages should be thrilling; if it is a comedy-drama, be funny; if a horror, be scary; if it is an action story, let’s see some action.
All this is a lot to do in ten pages, but it is what you have to do to propel the reader on to the eleventh page and beyond. It has to be a page-turner.
At the end of Act 1 you will need to create a plot-based cliffhanger or emotional revelation that will entice an audience back after the ad break and that will keep the script reader turning those pages.
Act 2
Each act has to serve a purpose and you want to be clear about what you want to achieve. In basic terms, your destination within each act is the end-of-act cliffhanger. The end of Act 2 (in a four-act episode) will be your halfway point (aka midpoint), which marks the furthest point your hero gets from achieving his or her goal.
By the start of the Act 2 your characters and tone should be well established. During the second act it is all about the obstacles in the way of success. These obstacles should create conflict and build tension and propel the story along. Your characters are pushing forward and are having increasing amount of success until suddenly they hit the barrier of failure or an unexpected outcome. By the end of the act a major event or revelation occurs that is so significant it redirects the story in a different direction and creates new problems. It may be a point when a character is in jeopardy or takes a step backwards from their goal.
The problems of Act 2 may have been resolved but they also create new and unexpected obstacles.
Act breaks
The end of each act is very important in terms of storytelling on commercial television. You have to make sure you entice the audience back. In the UK an ad break can be up to three minutes and 50 seconds long and so that last image, that last revelation, that moment of jeopardy, needs to be big enough to linger in the mind long enough to make the audience return.
Act 3
Act 3 makes things even harder for your characters. They are battling against the odds and they now look like they’re heading for failure. Be clear what purpose the act serves and the problems that have to be overcome. Basically, a good tenet of television writing is to create characters you love and then make their lives as hard as possible – make them suffer! If a problem is solved, then a new one should arise or the resolution of the problem itself should produce unexpected results. The end of Act 3 is the all-or-nothing moment – when the character(s) and we the audience realize that there is only one outcome or confrontation left and we are propelled into the final act.
Act 4
Act 4 is all about the resolution. The plot builds to a climax and is resolved. By this stage of your episode everything needs to be heightened to fever pitch. Make sure, with regard to your A story in particular (see Chapter 9), that there is a climax, a big finish – or, if it is a serial, that you have what I call an ‘Oh shit!’ moment when something is revealed that changes everything.
The best illustration of this is the closing episode of Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica (‘Crossroads, Part 2’), which climaxes with the revelation that four regular characters are not as they seem, coupled with the return of a character previously thought to be dead.
THE TAG
In old-school terms this is the epilogue. It occurs at the end of the script when everything is wrapped up. It may pay off a plot point or it may be a running gag. A tag can be as little as one to two pages long but forms part of the final act.
Key advice
The four-act structure can be a very helpful discipline for the beginning scriptwriter.
Remember, though: the four-act structure is a useful tool, not a commandment set in stone.
The first ten pages of your script are crucial – remember: hit the ground running!
End each of Acts 1–3 on a cliffhanger – you need to entice the audience back again after the ad break.
The final act should be about providing a resolution.
However, there may well also be a final ‘twist in the tale’ to help reel the audience in for the next episode or series.
9
The story
In this chapter you will learn:
• that most TV dramas are structured around two, three or even more storylines.
It is incredibly difficult, and rare, for a single hour of television drama to be sustained by a single story. The norm is for the episode to be sustained by at least two other stories that interact with and/or are linked thematically to the main plot. Each episode tends to be made up of an A, B and C story. Some of the more ambitious dramas –The Wire, for example – have even more stories on the boil and certainly some BBC dramas have D and E strands.
The A story will focus on your main characters, the hero or protagonist, and the story outlined in your logline for the script. The B story may deal with the personal lives and problems of the main characters which may relate either thematically or directly to the A story. The C story could be about the lives of the supporting characters.
As a rough guide, this is how those stories will break down in your script:
A story 60%
B story 30%
C story 10%
These percentages are only a guide and the various story strands may take up a greater or lesser proportion of the script depending on the stories you want to tell.
Below is an illustration of how a three-strand story could work in terms of the four-act structure as a ratio:
Sometimes the teaser is all about the main A story. The C story may be told over a single scene in each act. The B story may be resolved by the end of Act 3. It all depends on how you choose to tell your stories.
Questions to ask of each storyline
What is the story about?
What is the theme that links the storylines?
What does each character do?
What does each character think?
What is the complication – the drama – of each story?
How is tension created and how does it lead to the next action in the story?
What is the core problem that has to be overcome?
What choices does the main character make in each story?
What consequences result from those choices?
Do characters take responsibility for their actions?
How does each storyline end?
What is the timeframe for each story?
Try this
1 Watch an episode of your favourite TV show.
2 Note down how many stories there are and, using one sentence for each, what they are.
3 Write down all the key moments in each story and approximately when they happen.
4 Identify how many acts there are and what happens at the end of each act. (Note that in the UK the ad breaks for US shows do not necessarily signify the end of an act. The end of an act is usually indicated by a fade out / fade in.)
5 Do the same again with a different show.
6 From both examples, you should now have a guide to television story structure. Use them to help you plot out your stories.
Key advice
Your main storyline – story A – will probably have to be supported by at least one other storyline – story B, C, etc.
A rough ratio of time spent on the A, B, and C stories will be 6:3:1.
A typical A story may deal with an event in the protagonist’s professional life, while a B will relate to their personal life.
Industry interview 4: the scriptwriter (II)
INDUSTRY INTERVIEW: MARC PYE
Marc Pye has been writing for film and television for the past 14 years and has written more than 100 hours of serial drama. Among his television credits are The Street, Holby City, EastEnders, The Bill, Waterloo Road, The Royal, Holby Blue, Doctors, Moving On, Echo Beach, River City, High Road and RTE’s Fair City. He is the author of two novels, Lollipop and Rewire (Sceptre) and his three short films – Baldy McBain, Last Legs and Instant Credit have all premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Instant Credit was also selected for the Newport Beach Film Festival, LA in 2004. His first feature, Act of Grace, starring Leo Gregory, David Yip and Jennifer Lim was released in April 2012. His second, Between Weathers, went into production the following month.
Nicholas Gibbs: How did you break into television drama?
Marc Pye: I used to hound everyone with my scripts. Any indie I found in the phone book; even if they did documentaries I still sent it to them. I used to work in Boots the Chemist in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street and Scottish Television was just up the road from there, so most lunchtimes I’d head over there with my scripts and hand-deliver them. There was a script editor there who would read my stuff and would write back to me with encouraging letters. They all basically said the same, that the opportunities were limited and, although he liked my writing, I’d be better off trying to get on a long-running show, but he appreciated how difficult that was. A couple of years later he was made producer on High Road and I got a call from him to come in and have a crack at writing a script for the show. I wrote it, he liked it and I got on the show and went on to write 29 episodes.
NG: Your first gig was writing for the High Road and you later wrote for River City – what was that experience like? And in practical terms what was the writing process?
MP: High Road was pretty easy now I look back at it. They gave us scene breakdowns which were pretty prescriptive. I didn’t stick rigidly with it and would always slant it so there was more of a hook to the scenes or I’d merge scenes if I didn’t think they were moving on the drama. They allowed me a lot of free rein as long as I stuck to the restrictions, like what set was available and so forth. It was all a great learning process. I then went on to The Bill, where I learned a lot more but the principles remained the same, like leaving a scene or a part break on an unanswered question or jeopardy. As it was a cop shop, that was ideal. With High Road I had been spoiled, as we usually only did two drafts. With River City we worked from a storyline, again with an A, B, C story, wrote a scene breakdown, went to script and did between three and five drafts. I did that for a few years and wrote 56 episodes.
NG: You then joined The Bill which was, by then, a one-hour show. How did you find writing for the longer form? Unlike the High Road, presumably you had to pitch stories of the week and create original guest characters. What was the process for that?
MP: Yes, there was a script editor who liked my work and she was working at an indie. She got me meetings with her boss and we got talking about possible ideas and I did some pitches and stuff, then she went to BBC Wales and called me up one day and asked me to come up with ideas for drama in Wales, which I did. It was called Rewire and was about two Liverpool electricians who go to work in Wales, but Jimmy McGovern’s The Lakes was due to come out, which had a Liverpool guy working away from home, so as there was a similarity we couldn’t do it, so I later wrote it as a book.
She then moved on to The Bill and I got a call, saying ‘I’m at The Bill now. Do you watch the show?’ I didn’t, so she suggested I should and then start pitching ideas for it. I did that for six months and had a few near misses and then one day a story got through called ‘Sweet Sixteen’, about girl gangs. It was great to be able to create guest characters who could give the regulars a run for their money. I’d always liked the character Rod Skase, who was a bit sure of himself and thought of himself as a ladies’ man. Girl-on-girl crime and girl gangs targeting guys was on the increase, so I put the two together. I had him undercover, cocky, thinking he could flush this girl gang out, but they are too clever for him and turn the tables on him, abduct him, belittle him and totally mess with his head. I really wanted to get the mileage out of the character and by the end of the episode I’m sure he wasn’t the same character!
The longer form wasn’t and has never been an issue for me. Some stories are best told in one hour, some in 30 minutes. I really don’t have a favourite. With The Bill we were given a story document with an A, B and C story and wrote a scene breakdown from that, with part breaks in it. I think we did about five drafts once the breakdown had been OK’ed, but then it became a lot more when the way of working changed and it became more of a serial drama. When I started on the show they were stand-alone episodes, but then the personnel changed and it became a different show with more of a serial running through it to engage the viewer and increase the figures. There was a lot more work involved, as storylines would change at draft three, four, five and sometimes even be thrown out, and that meant the work you had done was redundant and you had to start from scratch. It happened to all the writers and it’s something that still happens on shows if something isn’t working. You’ve just got to knuckle down and get on with it.
NG: Tell me how your episode of The Street came about? Would it be fair to say that was your first original TV script in that all the characters and premise was yours?
MP: The show was originally called The Likes of Us as a kind of working title. I’d been working with a producer in Manchester who liked my work and he called me one day, saying he and another producer who I’d been sending my work to had been discussing me. The exec from Granada, who was doing The Street, was looking for ‘a gritty northern writer’, as they put it. She had called them to ask if they knew of anyone who would be suitable and they recommended me. Granada called me to tell me to expect the call. I didn’t really expect anything to come of it, till a script editor called me up, told me about the show, and that it was going to be set in Liverpool in the exact area that I grew up in and that Jimmy McGovern also grew up in. The area was a bit rough, so to write a story set in the streets I grew up in really appealed to me. She said if they liked the ide
a and it all went ahead that I would be working with Jimmy as a kind of script editor and mentor and asked did I have a problem with that. I think you can guess the answer. The idea I pitched was a story of injustice, about a respected teacher who is out jogging, needs to take a leak and goes into the bushes. He’s seen by a small girl and her father thinks he is a pervert. The teacher panics and runs off. He later gets identified at the school parents’ night and it all goes horribly wrong for him. It was my first original TV script and got me a lot of work and attention as a writer after it went out. As it turned out, they moved the series to Manchester but it worked just as well.
NG: The Street was an award-winning series and you said that you used ‘The Flasher’ as a sample to try and get a job for a film but the reader didn’t think it was emotionally engaging. Could you recall that story? I think it is an illustration of how fickle the industry is and the fact that nobody knows anything!
MP: I think the reader will know who they are so I don’t want to mention the show, but when they were filming The Street I met Arthur Ellison, who wrote the final episode of Series 1. He came up to me and said, ‘I got your script to read and I was halfway through and the tears were running down my face. I though how the hell is this poor guy going to get out of this?’ He had to put it down and call Jimmy to say he loved the script but tell him the effect it was having on him. I think the fact that we are emotional creatures as writers had something to do with it and I know Arthur won’t mind me telling that story, as it’s a great example of how we can move people through our work. When the show went out I had text after text, call after call and tons of emails all saying the same thing – that they cried, were choked or so moved by what was happening to this family, for the injustice the character suffered. And then there were also the tears of joy when it’s resolved for him. But this reader read it with a view to me writing for the show and said it failed to emotionally engage them, so thanks but no thanks. Hey-ho, best to quote William Goldman on that one!
Writing Television Drama Page 8
