Writing a Soap Opera is Hard

I probably have written about ten or so full length plays in my lifetime. I have written plays with complicated structure. I have written plays about social issues. I have written satires. I have written broad comedy. But nothing is harder than writing a TV pilot. That doesn't mean that writing TV is more intellectual or more challenging. It doesn't mean it's dumb either. But in TV you're writing on a shoestring budget. Obviously, I don't mean once you get something produced. But in terms of language and what has to happen in such a short amount of time, you have to be economical in how you spend those words.

I am working on my third or fourth draft of this pilot. I wrote a version of it that I loved. Then I decided it needed to be bigger, more of a saga, and that's when it got so much harder. I was scared of going into melodrama territory. But here's the thing that happened. As the stakes got higher, the emotion got deeper. The personal relationships really started to appear to me in such a pronounced way.

I have friends who don't outline. I have always been critical of writing a TV script or a screenplays without a map. It's so much harder and completely unnecessary. When I'm writing a pilot, I'm thinking of:

• What the character is doing
• How their actions affect who they are by the end of the script
• How their actions reflect who they'll be in the next episode or in the arc of the season.
• How they relate to the other characters
• How the choices reflect their internal and external struggle
• What they're saying
• What they're not saying
• Laying out clues to who they will reveal themselves to be
• The big moments
• The small moments

I'm thinking of a lot of things and in order to keep everything straight, I need to know the actions that are coming up. I need to see what material I have that can be moved up. I need to be constantly upping the ante--that's what this kind of dramatic writing is about. So maybe there's something I have planed for Act Four that I can reveal now. Then Act Four gets a lot more intense.

The first two drafts of this script were what I do well: personal moments in relationships. Then I decided to blow it up and make the characters larger than life and their journeys more epic. What I really did was raise the stakes. And that made everything that happened so much more vital. Then that revealed who these people really are.

I have a character die in the beginning of this script. And I outlined something beautiful about legacy and about the past coming to haunt the present. I changed the title to reflect the subject matter and the theme much more articulately. As the script swum around in my head, more things were being revealed to me. I had gotten to half way in my script when I was at a stand still. I just thought I had to push through this blockade.

Then I went to a concert on Thursday night and I started day dreaming as the songs were going on. A few days before I had written some ideas about upcoming episodes. This is also why I think it's important to do a bible. I think doing a bible helps with the larger arcs. I wanted a hypothetical episode 2 to be about the funeral. As I was day dreaming at the concert, I started thinking about how much fun the funeral was going to be to write. I started to get jealous that I wouldn't write the funeral.

Then I realized I had to write the funeral.

I have a great teaser. But then Act One needs to open at the funeral. Then everything that happens and every conversation that happens in Act One takes on a stronger meaning if it's happening at the funeral. It has greater resonance.  I had an aha moment.  So I spent yesterday and part of today just working that out in an outline. I changed things around. It all got deeper. I got to give some context while moving story forward by doing a funeral.  

I was a little concerned that I had too many events. The story opens up at an awards ceremony. Then we go to a funeral. And the end of the script is a big event. But I also think that ritual is important. Reminding the audience of how these characters are in public and in private is also important.

I love to write. I love to write fast. Sometimes the idea is bursting forth and has been marinating so long that it's ready to get on the grill.  But sometimes things haven't marinated long enough. I wrote two big drafts of the script in October. Then nothing until January.

I have been beating myself up for it over the past several months. November: gone. December: gone. But here's something I'm starting to realize. It's not just about going fast, fast, fast, fast. If I don't let an idea grow and mature. If I don't give it some space to get better, then I'm just writing unripened scripts. That doesn't mean that there aren't some scripts that fall out because they've been maturing in my head for a long time. That doesn't mean that I can't go fast sometimes. But I can't think that I am going to grow and get better as a writer if every script I write is churned out. 

Patience has always been a bit lesson for me. So I'm still learning it. If last year was about productivity, maybe this year is about patience.

Who knows? It's only January.

I am grateful for knowledge.

I am grateful for beauty.

I am grateful for ideas that make me excited.

I am grateful for patience.

I am grateful for an office to use this weekend.