The Dramatic Question

You are likely to know the structural item  ‘The Dramatic Question’ (DQ) in story.  Important as the DQ is, it is the tension of opposites in attempting to answer it that brings real power and sophistication to a story.

The dramatic question is a central part of any story but not  in the story -it is in the audience’s mind. It is what keeps them in their seats. The question comes to mind shortly after or at the inciting incident in the story, that event which sets off the protagonist to pursue a path of action leading to the climax where the dramatic question will be answered by the final action of the protagonist. (“Will he be able to prove his innocence in time? – The Fugitive.  “Did she inherit her father’s genius or madness” – Proof).  The real power of the DQ  is in the level of doubt sustained by the audience as to their own prediction of the outcome. This is the Tension of Opposites.   If they do not believe their own prediction, then there is doubt.   Doubt is good.

The audience may not be consciously thinking the question aloud but it compels them nonetheless to stay and watch the rest of the story unfold.  Indeed, the question can change, redirect and become more subtle with the protagonist action since we are not talking rules here. Often it is difficult to be absolute about the question and to say it succinctly depending on the movie, play or book.  Audiences will rarely talk about the dramatic question and may not even understand the term but book readers will say  ‘That book  was a real page turner’  meaning the dramatic question was strong.    Within each scene of the work there is a smaller but connected dramatic question that in it’s own way leads the audience to sway one way or the other regarding the central dramatic question.

Structurally a DQ requires a setup, tension between the two sides of that question   and the payoff.    Here’s an example: Will the sergeant in Lady Gregory’s play ‘The Rising of the Moon’ help the revolutionary escape or will he turn him in for the reward?  The setup is the  discovery by the audience that the beggar is actually the revolutionary and the key to the sergeant’s reward. The tension of opposites is how the writer made the audience veer to both sides. At times you think he will and then at others you think he won’t.    A good DQ can win a Pulitzer! The play and film ‘Doubt’ by JP Shanley has the keystone of the dramatic question in the title.  The DQ is Did the priest molest the  pupil? The audience is brought from positive to negative and back again on this question by the writer planting doubt in their minds as to their own prediction of the outcome leading to an ending that divides the audience down the middle.
Watch for Tension of Opposites in your story and the ones you read and watch. Are you moved from one plausible outcome to another? Do you find yourself changing your opinion of what’s going on, despite yourself? If so then you are in a story of sophistication with a writer who has the power to move minds.

What should be my Second Spec?

After completing a spec script for one show, what should be the next show that I should write for?  Same genre to keep agents focused? Switch  from Drama to Comedy to show I can make people laugh? Swith genre to show I can do procedural as well as ?

After discussing this with an old hand in the business, I was advised to do none of the above. She said that agents are now looking for an original series as well as a spec script. Yep, the bar has been raised – now you got to go ahead and use your imagination. UCLA Extension has jumped on the bandwagon by offering a new class in Spring 09 ‘Creating a TV Series’ by Charles Rosin.  Get the details at https://www.uclaextension.edu/r/Course.aspx?reg=U8927

When A, B & C stories are not A, B & C stories

Breaking down ‘The Wheel’ episode in Mad Men shows a literary conceit that ties the title into the scenes playing out the cycle of life.  In this episode a man dies, a baby is born an affair is revealed and the first woman since WWII is given a copywriter position at Sterling Cooper.

The ‘problem’ for Don in the story is to figure out how to market Kodak’s new gadget. The end shows Don revealing the slide projector as a time machine to go back and forth through the past and returning to the place where we are loved. We see slides of his kids being born, Christmas day, him and Bets in poses of family love etc. This is a self-revelation for Don and a tragedy at that because he cannot go back and forth like the carousel and save his brother or his marriage.  If that weren’t enough, the A, B & C stories tie into this metaphor of the wheel or carousel. This episode is an example of fine writing.

Using the Story Template to determine the A, B & C stories shows that they are not hierarchical. There are more stories, more evenly weighted and they tie into each other with greater meaning. Other episodes tend to have a parallel or mirror story structure where an event in one person’s life is mirrored in another’s and there are clear A, B & C stories.

Story	Who’s key	What’s it about
Kodak	Don	Don has to figure out a way to market the ‘Wheel’
New Biz	Don, Pete, Fellahs	Everyone has to bring in new business. Key to ‘self worth’
Affair	Bets, Francine	Francine tells Bets her hub is shagging Manhattan. This seq is about Bets admitting Don’s affairs to herself.
Relaxacisor	Peggy, Ken	Peggy shows command and ability to learn with her account
New Baby	Pete, Trudy	Under pressure to provide a grandchild, Pete relents but more to get Clearasil biz from father inlaw
Peggy’s Baby	Peggy	Peggy has her (& Pete’s) baby and ignores it. Climactic scene from multi-episode story of her pregnancy.
Adam Hangs Himself	Don, Adam	Don tries to reach out to his brother after shunning him. The photos of the two of them together prompt his call to him.
Thanksgiving	Don, Bets	Don decides not to join his family for TG, at the end he comes home to go with them to find that it is too late.

Many of these stories are wonderfully told. In the ‘Affair’ above the writer (Robin Veith and Mathew Wiener) uses Francine’s admission to Betsy about her husband’s philandering as a way for Betsy to confront her own denial about Don. The story is apparently about Francine but is not at all. Bets tells her shrink about Don in a very casual manner but this is a dam burst forth. The cliche would have been. 1) Francine tells Bets she called a manhattan # in their phone bill and got a woman. 2) Bets calls numbers in their phone bill and gets Rachel. 3)Bets confronts Don in angry mess and 4) ‘Hi Jinks ensue’ . Instead, the indirect method is used for greater effect and is more true to the situation. Just because people live in denial doesn’t mean that they will explode at some point. What Bets gets in this story is self-realization ‘I feel sorry for him’ – she has finally figured out what Don’s actions mean.
To arrive at this self-realization is a stunningly beautiful scene in the car park where she goes up to 11 year old Glen and confesses her deepest secret to him ‘I’m so sad’.

    This is her emotional realization of the problem with Don – she can’t quite say it yet only to admit to the depth of it. In the scene with the shrink she intellectual acknowledges it by saying it out loud.

If this series had a subtitle, ‘The tragedy of Don Draper’ would be it. No surprise if this series actually ends with Don ending up on the concrete after a dive from the top floor of Sterling Cooper.  The tragedy in this episode is shown beautifully with the Kodak carousel. Don discovers the way to market the product from the realization of his own tragic actions. After telling his brother Adam that he did not want to see him and then after going through old photos makes the call to him only to learn that Adam had committed suicide. Too late for the call.  At the presentation with Kodak, clicking through photos of a better life with him and Bets he describes the pain of Nostalgia and here the truth of his life is brought to the surface. Ironically, he calls it the time machine, a device that allows us to go back and forth. But for Don, it is too late. He has lost his brother and now that Bets is aware of his affairs, he will lose her (at least emotionally). The irony, of course, is that he can’t go back in time.  This is what makes that last scene so utterly sad and emotionally powerful for the audience. Great stuff.
Robin Veith is certainly a wonderful and intelligent writer. She started as a writer’s assistant with Mathew Wiener on "Mad Men" and no doubt it was her strong visual and literary instincts that got her in as staff writer this season. A writer to watch.

TV doesn’t always connect the A, B & C stories but there’s always a better payoff when it is done with intelligence. Take a look at Hamlet. The A story is about a man seeking to avenge the murder of his father (Hamlet vs. Claudius) and the B story is about a man seeking to avenge the murder of his father (Laertes vs. Hamlet).
How they go about this reveals their values and the problem of the story but essentially the B story informs and affects the A story – as well as reflecting it. The resonance of the B story into the A magnifies the emotional impact on the audience. When the writer uses a strong literary conceit such as ‘The Wheel’ intelligently, the results are outstanding. Why isn’t this seen more often? Because it’s hard to do  -  well without seeming contrived.

Deconstructing a TV Script – What’s the story?

In order to figure out what the main A, B & C and runner stories in a script are, I need to read through and name each sequence , who’s in it and give some basic description of the  begining, middle end and the meaning. I can  then step back and figure out which stories dominate. A sequence refers to any natural grouping of scenes that belong to a story line.

Here’s what I do:

1. Open an empty Story Template here.

2. Fill in the name of the sequence.
When I start I put the first thing I think of for the name, I will go back by the first act and rename some of them because I can see by reading on that the earlier sequence is part of the same story. These names will become A story, B Story, C story etc.
Sequences are a handy way to group scenes into a narrative unit. For instance sequence 2 is where  Don goes to his mistress, Midge  but I don’t call it the ‘Midge’ story. It’s mostly him talking  about his upcoming presentation so it’s the smoking story  even though it introduces Midge and tells us more about Don. It’s not a science, I’m just grouping them in any way I think will help me pull out the main stories running through the script.
Some scenes are not really part of a story in themselves but may tie several together or be part of a broader story that goes over several episodes. I could name a sequence actively e.g. ‘Pete sabotages Don’ instead of ‘Steel’ which could be helpful but I try not to do too much analyzing at first.

3. Note the important individuals in the sequence

4. Put a description of what happened or what the sequence means if that is important. ‘The scene is not about what the scene is about’ – you know that adage so the meaning can be more important than what’s going on.  In the sequence ‘Have a Baby’ in the Episode ‘The wheel’ of Mad Men, one of scenes shows Pete relenting to having sex without a condom. The meaning here is that part of his motivation is to get approval from his Father-in-law by trying to have a baby (‘I know you’ll tell your mother’)  to get his business and thus get ahead at Sterling Cooper.

Now I can do a simple sort and see what the main stories are and who’s in them.

Out of the result below I can tell which are the main stories in the script:
A Story – Smoking

B Story – New Girl

C Story – Don vs. Pete

D Story – Rachel’s Store

E Story – Pete’s Party

There is also the beginning of another story which ends the New Girl Story when Pete sleeps with Peggy at the end.
Even though there are more sequences for New Girl, Smoking is the A story because it involves Don,  opens the episode and has the highest stakes. I need to weave in 4-5 stories into my script based on what I deduced above. If you notice that there are 6-7 stories or just 1 or 2 then this tells you to take a close look at the structure of the episode to check for literary devices or conceits such as in the ‘Wheel’ episode.
I can also see that there are two client stories in the episode – so I’ll need more than one when writing my script.
I’m not including runners for now. I know they’re there but am more interested in quickly getting to the heart of the story. Also note that the table doesn’t have Acts. You can break down your script into 4 acts for your drama or whatever number runs in your show. I go back and mark the act break later as this is handy for identifying how the act ends and what I have to do to match it.

Seq	Title	Who’s Key?	What’s it about?
1	Smoking	Don	Don in a bar asking bar hop about his smoking habits
2	Smoking	Don, Midge	Don with his mistress
3	New Girl	Peggy, fellas	Peggy arrives at the office on her first day
4	Pete’s Party	Pete, fellas	Pete’s office mates are planning a bachelor party
5	New Girl	Peggy, Joan	Joan shows Peggy the ropes
6	Rachel’s Store	Roger, Don	Roger reminds Don about Menken and the pitch to Lucky Strike
7	New Girl	Peggy, Pete, Don	Pete undresses pegy verbally
8	Don vs. Pete	Don, Pete	Don tells Pete his behaviour with peggy is out of line
9	New Girl	Peggy, Doctor	Peggy at the doctor getting contraceptives
10	Rachel’s Store	Don, Rachel, Roger	Don and Peggy hit it off – badly
11	Don vs. Pete	Don, Pete	Don rejects Pete’s friendly advance
12	New Girl	Peggy, Joan, Others	Peggy meets the receptionists
13	Smoking	Don, Sal, Gretchen	Sal and then Grethcen come up short on ideas
14	Smoking	Don, Roger, Pete, Gues	Big meeting, nearly fails but Don saves the day
15	Pete’s Party	Pete, fellas	The fellas get ready to head out
16	Pete vs Don	Pete, Don	Don tells Pete off for going through his trash
17	New Girl	Peggy, Don	Peggy puts her hand on Don and is rejected
18	Rachel’s Store	Don, Rachel	Don apologies to rachel and they share a moment of honesty
19	Peggy and Pete	Peggy, pete, others	Pete goes to Peggy’s house and sleeps with her
20	Home Sweet Home	Don, Betty, Kids	Don returns to his suburban idyll and beautiful wife

A simple sort on this table in Excel and I can see which is the A, B & C story as well as what is the beginning, middle and end of each

Seq	Title	Who’s Key?	What’s it about?
8	Don vs. Pete	Don, Pete	Don tells Pete his behaviour with peggy is out of line
11	Don vs. Pete	Don, Pete	Don rejects Pete’s friendly advance
16	Don vs. Pete	Pete, Don	Don tells Pete off for going through his trash
20	Home Sweet Home	Don, Betty, Kids	Don returns to his suburban idyll and beautiful wife
3	New Girl	Peggy, fellas	Peggy arrives at the office on her first day
5	New Girl	Peggy, Joan	Joan shows Peggy the ropes
7	New Girl	Peggy, Pete, Don	Pete undresses Peggy verbally
9	New Girl	Peggy, Doctor	Peggy at the doctor getting contraceptives
12	New Girl	Peggy, Joan, Others	Peggy meets the receptionists
17	New Girl	Peggy, Don	Peggy puts her hand on Don and is rejected
19	Peggy and Pete	Peggy, pete, others	Pete goes to Peggy’s house and sleeps with her
4	Pete’s Party	Pete, fellas	Pete’s office mates are planning a bachelor party
15	Pete’s Party	Pete, fellas	The fellas get ready to head out
6	Rachel’s Store	Roger, Don	Roger reminds Don about Menken and the pitch to Lucky Strike
10	Rachel’s Store	Don, Rachel, Roger	Don and Peggy hit it off – badly
18	Rachel’s Store	Don, Rachel	Don apologies to Rachel and they share a moment of honesty
1	Smoking	Don	Don in a bar asking bar hop about his smoking habits
2	Smoking	Don, Midge	Don with his mistress
13	Smoking	Don, Sal, Gretchen	Sal and then Gretchen come up short on ideas
14	Smoking	Don, Roger, Pete, Gues	Big meeting, nearly fails but Don saves the day

It’s important to do this exercise for a few scripts because that is when you will see a pattern.
Let’s take another example – Look at “New Amsterdam” EP 104

Seq	Title	Who’s Key?	What’s it about?
4	Don & Rachel	Don, Rachel	Don bumps into Rachel at the office
23	Don and Roger	Don, Roger	Roger tells Don not to compete with Pete
6	Helen Bishop	Betty, Dan	Dan tries to get into Betty’s home she won’t let him
7	Helen Bishop	Betty, Helen	Helen comes over to explain.
11	Helen Bishop	Betty, Helen	Betty goes to babysit at Helen’s house
14	Helen Bishop	Betty,Glen	Glen walks in on Betty in the toilet, she gives him a lock of hair
16	Helen Bishop	Betty, Helen	Helen comes home
5	Home Sweet Home	Betty, Kids	Betty is reading  a fairy tale to Sally.
1	New Apt	Pete, Ken, Harry & Paul	The fellas are listening to Bob NewHart when Trudy  arrives
2	New Apt	Pete, Trudy, Harry	Trudy tells Harry he can give his wife a baby, takes Pete out of office
3	New Apt	Pete, Trudy, Harry	Trudy shows Pete a new apartment
8	New Apt	Pete, his dad andrew	Pete’s dad turns down pete’s request for $
9	New Apt	Pete, Trudy	Pete pretends he didn’t ask his father due to ill health
12	New Apt	Pete, Trudy, Trudy’s parents	Trudy’s dad offers financial help with the apt, Pete grudgingly relents
13	New Apt	Pete, Trudy	Pete not happy with taking money
24	New Apt	Pete, Trudy, Trudy’s parents	They have bought the apt. Pete seems as if he has sold out.
20	Shrink	betty, dr. Wayne	Betty tells the dr. about her impressions of Helen’s life  in a condescending manner.
10	Steel	Don, Pete, Sal, Walter	Presentation scuppered by Pete
15	Steel	Pete, Walter	Pete suggests copy to Walter at a bar
17	Steel	Don, Pete, Walter, Sal	Pete’s idea undermines Don
18	Steel	Don, Pete	Don fires Pete
19	Steel	Don, Roget	Don tells Roger he fired Pete
22	Steel	Don, Roger, Pete	Roger covers for Pete saying he gave him a second chance
21	Steel	Don, Roger, Coper	Cooper tells Don he can’t fire Pete

So for this episode we have

A Story – New Apartment

B  Story – Steel

C Story – Helen Bishop

Why does Pete get the A story? It opens with him, ends with him and he gets the most scene mileage. However the B story seems to have more drama. The tale of Pete undermining Don has a whiff of intrigue and yet lets us see it from Pete’s point of view. Still I think New Apartment is the A story. It doesn’t matter much – it’s all about Pete.

My earlier assumption – that I need to put together 4 or 5 stories together for an ep is not true. There are 2  main stories a smaller C story plus a couple of threads.

Then there are Story Threads – such as ‘Don & Rachel’ and ‘Shrink’ which are stories that will play out over another episode or number of episodes.There is a scene with Don and Roger where they discuss what happened with Pete undermining him twice in a roundabout way. I could have lumped it under Steel but decided not to because it’s a revelation scene that ties in with a number of issues in Don’s life -mainly his unease.

The episode, however,  is mostly about Pete. He undermines Don in ‘Steel’  and is undermined himself in ‘New Apartment’. He nearly loses his job.  Pete really gets ‘buttoned down’  in this episode  nicely indicated in the playing of the Bob Newhart album that opens the ep. That opening, by the way, is a good example of the sophistication of the show. It rarely shows cultural or technological ‘bits’ without leveraging them as metaphor’s in the story. e This was done to great effect in the Kodak Carousel ep.

But there is the one oddball in these stories – the C Story doesn’t have a resolution. The ‘event’ of that story is Betty giving a lock of hair to young Glen though you wouldn’t know it until Helen confronts Betty about it in another episode. For n know a bit about  Betty and gives her an idea of what it would be like to be alone – if she left Don. Helen Bishop’s life is an alternative realit Somewhere inside she knows Don has left her out in the cold.

Don is still serviced in this episode as the story establishes Pete as a true antagonist of his and gives us a direct combat story which Don loses. The one story in common with the Pilot is ‘Steel’ .  That first ep focused on Peggy so now it’s Pete’s turn. The difference is that Peggy is a mirror of Don and Pete is an enemy of Don so the tension between them is of a different nature.

Running With My Eyes Closed › Ten Writing Tips for Your Mad Men Spec

Jill Golick has some tips for writing a mad men spec. 

Here’s the rundown:

1. Beat out between 14 and 19 juicy sequences to lay down two or more thematically related plotlines A Mad Man spec has to carry a weighty theme; you want to say something about the nature of being human.

2. Put in about twice as many A-story sequences as B sequences. If you want a C, devote three to four sequences to it.

3. Write a tease that draws you in with drama but doesn’t provide any direct clues as to where the story is headed. This should be a nice long meaty sequence, like Adam killing himself at the beginning of the episode about the Rejuvenator.

4. Include plenty of bank shot sequences that speak to theme but don’t necessarily drive the plot forward. These sequences help to set the stakes by showing us the lives of incidental characters. Joan’s reality as a single woman having an affair with a married man sheds light on what’s at stake for Rachel if she sleeps with Don. Harry’s pleading with his wife to let him come home warns Don and Pete of the consequences of choosing work over family. Dr Wayne tells Don that Betty is consumed by petty jealousies just before he catches Roger hitting on her and takes his revenge.

5. Don’t over tell it. Mad Men scripts invite viewers to figure out what’s going on, they respect their intelligence. They also trust that the structure and technique of the script to tell the story. We see Don catch Roger hitting on Betty. We see him give a few dollars to an elevator man. We see Don and Roger slurping down raw oysters and booze. And when they get back to the office, the elevator is out and they have to walk up twenty-three flights. Nowhere is it spelled out that this is a carefully planned act of revenge. Don’t spoon feed the audience.

6. Throw in an insider 60s reference or two: Dr Scholl’s, Desi and Lucy’s second divorce, Bob Newhart’s first comedy album. A lot of Mad Men is in the details.

7. Write some witty, educated and intelligent dialogue. A scene with agency men bantering back on forth is the perfect forum. Or give Roger a chance to wax poetic. Rachel is also great for historical and cultural perspective. These characters are smart and educated and not afraid to show it.

8. Include a 60s product in need of a campaign. And allow Don to come up with a pitch that is not only brilliant but sums up the human condition. “Advertising is based on happiness.” “The Carousel lets us travel around and around and back home again.” Of course this also needs to resonate with your over all theme.

9. Hit us on the head with a little racism, sexism or something else that nails the different value systems between now and the 60s. Make us uncomfortable and squirmy. Then in a counterpoint it with something that reminds us how similar we are. Think of Sterling with the twins — what a sexist. Then he keels over — we’re all flesh and blood. Think of Don saying of Rachel, “I’m not going to let a woman speak to me like that” and then promptly falling in love with her.

10. Provide an ending that is totally unexpected for TV and yet reveals the true nature of the character and seems inevitable.

Check it out here -  10 tips for writing a Mad Men Spec. She has really done a spectacular job deconstructing the series for writers including writing scenes that don’t necessarily push the story forward but parallel another story and speak to the theme of the episode.

 

and other home truths that drive you mad…..

Mad Men – Stories in Parallel

One of the ironies of the series Mad Men, is that while the female characters are openly harassed, have low expectations and work in a sexist environment, their male counterparts who oppress them are also suppressed, beaten down and suffer humiliations in their own way. Mad Men explores this containment with parallel stories showing how each character deals with the confines they live in.

The parallel stories we see plays with two pretty big questions:

• What does it mean to be a man?
• What does it mean to be a woman?

 

In episode 1, Peggy finds out what it means to be a woman. She is stripped naked verbally by Pete within minutes of starting her job(then later physically) and advised to show off her ‘darling ankles’ by the office manager. In fact, every message she gets is to prostrate herself. Then she does what she doesn’t believe in – she makes a pass at Don because she is now convinced  that is what she must do. Don’s response is not what she expects   – he refuses. ‘I’m your boss – not your boyfriend’ .  Yet when Pete comes to her home later, drunk, she sleeps with him. Despite what Don told her she can see for herself what it means to be a woman.

Don lives the suburban dream, a beautiful blonde wife, picket fence, well behaved kids, a top job in the city and the respect and admiration of his peers. He has created the perfect Norman Rockwell facade. (‘love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons’ ). He knows precisely how to build and maintain this facade  but the pressure to do so comes at the expense of his inner life. He is emotionally unfulfilled, his wife is little more than a child, he drinks continuously and is slowly coming apart at the seams.  Rachel, sees through him ‘I don’t know what you really believe in, but I know what it feels like to be out of place. To be disconnected. ‘ Just like Peggy, Don lives in a world he does not recognize but must live in and what that means when you are a man.

This theme is nicely summed up by Pete on the phone to his wife ‘I’m giving up my life to be with you , aren’t I?’

To be a grown-up, man or woman , is to be self-determined, self-reliant and inter-dependent but it is not what it means to BE a man, to BE a woman.  It is this disconnect that provides a rich, yet subtle blend of stories in Mad Men.

How long should my scenes be?

I was asked this question the other day by a friend writing a spec script. Again, it should be somewhat similar to the length of scenes of the series so that it has the same rhythm.

Here’s a matrix of scene lengths for the Mad Men pilot. You should do a few to get a feel for both length and rhythm. You might well get quite a variation in page counts, but the ebb and flow of the show will become apparent.
As you can see there are a three 5 page scenes which means you are free to write long  scenes but just less than half the script is taken up with 1/2 – 1 1/4 page scenes. I don’t count non speaking establishing scenes.
Download the scene matrix here.

Scn	1/8th	1/4	1/2	3/4	1	1 1/8	1 1/4	1 1/2	2	2 1/4	2 1/2	2 3/4	3	3 1/2	4	5	Scene
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	0	0	4	1	4	0	3	1	4	3	1	1	2	2	1	3
Scn	1/8th	1/4	1/2	3/4	1	1 1/8	1 1/4	1 1/2	2	2 1/4	2 1/2	2 3/4	3	3 1/2	4	5	Scene