Create Your Own TV Series for the Internet-2nd edition. Ross Brown
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hers? You can make a pretty good guess because you already know — or think you know — her “character.” You know who she is and how she thinks, and you can probably predict what kind of car she’d buy.
You walk out of Starbucks, and on the sidewalk out front is a guy in his early sixties, long graying hair and a beard, playing a beat-up old guitar with a peace sign painted on it. He’s singing songs like Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction.” Based on these clues, your mental computer says, “Hippie refugee from the 1960s.” Now you have a pretty good idea who owns the VW van. And you probably can make all kinds of other character assessments. Republican or Democrat? Neither — probably Green Party. Or maybe he didn’t vote at all because that’s how The Man controls you, man, and we’ve all got to fight the power.
In a sense, the process of creating your characters is an inversion of the process you use to figure out who people are in the real world. As a writer, you will first decide who you want your characters to be, then your task is finding the ways to communicate that “who” to your audience. Let’s return to the 60Frames web series Be a Celebutante. The main characters are two rich, spoiled, less than intelligent party sluts whose only interests are money, self-indulgence, and hooking up — and helping you learn how to live the same charmed and fulfilling lifestyle. The pilot, which runs all of 95 seconds, is chock-full of character clues. Two hotties in bathing suits and fur shawls lounge by a private pool (environment). They introduce themselves as “the Douche (pronounced “doo-shay”) sisters, heiresses to the douche fortune” (dialogue). They are drinking and dispensing smug advice on how to make extra money (action). Dannah and Danielle’s ideas include:
DANNAH
If you really want to rake in the dough…
DANIELLE
Or make money…
DANNAH
You should “accidentally” make a sex tape.
CUT TO FOOTAGE OF THE DOUCHE SISTERS IN BED WITH A MAN, CLEARLY AWARE OF THE CREW AS THEY “ACCIDENTALLY” MAKE A SEX TAPE.
DANNAH
Yeah, when our “accidental” sex tape “accidentally” leaked onto the Internet, we “accidentally” made five million dollars.
DANIELLE
Oopsies…
You get the idea. Everything your characters say, do, wear, drive, eat, or come in contact with should tell us something about who they are as a person. Once the audience picks up on who they are (and hopefully finds them amusing or interesting enough to follow around for 6 or 12 or 100 episodes), the audience also begins to anticipate the juicy situations you might put them in.
YOUR OVERALL CHARACTER LANDSCAPE
Characters do not exist in a vacuum. They exist to serve the overall premise, and they exist in concert with each other. It’s not enough for each individual character to be cool or interesting in his own right. They must work together, as a team, with the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Each character should serve a specific function within your series, and that function should be unique. You wouldn’t want a rock band with five lead singers but no drummer or bass player. Instead of Hootie & the Blowfish, you’d end up with Hootie, Hootie, Hootie, Hootie, & Hootie. Even Hootie’s mom wouldn’t want to see that act. The premise is band. The characters must form a complete team or group, one with stars and supporting players.
I think of this overall character composition as the character landscape. Your series landscape needs balance and variety. Each character should cover a different “instrument,” a distinct function or sound within your overall composition. Take The Guild once again. Yes, they are all online gaming freaks. But aside from that, they are different types of people: a mom so addicted to video games that she virtually ignores her three young children (Clara); a young woman so afraid of revealing any real details about her personal life that when asked what she does for a living, she gives the plot line to Ugly Betty (Tinkerballa); and even, starting in Season Two, Codex’s hottie neighbor who has absolutely no interest in video games at all (Wade). Characters with distinct differences are crucial to the success of your series because character differences are what lead to conflict, the essence of all comedy and drama and, therefore, the life-giving reservoir of stories for your pilot and your series.
LEADING CHARACTERS VS. SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
All series have both. As stated before, no good group can be composed of all Hooties (leading character) or all Blowfish (supporting characters). But why is Hootie (or Mick Jagger or Bono) the leading character? What makes him more important? Surprisingly, the answer is pretty much the same for both music video and series television. Your lead character is the center of gravity for your group.
In a music video, the camera focuses on the lead singer more than anyone else. And when the camera isn’t on the main character, what we see is seen mostly through his eyes. In a television series, we experience most of the action through the lead character’s eyes. In Gaytown, the lead character is the straight person who is desperately trying to avoid detection and persecution. We follow the action of Gaytown from his POV, as opposed to, say, the perspective of a morals cop trying to track down the “perverted heterosexuals.” We experience the world of The Guild primarily through the eyes of Codex. In Seinfeld, Jerry is the lead character, the primary prism through which the story is filtered.
So what makes these characters leads as opposed to supporting players? What makes these characters capable of anchoring a series? For one, as quirky and troubled as Jerry and Codex are, they are, from most of the audience’s perspective, the most “normal” person in the universe of the series. Yes, Jerry on Seinfeld is a neurotic mess. But compared to George or Elaine or Kramer he’s a rock. Same goes for Codex. She’s so warped even her therapist abandons her. But compared to Zaboo or Tinkerballa, she’s a solid citizen. So one job description of your leading or main character might be “sane person in an insane world.” (Note: The rock band analogy breaks down here. There is no rule that says the lead singer of a rock band must be the sanest or most normal. He is free to have as many substance abuse and legal problems as he chooses. In fact, in the world of rock and roll, the more messed up you are, the higher your profile.)
DRAWING ON REAL LIFE
So where do characters come from? Do they just pop into your imagination randomly? Of course not. Creative inspiration, despite the mystery that often surrounds that concept, is usually quite methodical. “Inspiration” comes because you work at it. William Faulkner once said, “I only write when I feel like it. Fortunately, I feel like it every day at 9 a.m.” A successful and prolific TV writer and producer once described the main job qualification of the writer as “butt in chair.”
Your characters will come to you because you work at it — conscientiously, purposefully, by design. To begin with, you’ve got your premise. Let’s say it’s Seinfeld, where the premise is that a stand-up comic observes and comments on the small insanities of life, and he lives in the capital of insanity, New York City. That’s the roots of the world that series creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David began with. So their task, then, in developing that premise is to figure out who we surround Jerry with. Rather than randomly spitballing a few zany characters off the top of their heads, Seinfeld and David did something incredibly logical: They were writing about the world they knew, so they chose real-life characters they knew (or fictitious versions of them) to be the supporting players. Believe it or not, Kramer is actually based on a real person that Larry David knew in New York, Kenny Kramer. If you are so inclined, you can visit the real Kramer’s website, www.kennykramer.com, and take his personal tour of New York City. George is based on Larry David himself. Not each and every detail; George isn’t a writer. But emotionally, and in the neurotic way his mind functions (in other words, his essence or character), George is based on Larry David.
Real life is always the richest resource