How to write a TV series: Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Handmaids Tale & the Diplodocuses

My most popular blog post has been one on writing high concept films (by popular I mean it had over 10 views). The popularity may be because I wrote about the classic film Revenge of the Nerds (and included a photo of the plate the nerds had their cream pies on - I’m afraid it’s not a PC picture). But this is the age of the small screen, something of a post-Jurassic era on Earth, the Cretaceous period, where dinosaurs like T-Rex actually ruled the Earth. Note: T-Rex’s didn’t exist during the Jurassic era, neither did velociraptors, they only lived during the late Cretaceous period - you have been duped. They did have diplodocuses in the late Jurassic period though. So Jurassic Park should really be renamed Cretaceous Park, the era where T-Rexs were actually around, just prior to the big meteor strike. They were only 50 million years off.

So, the small screen - roar!!, feel its mighty T-Rex like power (by the way the Allosaurus was the apex predator of the Jurassic if you were wondering - pretty impressive beast, probably a bit of a cannibal, and a smaller cousin to T-Rex - more on cousins and dinosaurs later on). I’m sure you have analysed shows you watch on Netflix and the like. You probably watch these shows and you are like: that would never happen! And you pick holes in the plot and focus on finer details that are wrong - they didn’t have those type of dinosaurs around during that period and comments of that type. My wife feels my constant comments add value to everything we watch. But nitpicking aside you may have also had thoughts about the differences between feature films and small screen productions (well small screen series). You may have thought things like, how did they get me hooked on a story about a science teacher who cooks meth for people who are hooked on meth? Or turn a book like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale into three (or four or five) series. Well just like Walter White knows, it’s all about formula. And, as writers, the more conscious you are of the formula, the better shows you’re gonna create. So let’s jump into the art of writing formulaic series for the small screen.

Ok, so you have your ‘hero’s journey’ - read a book about this if you must - and you also have your basic overarching story structures. The basis of all good story telling is the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey does not have to be about a singles character’s journey. It’s just about the goals characters have and the challenges they face on the way to achieving this. I.e take note here, your characters need motivations to do stuff. In a hero’s journey you usually go from a relatively normal everyday life to something extraordinary or different from the everyday. Some examples further below.

In Game of Thrones there are lots of characters to drive the story. There is one main overarching hero’s journey that ties them all together - the quest to gain or keep the iron throne. It’s true a lot of the individual characters don’t have this as their primary motivation, but all characters are somehow affected by this main quest. GoT also has other pretty important quests to keep characters occupied, like keeping out the white walker zombies. That’s a pretty major motivation for a bunch of them, and it even resulted in construction of a huge magic ice wall manned by sad rejects, including Jon Snow. Keeping out the white walkers even affects the goal of going for the iron throne, especially towards the end.

But GoT also has a bunch of other more minor squabbles, storylines and challenges going through the overall main storyline. Theon Greyjoy trying to please his father, who is very disappointed with his lack of manhood, and, being GoT trying to crack onto his sister, then betraying the Starks, then getting his balls cut off and trying to make amends to the Starks and his sister, as well as fighting his uncle who threw his father off a rickety bridge in the Iron Isles one wet and windy night. As he fell off the bridge you can hear him yell, ‘you’re still a disappointment to me Theooooooooooooon!!! splat.

There’s also Sam Tarly’s tension with his old man, who is very disappointed with his lack of manhood. And as his father and brother get roasted by dragons you can still hear him screaming as he sizzles, ‘you are still a (crackle) disappointment to me Sam taaaaaaarly!!!! (sizzle, sizzle)’.

And there’s Ramsay Bolton’s tension with his father, who finds him very disappointing because he is a bastard - which doesn’t seem to be Ramsay’s fault given he wasn’t born - but who turns out to be real bastard, which probably is his fault, before Sansa Stark feeds him to the dogs out of revenge!!! (And fair enough to). And Tyrion Lannister’s tension with his father who thinks he’s a disappointment because his mother died during Tyrion’s childbirth - with Tyrion being like, screw you dad - crossbow bolt on the toilet - and I’m gonna go serve the mother-of-dragons and continue to be a disappointment to my sister.

There’s a lot of father/ son tensions in GoT, come to think about it, is there something you’re trying to tell us George R R Martin?

Now I don’t know all the fancy terms for story structures, I did study screenwriting at RMIT University in Melbourne but didn’t read those ‘books’ they recommend. But it’s pretty basic, the difference between a feature film and TV series is the different story arches, curves (a term coming into vogue with COVID-19) and twists. Well, it’s actually not a very big difference, you just have to have more of these in a TV series to keep characters occupied for longer.

But before I depart from the hero’s journey concept, here’s another example of why it is an important mechanism to motivate characters. Luke Skywalker, this dude from Endor, who was raised by ewoks, finds his father is Hammerhead - aka Moma Nadon - and he finds he’s been kidnapped by space Narcos and he needs to go back to Hammerhead’s planet to rescue him only to be told by the space Narcos the only way they will release him is if he goes to another planet and gets some blue crystal which makes you feel very powerful but can be highly addictive and causes liver damage. But to get there he has to mortgage his farm, but he’s so far into debt he finds he needs to get more blue crystal to save his moisture farm from bankruptcy (it’s located on a desert planet of course, so it’s never been very profitable).

So the main quest is basically to get the blue crystal and save his farm/ father. Any other stories will just hang off this main story line. But, the way Luke goes about this is the important bit. If he just gets in his Naboo Royal Cruiser and heads off and nothing much happens except he picks up his weed smoking Rasta friend Jar Jar Binks along the way and they only stop for toilet breaks, and a quick stew at Yoda’s place, and then when they get the blue crystal, they just hyperspace the hell back before the bank closes for the long weekend, well, it’s not going to be a very engaging story. And people aren’t going to be excited to retell it and discuss it with colleagues and friends on Monday (assuming it’s not a long weekend).

Remember we humans developed stories before we could write, or had access to social media, so we relied on people ‘liking them’ and telling their ‘friends’ about the story. Of course their friends would screw it up, and the original story teller would be like, that wasn’t a story about a huge arc 40 cubits long and high with two of each animal in the world, it was about a small round boat on the Tigris River, which we got onto one day when it flooded and we didn’t have much space so we reserved it for goats and chickens and other useful things we could make cheese from.

At its simplest level characters in both feature films and series always have to face some challenges along the way. Again with Luke, let’s say his wife, Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo Says to him,
“why don’t we just let the bank take the farm and move back to Endor which is very moist unlike this desert planet. Not to mention we wouldn’t have to deal with the sand people anymore.”
But Luke heads off anyway, because Jabba the Hut captures his wife before she can talk sense into him and says, ‘ha, ha, ha, I want a melenium falcon full of blue crystal, otherwise I will feed your wife to this big monster thing I have under the floor. And so he flies off to the Hammerhead planet to get some crystal (this is a different story so the crystal is now on Hammerhead’s planet, don’t overthink it) and along the way he comes across a interstellar fried chicken place which uses a special medi-clorian spice that’s like 50,000 on the medi-chlorian chart, but he ends up getting in trouble with the chicken shop owner because he ordered a huge bucket of chicken for the trip but forgot his wallet and so had no credits, or his credits were worthless around here, and so Gus Gus Frinks says you’re gonna have to go and get me a huge shipment of the Hammerhead crystal to pay off your debt, and so on a so forth.

In a feature film there’s a main mission, task, something central to the plot, and then there’s all these subplots obstructing the main plot from resolution. And these subplots are attached to character back stories. But it all gets resolved in around 90 minutes, so you have to be pretty succinct and economical with the subplots and character backstory. I’m thinking Godfather, or Godfather II, I can’t remember, we have a back story, how did Don Corleone become Don Corleone? Well basically he shoots the local mafia guy who was running the show. They do spend a bit of time harping on about that, but it doesn’t drag on too long, you’re pretty engaged and interested. You could also just do a quick flashback or two, like in Gladiator where Russell Crowicus Maximus, drifts back to wheat fields and dead wives and a kid, which drives him to revenge!!

In the Handmaids Tale we have the story of how June, Offred, goes from jogging and going out for coffees with friends and being able to withdraw money from the ATM and going to work and all those normal things, to being captured by the fanatical forces of Gilead and given to a family as breeding stock for an infertile woman called Serena who is part of the ruling class, and, we find, after having her daughter taken away, June is seeking revenge!! And June also has a lot of very serious eye rolling to show her disapproval of the dubious values the Gilead regime is trying to uphold and force on others.



So in a TV series, the same stuff happens as in a feature film, but it just takes like 90 hours rather than 90 minutes.

And you generally have more characters, and more sub-stories, in a TV series. In Breaking Bad you have a new main antagonist each series, who usually lasts about 8-10 episodes. So a storyline going over one season but also other ones that go over the whole series - like Frank chasing Heisenberg over several series. Or Walter’s story of slowly working his way up from intern to drug king pin, say my name I dare you, and then falling from grace and crying because he got Frank killed by the nazis, and then having to redeem himself by saving Jesse Pinkman from one of the nazis who is using him to make meth to impress some woman he’s infatuated with. She’s just not into you.

And there’s Jesse Pinkman and his story. Jesse is a disappointment to his father - wow, along with revenge, this seems a pretty common theme in top rating TV shows - as well as a bit of a loser in the eyes of his former teacher and meth-making partner Walt, who develops into a super chemist who can cook meth as well as a super genius, becomes a legend to his friends and, although he’s still a bit of a disappointment to his father, he gets enough cash to screw his father over by buying his aunty’s house that Jesse was living in but which his parents tried to screw him out of. Plus he gets it at a good discount with the aid of his unethical lawyer Saul - who has his own story explored more in Better call Saul. I love that line, I could say it all day. So Jesse gets, revenge!!!

And there’s Gus Fring, who has a fried chicken shop serving a special fried chicken with a secret Chilean spice mix that is so successful it’s got stores in several states of the USA, and presumably he’s quite rich from this enterprise, but he still gets into the meth business because the Narcos killed his friend in a pool and he is seeking, revenge!!

Or we have Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons in GoT which literally grow throughout the series and then turn into these massive weapons to take to Kings Landing and seek, revenge!!

So there’s overarching story arches, or lines or curves, whatever lingo you wanna use, and then there are the medium sized ones which are usually resolved in a season, and the little ones that are (usually) resolved in a single episode - or two or three - these are the interesting side stories which we come in and out of throughout the main series. Or in the case of GoT there are many story threads which string along over series to finally be resolved in the final series.

Like Samuel Tarly in GoT who gets together with the wildling chick, and befriends Jon Snow and I think from memory helps to resolve both the white walker problem - they get killed with dragon stone - and also Jon Snow’s issues with being a bastard - he’s not really a bastard, he’s the son of a Stark and a Targaryn so he’s the heir to the frickin iron throne!! He even has a greater claim than the aunt of his he’s having sexual relations with. But actually he’s still a bastard I think because his parents never got married (or maybe they did?? Can’t remember). There’s also the story of the high sparrow, who practically takes over the iron throne for a while, and a bunch of other dudes. Hell even Glegane, the Mountain, has a pretty substantial story line, the character doesn’t help resolve much it seems except by killing his brother - as revenge!!! -  for putting his head in a fire when they were kids or something and taking Ayra Stark around a few places. And Walder Fray, Lord of Riverrun has his subplot - he’s pissed because the Starks keep ignoring his family so he’s out for, revenge!!! And kills a bunch of Starks at a wedding. And then Ayra Stark comes back, and takes the form of Wales Fray in order to take, revenge!! In the very place Walder took revenge on the Starks.

And there’s shitty examples like that guy who kills all those zombies with sticks in Walking Dead. Sometimes we spend a few episodes looking just at his story, even though the main story is with Rick Grimes, getting rickety-ricked elsewhere, until Rickety-Rick gets abducted by aliens with the help of the garbage woman. This is probably also good for filming schedules I imagine as you could film stick dude - Morgan Jones - I had to look that up as I never paid attention to his name, just focussed on the stick and the tragic back story, and then I worked out, damn! he was that dude who met Rickety-Rick in like episode 1 or 3 or something of Walking Dead - so, you can film Morgan’s antics and at the same time film the Rick gang and have more Walking Dead out on screens more quickly (or quicker). Then Morgan walks for weeks until he finds a bunch of people on another TV show called Fear the Walking Dead, and Morgan’s character was ok for a time and then it sucked and he went from sometimes not wanting to kill anything and being some sort of hippy spiritual type, to like killing anything that moves with his stick, and in the end I lost interest and didn’t want to pay Foxtel, the cabrones in Australia who have the rights to Walking Dead and GoT any more money to find out what happens to anyone on either Walking Dead or Fear the Walking Dead. And I just got my son to download the last episodes of GoT for me, except the very last episode which was for sale on iTunes in Mexico, so I got it while I was there.

Even comedy series follow the same formula. In Seinfeld George gets stuck under his desk while working at the Yankees, he resolves getting out from under the desk in one episode, you probably don’t want to stretch that out over a whole season. In another episode the guys are going out somewhere and Elaine hasn’t eaten and they can’t get a table at the Chinese restaurant, again it’s still your formulaic challenges on a hero’s journey, but again, resolved in a single episode. There are however heaps of longer term stories that go over seasons and indeed the whole series. Like George’s unresolved conflict with his parents, Kramer’s endless money-making enterprises, Elaine and Seinfeld’s backstory of them once being a couple. I didn’t ever see the last episode, so I don’t know if any of these things ended up being resolved, but maybe the beauty with comedy is that they don’t really need to be resolved, people don’t need to grow or change, they can just do stuff. That’s the resolution.

And that’s kind of it really. That’s how you structure a TV series as opposed to a feature film. Same basic concept, just longer and hopefully more complicated. I feel a bit like when that hitchhiker character in Something About Mary reveals his revelations about 7-minute ab exercise videos. Its like 8-minute ab exercises but only shorter. Except in this case it’s like 8-minute abs except it’s like 8 hours abs. And if you do it right it’s as addictive as the blue crystal Luke is after.

And that’s the trick, you have to do it right, you have to have stories people relate to, emotion, clever lines, twists, turns etc. Things people remember, winter is coming, a Lannister always pays his debt, under his eye, praise be, may the force be with you, your medi-chlorian is off the charts!, or Seinfeld’s, do you think (or something like that). This is as opposed to no line I can recall from Fear the Walking Dead.

And that’s where the magic happens. I can tell you a house has four walls and a roof, but empty houses are boring, you need to fill the house with zombies, or crazy professor grandpas like Rickety-Rick from Rick and Morty, or fat slimy slug like creatures like Jabba the Hut, or funny people trying to navigate the 90s in New York. That’s where the work’s at. You can read all the fancy books about the subject you like by a bunch of wankers who think they’re experts. But, save your money, all you need is interesting diverse characters, tensions, backstories, challenges and ultimately some sort of resolution in each episode, season and the series. So with that in mind you should probably start small and build yourself up. Like Breaking Bad, start with Crazy 8 and then work your way through to Tuco Salamander, Gus Fring, the Narco bosses and finally the nazis. If you start too big you just won’t have anywhere to go.

And it has to wow, when I used to come home from playing hockey in Canberra on a cold winter’s night, I’d turn on the tele and be like wow what the hell is going on, there’s some crazy dude in his underwear with a gun in the desert... and that’s how they get them kids hooked. Actually I initially thought, what the hell is this show about, and then I got hooked and was glad I didn’t do so until 2013, which is also the year I went to a Dodgers game in LA with Bryan Cranston. Well I was there with my niece and his picture appeared on the big screen. So we were there at the same time, and we both had Dodger Dogs (I assume). Also because it was 2013 I could binge watch a bunch of Breaking Bad and I didn’t have to wait long for the last series to come out.

As a denouement I like side characters, I have always been fascinated by Hammerhead from Star Wars. I went to Toombul shopping centre in Brisbane, with my grandfather and cousin sometime in the late 70s I guess, and I bought the Hammerhead figurine. And my cousin was like ‘why did you buy Hammerhead when you haven’t got all the main characters yet’, and I was like, ‘well maybe some of us aren’t as rich as you cousin Alister and we can’t methodically purchase the full list of main characters in order of prominence before we start with the minor characters. Perhaps some of us need to buy Gonk and the Medical droids because those are the ones that are on sale, and the only ones we can afford...’ Anyway Alister and I also had a long standing argument about the pronunciation of the name of the dinosaur diplodocus. I say dip-Low-doh-kus (4 syllables) he used to say di-plodocus (only 2 syllables). These are some of the unresolved storylines of my life. And who knows whether they ever will be.