CheckPoint 4: Tone & Style — Genre

You have honed in on the concept, the characters and the world your series is set in.

You’re pretty sure of how you want to do it — but are you?

Since I’m such a believer in trying different ways and giving yourself choices, it is perfectly okay to have second thoughts about what you have done so far.

Better now than after you’ve written your script.

Are you sure you want it to be a half-hour comedy and not a one-hour dramedy? Or even a turgid melodrama?

When I used to teach my Episodic Writing workshop, I developed an exercise to demonstrate this point. I set up a situation: A guy walks in with a bomb tied around his waist, threatening to blow himself up.

Then I would say, I want you to write that as a scene from:

Cheers

Law & Order

House

NCIS

Same scene. Same set-up. Totally different executions.

Same thing goes for you here. This is a good time to step back and ask yourself: “Is there a better way to execute my series than the one I have chosen?”

The concept doesn’t have to change, nor do the characters, nor the locations — only the genre.

Modern Family could be a soap opera.

Law & Order could be a comedy.

Seinfeld could be a drama about the life of a stand-up comedian à la Punchline.

So take a look at what you have — most likely, you will keep it in the form it is, but there is that rare awakening that will whisper to you: “You know what, this would make a great animated series!”

And there you go. You’re off and running down a different path but with the same concept and characters you already have.

The only caveat I offer is: Don’t play away from your strength.

If comedy is your forte and where you want to be, don’t make The Neighbors a science fiction thriller when you’d be better served doing it as a comedy.

If turgid drama is where you want to be, don’t make Breaking Bad a comedy — although it could easily have been.

Tone is extremely important. And it often doesn’t come through on the page. We all know from e-mails that tone can be misinterpreted.

You can help make the tone you want a little clearer by giving the description and narrative the tone you want, in addition to the visuals, characters and dialogue.

If your series is going to be dark and ominous — the elements should reflect that. You can drop in a few adjectives in the narrative, to reinforce what you want.

If you’re writing a comedy, the choices you make, the actions and business you give your characters, as well as the dialogue, should all fit the tone you want.

Where it becomes a little murky is when you drop scenes in that are counter to the overall tone — like when you drop a lighter sequence into something dark and scary, fraught with tension. The lighter sequence can cause the suspense you built up to dissipate. In these instances, inserting descriptive phrases is a great help.

The one thing I’ve learned from experience is — if I’m writing an intense drama, thriller, or horror project — dropping in comedy easily works against the tension I’ve worked so hard to create.

Just know when you do that, you will have to start all over again to ratchet up the tension.

It is important for every department to know the tone that is being strived for. Sets. Costume. Music. It all adds up. In the real world, the Showrunner and Director and the various department heads have a separate meeting in which they strictly discuss tone as they go through the script, scene by scene. But you have the chance to start them down the right path.

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Meta Structure

As I said, there are other kinds of meta structures besides fairy tale structure and mythic structure, so for people who are taking this master list thing seriously, I want to spend a chapter talking about meta structure. That’s my own term for it, by the way; I don’t know if there is some definitive official term for what I’m talking about. Aristotle called it energia, and John Truby calls it the “story designing principle,” but this is what it is:

Sometimes there is just a perfect way to tell a story.

This is partly luck in premise, but some of it can be engineered, if you train yourself to look for meta structure.

Here are some examples.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Sleepless in Seattle

Groundhog Day

It’s A Wonderful Life

Four Christmases

Slumdog Millionaire

Rashomon

Murder on the Orient Express

Eat Pray Love

I don’t know if people can see what I’m getting at just by looking at that list, but don’t worry, I’m about to explain each one.

Now, all of those movies are “high concept,” but those premises also go beyond high concept.

– Four Weddings And A Funeral tells you exactly what the story is going to be, right? The meta structure of that story is seeing the same group of old friends on the days of four different weddings and one funeral day at which they mourn one of their own.

– Groundhog Day: A man repeats the same day of his life over and over and over again until he gets it right.

– It’s A Wonderful Life: shows a man’s entire life in vignettes, and then shows the cumulative effect of his life and deeds by depicting his home town as it would have been had he never lived.

– In much the same way, Back To The Future shows a kid whose life is not great who is accidentally transported back to the past, and his actions in the past completely transform the circumstances of his life when he gets back to the future.

– Four Christmases: (which I haven’t seen but got the meta structure of it instantly) – depicts a young couple forced to attend the Christmas celebration of each one of their divorced parents, which teaches them what they want for themselves in marriage and love.

– Slumdog Millionaire: shows how every major event of a poor Indian boy’s life has enabled him to correctly answer the questions on a multi-million dollar game show.

– Sleepless in Seattle: is a romantic comedy that shows two people who are meant for each other falling in love, even though they live on opposite sides of the country and never meet until the last scene of the film.

– Murder on the Orient Express: is a murder mystery in which the twelve passengers on a stalled train act as a jury to try, convict, and execute a heinous criminal, and Hercule Poirot acts as both detective and judge, who first solves the baffling, contradictory crime and then decides that the killing was just.

– Rashomon: We see a highway robbery, rape, and murder replayed from the vastly different points of view of each of the three participants.

Okay, so each of these premises tells you exactly how to tell that story, right? Each story almost has to be told the way that it is told.

Your story might not have a meta structure like that. Many classic movies and books do not have this kind of meta structure. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws — they’re great, high concept stories, but I don’t think you can say that there’s a meta structure operating in those stories the way there is in the other stories I’ve listed.

I’m bringing up the point to get you to start looking for meta structure, because when you add this narrative tool to your ever-expanding toolbox (hmm, that sounds intriguingly dirty, doesn’t it?) you may just hit on the perfect meta structure for your own story.