Tuesday TV: How to Write Apocalyptic/Dystopian Scripts
1. Ten minutes of normal life in a small town. Yes, it has to be a small town. If you want to show big city characters, you must show them in a community so it is like a small town.
2. The big apocalypse. Mushroom clouds. Aliens. Natural disasters. Plane crash. Whatever it is. Show it in detail, from multiple points of view. Must have lots of screaming. Several people should commit suicide.
3. The immediate aftermath. Phone service is interrupted. TVs and satellites don't work anymore. It doesn't really matter what the problem is. Anything that we have come to depend on in the twentieth century goes kaput.
4. The slow slide into the Middle Ages. Now you can take your time. The idea is that each episode focuses on a new problem that the characters have to solve. One by one, take things away from them which they have come to depend on. Each episode should make things just incrementally worse.
5. Relationships begin to break up. The characters who you spent so much time showing connected to each other now start fighting. There should be at least one divorce.
6. New relationships form. Under stress, this happens. People get together who hated each other before, just because they need something to anchor them. I guess.
7. Outsiders arrive. Everything you thought you knew about these people starts to be undermined.
8. Fights break out and humans become animals. Theft, murder, and anything bad. Throw it in, just for fun.
9. Time for the retrospectives. You want to show what everyone was doing before the apocalypse in more detail now. Don't make us love these characters. Now is the time to show how they are all greedy and selfish.
10. Secrets begin to emerge. You can't trust anyone, it turns out. The heroes are most likely to be compromised morally. Because, well, this is apocalyptic TV.
I think this applies to a bunch of TV I've watched lately, including Jericho and Lost, and it applies just as well to most of the dystopian novels that are coming out (some of which are actually apocalyptic).
2. The big apocalypse. Mushroom clouds. Aliens. Natural disasters. Plane crash. Whatever it is. Show it in detail, from multiple points of view. Must have lots of screaming. Several people should commit suicide.
3. The immediate aftermath. Phone service is interrupted. TVs and satellites don't work anymore. It doesn't really matter what the problem is. Anything that we have come to depend on in the twentieth century goes kaput.
4. The slow slide into the Middle Ages. Now you can take your time. The idea is that each episode focuses on a new problem that the characters have to solve. One by one, take things away from them which they have come to depend on. Each episode should make things just incrementally worse.
5. Relationships begin to break up. The characters who you spent so much time showing connected to each other now start fighting. There should be at least one divorce.
6. New relationships form. Under stress, this happens. People get together who hated each other before, just because they need something to anchor them. I guess.
7. Outsiders arrive. Everything you thought you knew about these people starts to be undermined.
8. Fights break out and humans become animals. Theft, murder, and anything bad. Throw it in, just for fun.
9. Time for the retrospectives. You want to show what everyone was doing before the apocalypse in more detail now. Don't make us love these characters. Now is the time to show how they are all greedy and selfish.
10. Secrets begin to emerge. You can't trust anyone, it turns out. The heroes are most likely to be compromised morally. Because, well, this is apocalyptic TV.
I think this applies to a bunch of TV I've watched lately, including Jericho and Lost, and it applies just as well to most of the dystopian novels that are coming out (some of which are actually apocalyptic).
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