[MUSIC PLAYING]
So hopefully as you're doing your blue skying,
you're working on your characters,
you're working on some setting, stuff
is starting to become a little bit more into focus.
And we did talk about how your characters go from A to B,
especially your most important characters.
They have a little arc from A to B.
What we haven't talked about as much
is a story arc 'cause your story arc is also going
to want to go from A to B.
Now if you have a very sort of simple drive to your story
as we did in "Stranger Things," which is Will's missing.
We have to find Will.
So all of our characters in season one
have the same drive, which is to find Will.
Hopper had it, the kids had it, the teens have it,
which and those are sort of what we talk about as
are each of those is a different generation,
a generational storyline, which is
one of the early ideas we had that we were excited about.
And they all have the same drive,
which was really helpful on season one,
and it helped really unite the season.
So we know that everyone's going to go
from A, which is Will disappears and this thing happens
and changes their lives.
B, we're going to find Will, right.
So we know that, which is great.
But within each of those storylines,
they're going to have sort of an individual arc for how
they get from A to B.
And as we were developing this season--
and it's even in our pitch to Netflix
where we talk about each of these generations
and we talk very broadly about their story arcs
as in they start here on A and they go to here on B.
We did not have a lot of detail about that journey from A to B.
We put in a few ideas, a few ideas we had,
but we didn't put a lot because what
all we wanted to communicate-- and all
that was really important is we knew
where their starting point was, which is in the pilot,
and where their destination was.
If you don't know their destination,
it's going to be challenging because you
don't know what to set up at their starting point.
So you really do need to try to, if you can,
have at least a broad sense of where you want them to go.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You know, obviously so we have this big story arc,
but one thing we found when we were blue skying
is that we wanted to have three groups of characters, right.
We wanted to have kids, we wanted to have teens,
we want to have adults, and that each of them
was going to have their own little mini
arc within the big arc, the big arc being find Will.
So they would each be kind of-- they
would each be moving towards that goal
but in very different ways.
And it was like, since they all have the same drive,
how do we differentiate them, right?
Like, it was like how do we-- they all have the same goal.
How is that going to go?
Find Will?
Aren't they just going to be colliding and overlapping
the whole time?
We're like, OK, so it's just we thought about as
one big puzzle, and they're each going
to be solving one big piece of the puzzle that's
necessary to find Will.
So the kids are solving one piece of the puzzle,
the adults are solving one piece of the puzzle,
and the teens are solving one piece of the puzzle.
And then we thought in the penultimate episode,
so we were going to have them all combined.
So we're going to have all three generations combine.
They're going to share their information,
they're each going to have a key piece of information
vital to saving Will, and then they're
going to use that so join forces and ultimately save Will.
But if you removed one storyline, it wouldn't work.
They would be-- they would not have
one key piece of information that's necessary to save Will.
He would get eaten by Demogorg.
He would get-- right.
So we found this, like, to be, like, kind
of a really effective structure for the show for "Stranger
Things" and as much as it changes from season to season,
so as different as two is from one
and season three is from one, they all kind of
have that core structure which we have.
We splinter our groups, and they're all
in their own sort of adventure or horror story.
But every time they're learning some essential piece
of the puzzle, they kind of come together
and put all their information in their brains
together in order to solve the greater mystery.
That's a story arc that's very specific to what we discovered
in our blue sky process.
But I'm hopefully as you're doing your blue skying,
you're also coming up with a structure that works
specifically for your story.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
One thing that's going to come up inevitably
if you're developing a television show
is this idea of, OK, what is.
Is this a one off?
Is this a limited series?
Is it multiple seasons?
Do you need to start figuring out what
those multiple seasons are?
Our opinion is that can get really overwhelming if you
start doing that right now.
I think that when we were developing "Stranger Things"
specifically, it was going to be a one off.
It was going to be a season one.
We knew we were going to get asked the question of,
OK, inevitably if this thing is successful,
you know, what does this season two look like?
Can this-- does this have potential to continue?
The answer seemed pretty obvious.
It came to us-- you know, wasn't-- it wasn't hard it was.
Like, OK, well, we knew they were going to find Will
and they were going to rescue Will
and they were going to bring him back home.
Will's been-- we don't know what's happened with Will.
Like, we knew he was going to be off screen
for the majority of the season, that he was going to come back.
So we knew if there were going to be
a continuation of the story that we're
going to have to focus on Will.
He's been in this alternate dimension.
We don't know what the hell happened to him.
We knew that was a story arc that we would pitch,
and that's honestly all we pitched
when we went into Netflix because I
think the key is developing a really great first season.
I mean, we're all about just taking it one step at a time
because otherwise you get overwhelmed.
In our opinion, it's so hard to just tell a story
and tell a simple story well--
That works.
Yeah, that just works.
And certainly for our first script,
that was just the drive.
Can we tell a story that is very simple
and that works that keeps the reader turning the pages
and then goes from A to B. And I think that really
should be the focus right now.
Because guess what, if you tell a great story,
you're going to find a way in to tell that sequel
or the second season or whatever it happens to be,
but really I think the goal right now
should be to just focus on let's tell a simple cool story.
It has a goal, and you achieve that goal
at the end of this story.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
As we're talking about developing an arc-- in fact,
this applies to everything we've talked about right now,
which is just stay pretty zoomed out.
It's overwhelming enough, in my opinion,
to just get a good pilot script.
Don't start thinking about your seventh season arc.
Don't write a 30-page world-building mythology book.
Don't write a 20-page back story for each character.
I mean, listen, you can do that.
I just worry you're never going to finish your script,
and, again, you're going to get lost in the--
I really think you're going to get lost.
It's so easy to get lost.
I know Ross and I are not the only writers
who this happens to.
We're just-- lose sight of where you are.
So to us-- and we've made that mistake.
I mean, I've lost years of my life doing this.
I'm trying to save you years, which is just
stay really zoomed out, keep it really simple in terms of arcs,
in terms of characters, in terms of setting,
in terms of everything that we've talked about.
As we go forward with this class, what we're going to do
is we're still pretty wide, right,
and then we're going to just slowly start
to do this until you have-- until you have your pilot
script.
And even from then, it's going to continue to evolve and get
more specific.
Don't get overwhelmed.
It's like the eye doctor, you know,
where they're putting in different lenses,
and it just, like, it's going to start out really blurry
and it's going to keep getting more and more focused.
And I think that sometimes you're
just like why can't I see.
Why is it all blurry?
That's [INAUDIBLE]--
Or you're doing-- like, I'm doing it's so blurry
and unfocused.
I'm doing something wrong.
It doesn't look like this finished movie
that I just saw this weekend or that finished show
that I just saw and I loved.
Why is it not that good?
Why is it not that specific?
My characters aren't that good.
Like, they shouldn't be at this point.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
And I think what happens in a lot of people
then they get frustrated, and they go, oh, well, whatever.
I can't do this.
And then-- and then they abandon what they're working on.
It's like--
Or they give up.
They don't want to-- they're like I can't write.
I can't do it.
But, like, we never saw ourselves as writers,
and I do think that there's a way
that you can take this process and you take it slow.
I mean, but even now, even having
done this for quite some time now constantly,
we start to see ourselves get lost,
and we go, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Zoom out, zoom out, zoom out.
We say that all the time in the writers room, right.
Zoom out, right.
Zoom out.
We take a step back, take a breath,
and go OK, what are the big beats here.
What's the A to B?
Is that working because we're going into details now
in something's missing from the bigger picture.
So blurry is good right now.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
OK, so at this point, you know a little bit more
about your setting.
Hopefully a little bit more about your characters,
a little bit more about your story, and your story arc.
And I think it's worth taking the time
to sort of write that down because
right now, your document, if it looks
anything like our document, it's going to be kind of messy or--
Chaotic.
Extremely chaotic and messy.
So just-- I think it's worth-- it's not
going to be super time consuming, this part
of the process, but just carve out the ideas that you don't
need any more, focus in on the ideas that are good,
and just write a clean organized one page
description of your concept and your idea including
now some-- a little bit more detail about characters
and about the setting that they exist in.
And the antagonist.
I mean, if you just think about our Steve and Dustin example,
now we haven't had a week or so to blue sky that,
but if we had, imagine the details
that we could start to add here.
Who-- who is Dustin's dad?
And where exactly was he living, and who
are these other thieves that are going after this treasure?
And what is it actually that is lurking within those mines?
There were so many things in that initial paragraph
that we're missing that if we had had a week of blue skying,
we would have been able to start to fill in those details.
And then we've got a pitch.
Yeah, right, you have easy, easy page, easy page.
You might have a little bit over a page.
Let's fine, a page and a half, whatever.
But try not to make it too long because I think it's good
to keep it, again, simple.
Stay wide, stay zoomed out.