Right now I'm working on some posts about the Emmy winners. But this week I thought I'd step back and post some writing ideas from others.
Last week David Simon wrote a beautiful article about Michael K. Williams, who played Omar on The Wire. And while others have talked about Williams' incredible talent as a performer, Simon came it from the point of view of a writer, and the great gift that Williams gave their writing staff.
At the start of the second year Williams came in to see Simon and asked "Why are we doing this?" i.e. Why are we walking away from the story of the black community of Baltimore to spend time with a bunch of white dockies in the shipyards? The conversation pushed Simon and his staff to express more clearly what exactly they wanted from the second year, what it was going to be about.
And each year after that Williams and Simon would have the same conversation. "What are we going to say this year?" he would ask.
"He gave us an astounding gift", Simon writes, "an act of faith from a magnificent actor who could have played his hand very differently. Television usually chases its audience — if they love them some Omar, you feed them more Omar. If they can’t stop looking at Stringer, you write more Stringer. Never mind story and theme.
"Instead, Mike bent his beautiful mind to a task that even the best writers and show runners often avoid. He thought about the whole story, the whole of the work."
I find sometimes if I'm writing from a standpoint of theme, my characters can get lost. They are not chess pieces or puppets, right? But on the other hand, thinking about the whole story, about what is the thing that I'm exploring in this season, in this show can be so clarifying. Right now I'm working on a sitcom pilot where the main character is desperate to explore parts of his life that he never has, to have more -- and yet he's also terrified and hiding behind old defense mechanisms. It's a story about the terror of happiness, the two steps forward, three steps back struggle involved in taking the risk of chasing it.
And I think I'm at a point where his story is really clear and fun to watch, and the script is probably fine to send out. But as I sit with it I'm realizing there's still a further opportunity here, and it's in considering the stories of the supporting players around him, and how their own journeys are dealing with the same issues. What is the happiness they are afraid of? What are the defenses they put up?
That's what happens sometimes, for me anyway, when I apply Williams' question: when you're clear about the question you're asking, the thing you're wrestling with, characters who might seem minor or secondary suddenly can lock in in a new way, like metal filings around a magnet.
