One last post about HEARTSTOPPER before I leap into the final seven eps of OZARK. (I'm done with three. In a word? Wendy GOT TO GO.)
It's just a tiny thing that I found fascinating. The show, you may recall, has seven main characters. Six of them have actual stories. The seventh--Isaac--sits around reading books and giggling. And that's about it. I think he might have seven lines in the season.
Now I haven't read the comics, so I don't know where that character is going. But I do know, if I were writing that show, there would absolutely be an episode in season two, maybe the opening of the pilot, that is basically retelling the season from the point of view of Isaac. And we'd find out what the hell he's reading and he would get a great big story of his own.
When we would write pilots in grad school, one of our profs would often warn us, you cannot do everything in the pilot. As a new writer you definitely want to show and do everything, both to sell the show and to demonstrate your talent. But that generally makes for a terrible pilot, like opening a trunk you overstuffed with things and then BOING it's shooting out all over the place.
I find the same goes for a season. You just won't get through everything. But here Alice Oseman turns that bug into a feature. She gives us this mysterious character who is around, and clearly has a lot going on--What is that kid reading?? And why does he suddenly disappear sometimes?--but never explores it. His presence is like a built-in teaser for season two. It reassures us that there's so much more world to be explored here.
Lots of shows offer characters like this, though sometimes they're more hidden in plain sight than Isaac; they're situated as the friend or someone else in the office, part of "the team."
If you're working on a pilot right now, maybe step back and ask yourself, Who is my Built In Teaser? Which character do I have who is supporting the action in season one in some way, but gives us a whole new set of fun experiences to play with down the road?
