With one click
Export a perfectly formatted traditional script.
Ever wonder what separates the writing room of a long-running TV series from one that only lasts a few months and then splinters apart when the series is canceled? Sometimes it underdeveloped storylines, sometimes its underdeveloped characters. Usually, it’s the latter since it’s the characters and their emotional resonance that draws in the audience.
Such as this one time when I worked for one of the highest paid showrunners in the industry at the time.
“Can everyone please come down to the soundstage?” rang over the speakers on every desk phone. What started as a slow walk down two flights of stairs became a full sprint as panic started racing through the crowd fearing their employment status.
The cast and crew gathered on soundstage 3A filled with dread. The truth is, the series had been sinking in the ratings since it premiered five weeks earlier and two weeks prior, the department head told us there was a good chance we were going to get canceled and to start looking for other jobs.
The two executive producers appeared, and the gathered crowd fell silent. When the showrunner announced our cancellation, I felt like a giant trap door opened under my feet. My career went into freefall for the next several months.
Five months earlier, I experienced one of the greatest highs of my life when the network picked the pilot up for series. At that time, I was hoping for a long run where I could get promoted upward through the ranks of the crew on a network TV series. Those dreams came crashing down when we were canceled.
This would be the first of many TV shows I worked on that were canceled before their second season. The gut punch from that moment comes with a ferociousness that knocks you to your knees. Then comes the nausea as you think about the phone calls, emails, and awkward conversations when you start your next job search.
Working on a canceled TV series is a hard reality for anyone who chooses to do this for a living. 30% of new TV shows will get a second season which means seven out of ten new shows that premiere at any given time will be gone within the year.
During the pandemic I spent one night adding up the number of canceled first years shows I worked on, and I stopped once I hit double digits. I estimated the combined cost of those shows to be $470 million.
When I studied my list of canceled shows, I asked myself, “What do all these projects have in common?” and the answer jumped off the page. Mediocre writing. There isn’t one canceled first year series I worked that had great writing. On a scale of one to ten, most of the writing scored a six at best.
Most of the writers I worked with were good enough to get hired, but not great enough to create a quality episodic TV series for ten episodes. At the heart of these scripts were poorly developed characters who truly had little development besides some quirks in how they behaved and spoke.
How to Combat Poor Character Development Using Raw Writing
For most of these writers, it’s not the characters that are the problem, but how they develop them. Few have received proper training creating characters, conceiving their backstory, giving them a true emotional core and figuring out how to put them in relationships with other characters in the story that has any true depth.
Thus, it brings us to the following writing exercises called Raw Writing, and they’re designed to bring more emotion to your characters, dialogue, and prose. It’s a form of freewriting that can help you write from an emotional place.
Keep a Daily Journal of Your Emotions
The first part of bringing more emotion to your writing is to carry a journal with you to write about how you feel throughout the day. It can either be a small paper one or an app on your cell phone you can write or dictate in.
Five times a day, write down the strongest emotions you’re going through that day. Go into detail about what the emotion is, how it felt and what triggered your reaction.
Get into the habit of journaling about your emotions daily. On an average day, you might go through the same emotion or multiple ones on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Complete This Raw Writing Exercise
A longer, more extensive exercise that can enable you to deep dive into your emotions is called Raw Writing. It’s a form of freewriting designed to get you more in touch with your consciousness and get your mind into a flow state where ideas come pouring out.
Begin raw writing by setting a timer for 45-minutes: open your software to a blank page or handwrite with a pen and legal pad. Start the timer and write the sentence, “How do I feel today?” Then start freewriting on the keyboard or with the pen and push your writing in the direction you feel in the moment.
If you’re depressed or frustrated, push yourself into the center of your feelings and write from that headspace. If it means writing dialogue, a scene, or a moment in your life where you were depressed and frustrated then get yourself to that place emotionally and write from that feeling.
Remember, any pocket of emotion is a great place to write from.
When you’re in this zone, keep your fingers typing or your pen writing. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar or even if what your writing makes sense. The only person who will read this is you. You want to remove any self-conscious thoughts like, “This is embarrassing,” or “This sucks,” or “I’m a terrible writer.”
Your mind is a fountain, you want your ideas to flow freely. You want to remove any self-doubt or criticism that will filter your emotions. One of the goals during raw writing is to remove these filters so you can write from a more direct place.
Conclusion
Try to repeat this exercise daily for 45 minutes to an hour until you become comfortable writing from an emotional place. Maybe even consider trying this as a daily warm-up before working on a screenplay, like a 45-minute cardio warm-up before heavy weightlifting.
Hopefully, Raw Writing will help you get to a more emotional place to bring more nuance to your work.
Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions on writing from an emotional place. We’d love to hear about your Raw Writing experience.