THE IDEA

‘Sure I’ve got a minute. What’s your series about?’

Imagine this: through luck or perseverance, you have tracked down the exact producer you want to meet. You’ve done your homework. You know exactly who this person is, what shows they made and why they are perfect to executive produce your series. You’ve got them on the phone or you’ve planted yourself directly in their path outside a screening. However it happens, you’ve got their attention. For about a minute.

How you use that minute will determine whether you are invited to come in for a meeting, or whether that producer will excuse themselves with a polite, ‘good luck.’ So what do we say? How do we best answer this basic question: ‘What is your series about?’

I’m going to give you a formula for this in a minute, but before I do, it’s important that you understand that there are at least two levels of communication going on in this situation. There is the WHAT (i.e., basic information that describes your series) and there is the HOW (i.e., the level of confidence and professionalism with which you speak). Which of these two do you think matters most at the outset?

You don’t need to be a deep student of psychology or interpersonal relations to know that confidence is crucial in a situation like this. How you communicate matters tremendously. And yet, where is this confidence supposed to come from? You, someone who has never made a tv series? Perhaps never even staffed or written a pilot – how are you supposed to convey the confidence and authority to make this person comfortable enough to trust you?

It’s actually pretty simple: practice. Your confidence (your how) comes from knowing exactly what you want to say when you get your chance. Let’s call it your ‘opening statement.’ I want you to script it, memorize it, practice it on strangers, practice it at parties when people ask what you do. Know it so well that if someone interrupted your wedding ceremony to ask, ‘what’s your series about?’ the words would tumble from your mouth before you could stop them. Confidence is all about preparation.

The Idea of Your Series - Ric Gibbs - Dec 22, 2019 - page 1 of 9 When I teach pitching, I tell students they should practice their opening statement like a gymnast practices a balance beam: backwards, forwards, side dismount, with a twist. I’m not talking about word-for-word memorization. I’m talking about knowing something so well, you could say it a hundred different ways.

CONVEYING YOUR SERIES IN ONE STATEMENT

For clarity, let’s define some terms. In our business, you will hear the term ‘idea’ and ‘series concept’ used interchangeably. Both refer to a quick, clear statement that situates your series within the universe of known tv shows, and lays out its most important and compelling features. These opening remarks are quick distillation, whose purpose is simply to give your listener the context they need to understand what they are about to hear, while hooking them sufficiently that they want to know more. And yes, this can be done in less than a minute. If you’re good, you can do it in about 30 seconds.

Here is what ‘idea’ does NOT mean. It does not mean telling your story, or your pilot episode, or its plot. It does not mean whatever idea first popped into your head and inspired you to write this series. (There’s a place for that, but not here). At the open, you are just doing your best to fit your series into a bite-size statement that (1) can be quickly understood and (2) makes us want to know more. In this regard, your series ‘idea’ functions a little like the logline for a movie script, but there are important differences as you’re about to see.

In my experience, your opening remarks about a series – your idea – works best when it contains these elements: genre + format + world + character(s) + the unique sustainable conflict that will fuel the series. Let’s look at some examples.

• This series is a one hour, a darkly comic fish-out-of-water drama, based on the true story of a privileged, white New Yorker who ends up in women’s prison for inadvertently smuggling drugs for a girlfriend. Totally out of her depth amid the street hardened women of this state penitentiary, our newly arrived ‘convict’ has to learn to to survive inside a world with codes and alliances and dangers she cannot possibly understand. From the creator of Showtime’s offbeat comedy, Weeds our series takes a hard, and often hilarious look at class warfare and the assumptions beneath it. (42

The Idea of Your Series - Ric Gibbs - Dec 22, 2019 - page 2 of 9 seconds).

• This half hour, offbeat teen comedy turns the classic coming-of-age experience on its head by telling the story of a high-functioning autistic kid who decides it is finally time to experience sex. His decision carries major social consequences at high school, where his older sister already has her hands full defending her weirdo brother. Not only is Sam’s blank approach to dating both hilarious and painful to watch, but – like other classic savants – he enters into predicaments with such glorious naiveté that everyone around him (including us) are forced to reevaluate everything we thought we knew about love and intimacy. That is Netflix’s Atypical (in 41 seconds).

• This one hour crime drama follows the unusual protection business of an Irish- American street thug from Boston who becomes a Hollywood ‘fixer’ who solves the dirty problems of the city’s rich and famous. If you saw George Clooney in Michael Clayton, he’s that guy. The clean-up guy for the worst, richest, over-privileged assholes in LA. It’s also the story of a man who just wants to build a respectable life for his wife and kids, but somehow can never escape his own dark impulses and the chaos stirred up each week by his criminal father and deadbeat brothers. Showtime’s Ray Donovan (44 seconds).

As you can see, each of these opening statements declares its genre and format right away: ‘a one hour crime drama,’ ‘a half hour offbeat teen comedy,’ and ‘a darkly comic fish-out- of-water drama.’ Is this absolutely necessary? No. But it is extremely helpful to buyers and puts them at ease! In just a few seconds, you have already set a clear frame for your listener to understand the kind of series you are writing. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? Everything you find listed on television is described first by category. Don’t fight it. Use it!

Also, try to slip in a sub-genre if you can. ‘Fish-out-of-water’ story. ‘Coming-of-age’ comedy. References to ‘tone’ are helpful. Orange is the New Black is a one hour drama (that’s your format) but the tone is comedic (mostly). And that’s important to say. It’s not a prison drama like Oz (HBO). Similarly, the series Atypical deals with serious topic -- autism -- but in a very offbeat, irreverent tone. If you just said it’s about a kid with autism, you would be missing what’s unique about this series. So ‘tone’ is important to your description, especially if you can link it to another series that’s familiar.

The Idea of Your Series - Ric Gibbs - Dec 22, 2019 - page 3 of 9 It’s a little harder to find another comedy about autism in high school (part of what made Atypical so fresh!) but if this were your project, you could certainly reference other high school misfits in describing its tone. For instance, you might say that this series story has all the awkwardness of ‘Freaks and Geeks,’ magnified by the fact that Sam’s autism means he has no social skills at all. So things are even worse.

Do you see how quickly you can set the stage for a series, with just a few words about the genre, and how this particular series will set itself apart? Awkward teen comedy made more awkward by autism. Rich New York woman tossed into state prison with tough girls. Ray Donovan trying (a bit like Tony Soprano) to raise a normal family, in a normal suburb, while his day job is both violent and criminal. It does not take many words – if you pay attention to the central problem of your series – not many words at all to lay out why someone would want to watch your series.

FIND THE ONGOING PROBLEM

In movies (and most theatre) the play unfolds in three acts (beginning, middle, end) all pointing towards a resolution of the main problem. The Wizard of Oz: Will Dorothy get home to Kansas? When she does, the movie is over. Lord of the Rings: Will Frodo destroy the evil ring and save Middle Earth? Yes, he does. Movie over. Charlie Brown Christmas: Will Charlie Brown get over his funk and find the Christmas spirit? Yes. And everyone comes together around him and the movie is over.

In television, we want just the opposite! If we are building an ongoing series, we don’t want to resolve the problem. We want an ongoing problem that will keep our viewers engaged.

Will Elizabeth Windsor ever reconcile her authentic personal desires with the impossible demands of duty in The Crown? Will all the young doctors of Seattle Grace Hospital find love and fulfillment in Grey’s Anatomy? Will The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ever reconcile her love life and her budding career as a comedian? Of course not! In all cases, we DON’T want these problems resolved. Or we would lose interest. That’s how drama works.

Now obviously, there are limited series where the story (and the series) are designed to conclude. Examples of these are murder mysteries such as The Night Of (HBO) or

The Idea of Your Series - Ric Gibbs - Dec 22, 2019 - page 4 of 9 anthology series such as True Detective or Fargo. British television is more likely to produce limited series than an American broadcaster because there are a great deal more literary adaptations making up the programming in England.

By contrast, we find many police procedurals (or legal or medical dramas) that go on for years. So what is the ‘ongoing problem’ behind a series like CSI? Talk to any cop, and she’ll tell you: crime never stops. Will they ever solve all the killings? Of course not. So the series keeps going.

In your opening remarks (your idea) it is very important to identify what ongoing conflict will define your series? ‘Who will sit upon the Iron Throne?’ for example. This question sustained Game of Thrones for eight seasons. There we dozens of other, smaller questions that functioned as intriguing subplots in this mammoth work. But the battle for control of the seven kingdoms was the long-running problem that held our interest and fueled storylines for a decade.

WHO IS YOUR SERIES ABOUT? Any description of your series would be incomplete without mentioning the characters whose story is being told. My best advice is to delay naming names until later in your pitch. Even if your series focuses mainly on one character, it’s still best to leave the names and details for later. By contrast, we want to use this introduction to highlight why this individual – or her situation – will captivate us. She’s a spoiled, rich New Yorker who suddenly has to learn to survive insider a women’s prison. He’s an ordinary high school chemistry teacher who ends up running a drug empire (Breaking Bad). He’s a sixteen year teenager trying to have his first sexual encounter, but he has autism. In other words, highlight what is truly distinctive and unusual about the characters you are proposing. Don’t try to add character names and descriptions yet. There’s plenty of time for that later.

Take a look at this introduction to Killing Eve. Notice how character-centric it is:

• This one hour spy thriller follows a dowdy, low-level MI-6 analyst who is the first to uncover the trail of assassinations carried out by a beautiful, but emotionally unbalanced Russian female agent, Codename: Villanelle. Based on a series of novels by Luke Jennings, this series is adapted by Phoebe Waller-Bridge whose recent hit Fleabag took us inside the antics of another emotionally unbalanced but unforgettable female. Far more than just a spy catcher-drama, our

The Idea of Your Series - Ric Gibbs - Dec 22, 2019 - page 5 of 9 series pulls us deep inside these two women’s mutual obsession with each other. An obsession which blows apart this analyst’s tidy world and marriage, by dragging her into a world of danger, excitement, and a woman she finds irresistible. Which means this one is also a love story.

It would be a huge mistake to focus on the spy-craft and procedural methods that Eve uses to identify Villanelle. Those elements are not what distinguishes this series. What sets Killing Eve apart its genre-bending love story. Two women on opposites sides of the law, who become obsessed with each other. That’s why this series is a hit!

As we will see, television is primarily a character-driven media. Cinema is the realm of plot. But in tv, the main reason any show succeeds is that its characters intrigue us and hold our interest. Either they are very colorful. Or they have entered a world where they don’t fit and can’t escape. Or (in the case of Fleabag) they are deeply at war with themselves and manifest all kinds of unpredictable, self-sabotaging behavior because of this. That’s you, Don Draper.

THE WORLD OF THE SERIES World-building is a major element in series development, and we will focus on this soon enough. But it certainly deserves inclusion in your opening remarks. In some genres, such as science fiction/fantasy, the world defines so much of the drama, you can’t really discuss the series without describing it. Could anyone understand the problem of The Handsmaid’s Tale without a description of its world? Let’s look.

• In a dystopian future where the human race is dying off, the few women who remain fertile must serve as ‘Handmaids’ to the country’s religious elite. This hard-hitting social drama will be told through the eyes of June Osborne, a very normal working mother in Boston whose life is upended (and daughter stolen) in the religious revolution that turns the United States into an unrecognizable nation of Christian zealots and their female slaves. It is a story of tyranny and resistance, and one woman’s relentless battle to survive anything, and get her daughter back.

Note that the essence of this world (the reason for June’s enslavement) can be handled in one sentence: in an infertile world, the last fertile women become slaves. This is simple, clear, and it comes with its own ready-made conflict, dictated by the genre itself. I.e., in any slave story, the slaves seek freedom.

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However, slavery isn’t that exciting or unusual. We’ve all seen slave stories. What sets this one apart, and the reason this adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel found such success, was its proximity to our world today. A proximity that was emphasized in the series by splitting the narrative into ‘before’ and ‘after’ storylines. The normal world vs. the new world. This normal, pre-revolutionary world is revisited again and again in this series. So that we were never allowed to forget what was lost. Or what could be lost, if the wrong people seize power.

This is why I chose to include the main character’s name, June Osborne, in this description. It was a deliberate choice, because her name is so ordinary. And above all, this is June’s battle to reclaim her ordinary world.

RULE OF THUMB: The more ordinary your world, the more extraordinary your ‘twist’ on it must be. The world of mobsters was not unique when David Chase debuted his series. But his decision to take us inside the everyday life of a New Jersey mobster, with his psychiatrist, his manipulative mother, squabbling teenagers, and status-conscious wife, gave tv one of its breakthrough series in The Sopranos.

The ‘medical drama’ was hardly unique to television either, when David Shore invented a doctor whose social skills were so politically incorrect and emotionally brutal that nobody could wait to see what Dr. House did next.

By contrast, if the world is highly unusual, such as Black Mirror or Man in the High Castle or The Handmaid’s Tale, then the characters don’t need to be extraordinary. The character of June Osborne (Offred) is remarkable for bringing an ordinary woman’s sensibility into a world whose values are upside down. She is the one sane person in an insane world.

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I give students this ‘formula’ with a bit of a disclaimer. It works, but it works much better when you find a way to make it your own. Because when you draft your opening description for the first time, when you are trying to squeeze all your big ideas into a few short sentences – it will seem impossible to get it right. Just keep trying.

Write a draft. Revise it. Try it out on other people. Write a different version. One that emphasizes the world. Another one that emphasizes the characters. Try them all on real people. Strangers make great test audiences. Studios pay a lot of money to assemble “focus groups” and “test audiences.” You can find them for free at your local cafe or cocktail party.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS on “THE CONCEPT OF YOUR SERIES”

These first descriptors will be the most revised sentences of your entire writing process. You must capture so much in so few words. But it is this brevity that allows you to cut through the clutter and noise of our industry and grab somebody’s attention.

It must distill what is unique and compelling about the series – that can be found no other place on television.

It must give us a window into ‘The World’ of the series and why we must find out more about it.

The Idea of Your Series - Ric Gibbs - Dec 22, 2019 - page 8 of 9 It must tease us with those who will take us into this world, and what extraordinary challenges they will face.

And finally, it must hint at those deeply compelling human mysteries to be revealed on this journey - even if it’s just how to not murder our mate.

You will probably rewrite your ‘Series Concept’ a hundred times and it will never feel right until you have finished all the other work of developing your series. The important part, is just to start. And be willing to get it wrong on your way to getting it right.

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