I’m blessed to have such a talented room of wonderfully creative writers, 2/3 of which are Thai. I could not begin to conceive so many of the story points with any real local authenticity without their input. Not only that, but they are not afraid to defend ideas, dissent from the group, propose bad ideas, hunting for better ideas. They keep me on my toes.
We have two walls. One wall with each major (and some minor) character on the Y axis, and each episode number on the X axis. And at each intersection, where appropriate, we come up with one or two central beats, events, or actions that are pivotal to their main story or goal through the season.
We have a second wall with large chunks of space for anywhere from 20-35 index cards. This is where we break story depending on the other wall. How do the major character beats on the other wall break down into smaller beats of the episode, how do they interact with the other character beats, is there a conflict or theme that needs adjusting, how do the extra personal events affect the character beats... all these questions get sorted out here, shuffled, debated, torn down, moved, repurposed, trashed, realized, rinse repeat.
Eventually this should all lead to an outline for each episode that we all know quite well. Each writer will get their episodes to turn into a script, and they will work from this outline until a draft is complete.
We took a detour today from our work of breaking the season to really hone back down on major character events throughout the first season. It’s amazing how much talking and creative mental energy it takes to get a single post it or index card up on the wall.And tomorrow many of the post it’s and index cards will fall and be replaced by better ideas. And the day after that and after that.
Brick by brick by brick...
