Feb 11
4
Writing Lessons Learned from TV: Damages S1
I am a television fan, a fan of good stories, and of good writing. More than in any feature film, television characters engage me and draw me in. And it’s those characters and the time spent with them that have provided the most emotional responses from me of any visual media (film, theatre, web series, or television).
I have no business writing a how-to on screenwriting — I haven’t figured it out yet — but every great television series I encounter adds a new lesson (or three) to my mental notebook of how writing can be done right.
In this post, I’ll talk about FX’s suspenseful crime drama, Damages Season 1 (2007).
Disclaimer: No spoilers beyond the pilot episode.
Damages is the story of a young lawyer, Ellen Parsons, who gets the opportunity of a lifetime, a job helping high-profile litigator Patty Hewes prosecute a corrupt billionaire CEO, Arthur Frobisher. Patty is one of the most manipulative and ruthless in the business and every new case means a new set of enemies for the firm.
What makes Damages unique is the non-linear nature of its storytelling, jumping from the first encounters between Ellen and Patty forward six months as Ellen stumbles into the street shaking and covered in blood. Whose blood, the events of the night leading to that encounter, and the roles played by Patty Hewes and Arthur Frobisher are revealed in brief flashes as the episodes unfold, working backward until the story of Ellen’s beginnings meets the events of that fateful night.
Lessons learned:
Planning is key. There is no way to write a story like this, so full of lies, betrayals, double-crosses and scandal without a clear picture of the truth from the beginning. And there’s no way to ensure a satisfying finale, as I found the Season 1 conclusion to be, without carefully mapping the pace of events.
Control the flow of information and you control the emotional response of the audience. In a suspense/mystery the audiences emotions are shaped by the relative timing of reveals. As we flash back through the night of Ellen’s bloody encounter, we see other characters wrought with guilt, still others dead, and the audience makes natural assumptions about the causes behind these images. Each time, the next reveal proves to reverse these suppositions. The balance of “what happens next?” and “what aren’t they showing me?” keeps the attention of the viewers through all 13 episodes.
Had this story been revealed linearly, i think it could still have been successful, but the writers’ skill in holding back information and slowly leaking it over time is what made the first season so satisfying.
Heroes can be villains and villains heroes. Partly through clever casting, but largely through writing, the characters of Damages are shown to be mixtures of light and dark, all capable of making deeply disturbing choices or gestures of great kindness. In addition to believability, it amplifies the tension of the show that any character may be behind the heinous acts shown in the pilot episode.
Damages Season 1 is available on DVD and Netflix streaming.