It Begins!
We, the Kablooey Group, are writing our first musical theatrical production. How are we going about it? By taking a cue from television.
Your typical television show, be it a sitcom or drama, is written via a Writers Room. It is exactly what it sounds like: a room of writers, led by a “showrunner” who acts as lead storyteller for all intents and purposes. They all work together to create the characters and story, map out the character’s narrative arcs, break down the story beats, build histories and mythologies that inform the characters and the world around them, etc. Then single writers (or writing teams) go off and pen the individual episodes.
So it is with our first original show.
At some point I will go off and write the script to our show on my lonesome, but for now I have the pleasure of enjoying a weekly round of “story sessions” with Jerry, Rachel, and Doug. We’re only three weeks in, and though schedules allow us only a few hours together each week we have taken full advantage. I can’t share much at this point, if for no other reason than nothing is truly set in stone, but here’s a quick peek at how things are coming along:
Week One: Jerry, Rachel and I begin throwing out ideas out to see what sticks. Working in broad strokes we form a group of characters that seem to play well together and settle on an overall direction for the story. There’s a bit of world-building tonight, mainly setting up a timeline for events that precede our story. A lot of Googling this session…
Week Two: Just Rachel and I this week. Though we start off focusing solely on fleshing out her character we end with some major blanks filled in for others. We also manage to connect some sizable story dots. Our favorite takeaway of the evening is the title to a song we can’t wait to write for the show.
Week Three: Our first week with all four of us in attendance (Doug had been traveling for work). We cement the show’s characters and bestow tentative names on them (so now rather than referring to them as “That Character” we can say “Let’s talk about Deedee”). None of them are fully formed yet and some are still nothing more than a name and general description, but several are really starting to take shape and push the story, which is how it should be. There’s some additional world building tonight and we also tackle a decent chunk of backstory for one character in particular.
There’s a bit of work happening outside these sessions but generally speaking that’s where things are. Speaking of where things are, if you can’t tell from the photo we’re one hundred percent Panera-ing this thing. What can I say? When we’re writing for television we’ll look into an actual writers room.
