The doomed second series
In those far off and stony days, in that friendless and furless Time Before Rafael, my wife and I watched Bad Sisters, an Apple TV show.
(Now that we have Rafael the Squirrel in our home, we still watch TV, but he’s a menace. Until he decides it’s his bedtime, he jumps around the room, annoying the dog and throwing food everywhere. His favourite snack is crisps, the only thing he doesn’t eat messily. When he does decide it’s bedtime, he goes down either my jumper or my wife’s jumper, rolls onto his back and snuffles and snorts with happiness. We reckon we have about 2-3 weeks more of R the S before he’s ready for the Great Outdoors. He still can’t quite crack a nut without help. But watching dramas broken into 50-minute episodes becomes quite an undertaking if you keep having to break to remove a squirrel from the missus’s hair or trying to get him out of a crisp packet.)
Anyway: Bad Sisters.
The show involves five sisters, one of whom is married to an unpleasant and controlling man, JP. We start the season knowing that JP has recently died and knowing that he was unbeloved of those he left behind. But was he murdered or not? A life insurance investigator wants to prove that he was murdered, and by the team of sisters, and thereby save his ailing insurance business. The cast is very strong. The sense of family and layered histories and relationships and Irish coastal settings are all strong. The comedy? Well, it’s funny but not uproarious. The drama? Well, it’s involving but not edge of the seat. But the whole concoction just works. It’s warm and funny and dark and just about credible enough and dramatic and new and unexpected.
Most of all, though, the basic concept is armour-plated.
Did the sisters kill JP? Well, I won’t tell you that, but I will say that they give it a go … and you won’t know what actually happened till right at the end. The show has a kind of And Then There Were None beauty and necessity to it.
If no one had ever written And Then There Were None (or, for that matter, Murder on the Orient Express), it would be essential for someone to do so. Those concepts have an urgency – a kind of necessity – like an uncompleted mathematical proof that nags at you until it’s done.
Sure enough, the show got a 100% positive review rating on Rotten Tomatoes and went on to secure multiple wins and nominations at various TV awards ceremonies. A great concept, well-executed: that’s the result.
But TV is TV.
If you get a series that everyone loves, you have to have another. In the land of the novel, it’s a bit like that, but not really. In novel-land, the author is the brand, so if you churn out a masterpiece (Pride & Prejudice, say), it’s fine for you to follow up with Emma. You don’t have to write Lizzie and Darcy Have Kids, Lizzie and Darcy Go Travelling, Lizzie and Darcy Sort Out Their Pensions and Go for an Amusing Escapade in France.
But – in TV-land, the brand isn’t the author, or the actor, it’s the show itself. So, yes, you have to force these things into a second series.
But what? Bad Sisters was about killing (or not killing?) JP. Once he’s dead, he’s dead. You can’t really have the sisters try to bump off anyone else: that’s just ludicrous. The story arc has been beautifully completed. Anything else is just artificial and not needed. So yes, another season was commissioned and filmed. But, as Rotten Tomatoes said in its summary of reviews, “The return of Bad Sisters can't help but feel like too much of a good thing, but the lived-in dynamic between these outstanding performers continues to pay highly watchable dividends.”
Basically: the show is pointless, but the actors and characters are great, so … yeah. It’s OK. My wife watched some of it, but lost interest. I’ve not watched a minute of it.
Now, I’m going to guess that many of you will not have a TV show in production with Apple. But all these thoughts still apply to you.
This month is Build Your Book Month. The aim, as you jolly well ought to know, is to give you the tools to plot your book out over the course of a month – in a way that’s structured enough to be disciplined and loose enough to give you creative freedom.
And today is 3 October: the very start of that month. And the purpose of this email is to say: Be More Bad Sisters, Season 1.
You need that level of necessity. You want a reader to think, ‘Wow, why has no one written a book about X, Y, Z before? Good job that someone has finally done so, because that I have to read.’
And that level of necessity has to extend to plot, not just idea. So, for example, “I’d love to write a time-slip novel about three generations of women who have lived in the same house in X.”
And, OK, yeah, fine. But what about those women? What’s the story? What have they been up to? Why do we have to read that tale?
Your job is not to satisfy your own wants as a writer. Your job is to deliver a concept so sharp, it could cut through floating silk.
Don’t try to take a mediocre concept and plot your way to excellence. That’s desperately hard and you can never get to more than 75% success anyway. Start with a terrific concept and then let your plotting become the natural, inevitable playing out of your idea. That works. It always will. And – it’s harder to start, but it’s much easier in the end.
If you want help with getting your concept straight, then:
- Read 11 boxes, 2 imps and 1 owl, a newsletter which involves 11 boxes, 2 imps 1 owl, and also some ideas about elevator pitches.
- Take the first lesson in our Good to Great Video Course. If you’re a Premium Member, you already have access! Please remember to log in first. If you’re not, you can get a free taster lesson here.
I’ll see lots of you 9 October for a bit of Build-Your-Bookery. (I’ll be talking about scene construction, a job which sounds like it should involve some 2x2s and plenty of paint.) My workshop details can be found here.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY / From Spark To Story
This week is a little different, it's a takeover from Becca Day.
Becca wants you to take your spark of an idea and share your novel’s premise in Townhouse. If you didn't catch the first Build Your Book Month workshop, then watch the replay of From Spark to Story with Becca Day. The first workshop is free for everyone to catch up on.
Til soon.
Harry