The Art of Writing a TV Pilot — Part 3
By: Nom De Plume
Tags: Screenwriting, TV Series, Writing, Game of Thrones, Screenplay

The Art of Writing a TV Pilot — Part 3

Credit: HBO

If you have been reading this series, by now know what it’s about. If just came across it and haven’t seen previous installments, you catch by reading Part 1 and Part 2, which would also give you some context and set expectations. The only disclaimer I’m going to be including every article in the series is the fact that they include ruthless spoilers for every show mentioned. So if you have recently discovered Game of Thrones and don’t know yet who Jon Snow’s mother is, you may want to skip this series and catch up on the show instead.

And the secret of Jon’s birth is directly related to today’s topic. Which is backstory. Few — very few — things are as crucial in building viewers’ interest in a story as this one. And its role is especially critical in the pilot. Which may seem counterintuitive. The pilot is all about showings your audience the present and building up anticipation for things to come, isn’t it? In the limited screen time you have for the pilot episode, every minute counts, which means that spending those precious minutes on history may bore the audience. At least, this is what it looks like if you consider the purpose of a pilot.

Even the shows we’ve been referring to so far don’t disclose much of a backstory until some later points. Breaking Bad, for example, doesn’t tell us the story of gray matter — a core part of Walter White’s journey — until the fifth episode. As for Game of Thrones, which has literally thousands of years of a backstory, not much of that richness shows up in the pilot. The same could be said about Westworld — another great show that features and replies on a very rich and convoluted past, that we don’t get to see you until we watch a number of episodes. All of this is for a good reason. In the pilot, the audience needs to meet the characters and establish some strong emotional connection to them, be it admiration or hate. And this can be done only through characters’ actions, which, of course, all take screen time.

So yes, backstory definitely takes a backseat in the pilots of very successful shows. And yet one of the key factors that make some of them so great is the presence of that backstory. It may be not told, but it’s definitely expressed. And there is definitely an art to expressing a backstory and subtle but powerful ways. These ways fall into three major categories (though not limited to those three): hints, interactions, and character behavior. And all of these ways have the same objective: to make the audience feel that there’s more. More to the character, to the story, to events that at the first sight may seem not rooted in the past. In a good story, they always are.

Let’s look at some examples.

Hints

Hints are the most straightforward and a very efficient way to suggest that there’s more to the story than meets the eye. Any well-written dialogue where characters refer — without explaining — to the events of the past makes the audience want to learn more about that past. And in the best stories, they also make some characters learn more, so search for truth becomes a joint quest on which that character and the audience go together.

The art of a hint comes down to one thing: saying as much as possible with as little as possible. The more you explain, the less of a mystery there remains. And it’s the mystery of the backstory that makes it so powerful a tool.

A perfect example of a hint is the last conversation between Ned Stark and Jon Snow, which is a marvel of fueling multiple plotlines of a multi-season show with literally just a couple of lines. However, that conversation happens in episode 2, so for the purpose of this exercise, we’ll look at another scene related to Ned’s (and Westeros’) dramatic past.

Credit: HBO

It’s Ned’s and Robert Baratheon’s conversation in the barely lit darkness of Winterfell’s crypt. A lot goes on in that scene, including Ned’s fateful decision to accept Robert’s offer, which eventually leads him to the executioner’s block. But this is in the future. What takes the central stage in the scene is the past. The shared past of Ned, Robert, and someone else, who is only present in the form of a stone statue. And that past comes alive, even though we don’t get to hear a lot of details.

We learn the woman whose statue Robert looks at with pain and love was his wife. We learn that she was Ned’s sister. And we also learn that there was someone else. Someone, whom Robert holds accountable for his wife’s death. He doesn’t say much, but when he says, ”In my dreams, I kill him every night,” we want to know more. We want to find out who that man was, what exactly he did, and what happened after whatever that event was. But to find out all that we need to keep watching beyond the pilot episode.

Interactions

An old actor’s wisdom says, “acting is reacting”. Nowhere this approach is as powerful as in suggesting to the audience existence of a backstory. There is a tiny scene in Game of Thrones opening episode. A scene without a single word. With just two people exchanging glances. And yet it says a lot. It’s a moment when Caitlin Stark looks at Jon Snow who is busy putting arrows back after target practice. she doesn’t say anything just looks at him. He feels her unapproving stare and looks back. That’s all.

Credit: HBO

Nothing else takes place in that moment of screen time. Just two people looking at each other. But thanks to great acting, this scene suggests to us, the audience, that not everything is rosy in the Stark family. We see that these two share some past — and that past makes at least one of them very unhappy. And so the backstory shows up without a single line of dialogue

Character behavior

But sometimes you can hint at the backstory even without silent interaction. It requires amazing acting, but when it’s done right it becomes a very powerful technique.

And a great example of such amazing acting is Anthony Hopkins’ Ford in Westworld. From the moment we encounter the character in the pilot episode we can’t help but feel that there is so much behind-the-scenes, so much in the past that makes that world what it is. And if there is someone holding the keys to that past it’s Ford. His every line, and essentially every moment, even a silent one, even when there is no one else around, suggests that one day the past will catch up with Westworld and its inhabitants and unsuspecting guests. Of course, this has a lot to do with the quality of the script, but the masterful delivery by a great actor makes that impression so much more vivid. And when the past does catch up with people and hosts alike we are not surprised. After all Ford's smile has been suggesting it all along.