Which story should you write next?
A fellow writer recently asked me: how do you get an idea ready before you go to script stage?
By Ian Masters
As an answer to that question – and hoping to help others on a similar journey – here’s an overview of how my writing partner Jon and I are currently developing an idea for television.
The series is called Emergency Exit. It didn’t start as a title or a formed idea. It started with anger and frustration.
For two years, Jon and I had been pushing various ideas through drafts and pitches. We were getting our stuff read by the UK production companies, but the problem we kept hearing was that we kept tackling stories that weren’t ours to tell.
They Walked Alone – a crime series about the British-Chinese community in Liverpool. “Fascinating world, but, er, why you? Smith and Masters?”
Finders Keepers – a heist series about a British-Nigerian “recovering” items looted by the Brits during colonial times to return them home. “Nice, but again… er… why you?”
We were hearing the same thing again and again. “Why you?”
Trapped by authenticity and representation
It’s not something I’d ever really considered. When I came back to the UK in 2018, it was a very different country to the one I’d left in 1999. I thought I could write whatever the hell I wanted to. If I could research it, and test it out with friends and people in the communities represented, so long as it “rang true” did it matter who wrote it? And what was so wrong about that?
The answer is: nothing. Nothing at all. But it’s not likely to turn into a development deal or produced series.
The drive for authenticity and diversity is overdue and needed. This isn’t a railing against diversity programming and representation – far from it. The brilliant bursting of ideas and stories from less represented parts of the UK is a real joy to watch and a window to worlds not seen on screen nearly enough.
But where does that leave us as two white, middle-aged writers trying to break in?
I railed for a long time against the catch-22 of being me – a white, middle-aged, cis/het male, who was being told to write within my lived experiences, but whose lived experiences weren’t what the industry was looking for any more .
I was trapped between an authenticity rock, and a representation hard place. That’s the anger and frustration. And that’s where the development of this particular TV idea began…
Creating a “marmite concept”
It started fermenting in my brain (compounded by lockdowns), until I decided to lean into it rather than fight it. It wasn’t a plot, or a character or a genre. It was that frustration. We decided our TV series needed to have the following ingredients:
A marmite TV show – no more vanilla safety. Love it or hate it, but don’t be indifferent
We wanted a concept which would be acceptable by the industry for us to write – a story about middle-aged white men, so no one could say “why you guys?”
We wanted a story which defiantly said, “this is worth saying” – despite the universal disdain for us as a demographic
It started (as many ideas do) with the notion of a “what if”?
What if there was a service that just got rid of middle-aged white men? After all, they’re so vilified anyway, who’d miss them? But that’s not a story. It’s a point of departure. It’s leaning in to the limitations of where we felt we were as writers.
But that started opening up some interesting ideas. Why are middle-aged men either reduced to becoming dastardly villains, or tragically pathetic jokes? Why are middle-aged white men the most likely to take their own lives? Why is this not talked about as much as it should be, given the demographic evidence?
If the plot is the map, the “why” is the compass. I often like to start with the compass.
Finding the compass of the story
It’s at this point in the development journey that I like to write more about why I want to tell a story rather than about the actual mechanics of the story.
If the plot is the map, the “why” is the compass. I often like to start with the compass.
Jon and I wrote three pages of “why this story”: why it matters, why it matters to us as writers, why it isn’t talked about. In that process, the seeds of characters and story ideas begin to form, like cells dividing in a petri dish of possibility - and more selection criteria emerge:
We wanted to use a genre and flip it on its head – a familiar thriller of villains, crime, police, victims, but actually use that to write something more honest about where we are as middle-aged white guys.
We wanted it to be both grounded in a real community that we know and feel, and high concept as an exploration of an idea.
All very abstract – until you hit upon the lightbulb moment. And then suddenly you're ready to go.
For us it was how three characters’ lives could link together around a service that provided "emergency exit" solutions to middle-aged men. A service that could provide tax, funeral, and legal solutions – as well as “a hit” made to look like an accidental death. A way of bowing out of life leaving grief, but not trauma. And a (story about a) character who changed their mind, because they began to re-evaluate themselves and their lives.
We wanted dark, dark comedy to be our colour. We wanted In Bruges and After Life to be our tonal guides. But we needed to make sure we were hitting our writing sweetspot, per the Scriptfella Project Selection Venn diagram:
Thriller – the genre we’ve been working in before – showcases our strengths.
We love the story because it matters and says something no one is really talking about.
We can write this story because we’re living it.
And it’s a story that we hope will advance our careers in a very crowded marketplace where we need marmite not vanilla.
Where are we now? The pilot script is going through a final polish. Win, lose or draw, we’re pinning our colours to this story because it matters to us. And if it speaks to us, we hope that readers and development execs might see its potential to land with an audience. We turned our frustrations into something that was a lot of fun to write – and when we found ourselves asking “we can’t go there… can we?” we knew we were onto something. Should you write a comedy about middle-aged white cis/het suicide in the UK? Turns out, we believe, that you can laugh with the characters and say something meaningful about a very real and current anxiety in the UK.
Ian Masters
Ian Masters is an award-winning scriptwriter who has worked across Africa and Asia for the past two decades. He is now based out of the UK with his writing partner, Jon Smith.
You can connect with Ian on LinkedIn, contact him through his agent or his website, and find out more about his work here.
Get killer articles in your inbox.
Subscribe to Screenwriting Intelligence.