Let’s write a new TV show together! Or a miniseries since that’s the thing now. What’s the difference? A TV show is random, sometimes its episodes disconnected in time from each other. Each show can exist on its own. The exact timeline is not as important. In a miniseries, the story is told in sequence, events build from episode to episode.
So a miniseries is probably more difficult to create because you have to have a never-ending supply of events to keep writing and you have to be building it up to a peak.
Naturally, we are not gonna go easy here, we’re gonna develop a miniseries! After all, we have no experience, ZERO, in TV writing but who wants to start at the bottom? No, in these COVID times, we all want it all and since we all want to work at home and never again work for the man, let’s go for it. No random, disconnected shows for us, we’re on top of our game!
So many shows are about family. Think of miniseries like The Sopranos, Dallas, Schitts Creek. Since we’re at the top or our game, we’re gonna write something different. No zombies, no vampires, no apocolypses.
Okay, I got it. Since everyone wants to be their own boss, we’ll write a show about a bunch of entrepreneurs who want it all, work at home and never again will work for the man. Perfect.
Whew, that was easy. Okay, all entrepreneurs come out of Silicon Valley (or at least the ones who invent new apps in their garages and then sell to Mark Zuckerburg and retire six months later). Well, that’s the myth so we’ll go for that; okay, we need one of those guys, they’ll become the model against which all the other characters measure themselves against.
Okay, we need to remember diversity is important and we want to make our cast look like America, not just a stereotype. So our Silicon Valley character will be a Hispanic female, Katherine. She is a graduate of Notre Dame since we don’t want to use the same old, tired clichés of all brilliant entrepreneurs coming only from Caltech, MIT or Harvard. Plus, we’re going to need viewers from the Midwest too, right? So Notre Dame pulls in Catholics and Midwesterners.
Katherine is pretty but she wants it all, too. Duh! How can we have a main character who is an amazing entrepreneur but who has not been taken seriously because she is a female, and Hispanic and didn’t “emerge” from Caltech? Of course she wants it all. In fact she is pissed off! Attitude, we like that.
Who will be her unicorn? A unicorn is the money person or investment group who is willing to invest in your idea or product as you try to make it viral or at least successfully launch it. There’s a lesbian we’ll name Lenora who works for a venture capital firm near San Francisco. Lenora will take an interest in Katherine’s product and of course later on, will take an interest in Katherine. It’s just that Katherine won’t see that coming until it’s contract signing time. This is all just too easy!
Okay, what is Katherine’s product, service, app, invention? Everyone loves pets! So if we come up with something that caters to pet lovers, now we’ll also attract pet lovers to our viewership, a huge demographic!
Since Katherine was a psychology major, she learned the importance of communication. Since she also minored in Programming Communications, she writes code and develops it into an app that allows pet owners to “speak” to their pets and them to “speak back” in a code that both parties understand. We’ll call her app, PetSpeak. As the miniseries begins, we will have Katherine struggling to figure out how to make her app work. Episode 1 will end with her Eureka moment: Katherine and her laboratory dog “speaking.”
But this is a show about entrepreneurs, so we need a few more characters. Since Katherine will be the big Silicon Valley buzz in our show, we will need a come-from nowhere character, someone who literally worked in his parent’s garage and developed a new product. We don’t want everyone to have an app, we also want other services or products. Dez, a black male student at a small college, is smart and on the edge of launching his new app. Dez, being black, is not receiving the same attention from unicorns so he is going to be a bit cagier.
And then there is Stephen who has been making a lot of noise in the High Tech corridor of Asheville, NC. Many angel investors located in Asheville have been watching Stephen and a few are poised to make him an offer. We’ll spend Episode 2 on Dez and Stephen to see how their contrasting styles (and products or apps) enable or hinder them as they try to rise to the top.
We’ll also delve into the money people – the Angel Investors and Unicorns – who help shape dreams into reality – by offering millions but also taking a significant piece of the pie when the end result goes viral or just becomes successful after launch.
So now we have a lot of characters. Three wannabees, multiple investors, we will create love interests, hangers-on, family (such as concerned parents: why can’t Johnny just get a nice job with a pension?) and more. Plenty of stories there, right?
Sounds like we’ll need to tackle more plot twists and stories in a later piece. Stay tuned.
Chris Ebel
9/29/21
Photo credit: @infinity_