There is a lot of training and skill that goes into writing for someone else’s show. When you have a long running television series (or radio in the case of our pre-TV OTR series) or yes, audio drama, you need to be able to create the same tone and voices of the show, or it simply won’t work. This is my background. My “wheelhouse” is television sitcoms. And I have spent countless hours cultivating the ability to morph into other creator’s shows. Which is why Madison leaping into all these radio dramas came together as a project for me. So I thought I’d describe some basics on how to write for someone else’s creation.
The first most important thing to do is service the leading cast. How are they usually utilized and how can you use them in the same way while also creating a new story for them? Obviously Madison is a different beast in this respect, but one of my hard-fast rules about adapting these old series is to not change the lead characters just to appease Madison’s storylines. I have made sure I didn’t turn any leading man into a clown, or dumb down anyone. I want to capture their voices and their essence with Madison. Which is why I insist we are NOT a spoof. Because I am writing the characters as real to who they were in the original series. Not reinventing them for comedy purposes.
So my technique is immersion. I do this when I write TV spec (speculative) scripts. That’s a sort of portfolio to show you can capture the voice and tone of an established series. I watch tons of episodes of the TV show. I even put cut out images of the cast around my workspace so I can look at them and remind myself how they sound, how they move. And the radio series is very much the same. When I set out to work on an episode for a series, I binge episode after episode. I want to get the little nuances of the characters. What are their go-to phrases? What do they like to reference a lot? How do they react to different circumstances or types of people? So I know when I add Madison, I am keeping the original character’s voices alive.
Which actually lead me to be kinda hurt by a listeners response. He apparently was a huge fan of the “Have Gun, Will Travel” TV series. So far as to have the TV Paladin as his online profile picture. He attacked me saying I should “at least watch ONE episode before I try writing one.” Well, as it happens, I had listened to over 60 episodes of the radio series before I wrote mine. Two things were at play here. First, no, I had not “watched” the series. Because I was adapting the radio show, not the TV show. And while they did share a lot of scripts, they still had a lot of differences. Secondly, I recognized that I chose to adapt a very early episode in the run of the series. As with any long running show, characters change and evolve. Writers try things or write things early on that they decide didn’t work and never revisit. In my “Have Gun, Will Travel,” Paladin gets a knock-out drug in his bar drink and the bad guys rob him. This detractor said that “would never happen” and that I was making him out to be a “buffoon.” But I was using exactly the plot that was in the episode. However, as Paladin evolved, his character probably would not have been that vulnerable. So if you are looking to contribute to a currently running series, be sure to focus on the most current episodes to make sure your characters have evolved with the series! (as for me, nuts to that guy! 😜 )
I also recommend making sure you are aware of the differences in how each of the leading cast speaks. A truly gifted writer can give very distinctive voices to each character in their work. So listen to how the characters speak and make sure you aren’t giving a joke response line, for example, to Character A when it’s really Character B who makes those types of quips. Yes, that type of quip is heard on the show, but who usually delivers it? And while you might hear a similar running punch line a lot, try to come up with an original one, and not just use the one they have already used in the show. For example, a while back, someone gave me a short scene they’d written for Madison. They had her reference “Applebee’s” which you know I do often. But they did nothing new with it. The line just sat there unimaginative and empty. Yes. I reference it a lot. But each time it’s new and different. So put the effort in to make it the same, while making it different. You are writing a new story, don’t rehash old jokes another writer already used.
This kind of writing takes a lot of practice. It really is much easier as a writer to create a brand new work because you are only limited by yourself. But when writing for other people’s work, you must fit perfectly into their mold, or you won’t fit at all.
-Chrisi (aka Madison)
