Process #3: A Room of Stories
Welcome to the Table of Pain
“The Table of Pain is a living, breathing organism. It eats lives and shits stories and our duty is to feed the beast.”
Once upon a long time ago I banned a production company’s Head of Development from a story room. Well, ‘banned’ is too strong a word and suggests I had actual power in this situation. I did not. In fact, writers never have the power they’d like to think they have in any given situation in this thing we lovingly call The Industry. But I am already digressing because the relationship between writers and ‘power’ within a production is definitely another topic for another time.
Anyway, in this instance, what I did was I politely suggested to the Head of Development, who liked to sit in on our storylining sessions, that seeing we were a couple of series into this particular show then, strictly speaking, it wasn’t really ‘in Development’ and maybe they might want to better spend their time developing new shows. If they had pushed back on this, then I would have summoned all my fearsome gravitas and said “oh, okay then, not a problem, see you next Monday”, but thankfully they graciously bowed out we were able to continue on our storylining path.
This request had nothing to do with this particular Head of Development (who was and still is a very fine person). Indeed, in the room, on this show, the Head of Development mostly took notes and wasn’t trying to push an unwanted company/network agenda upon the indentured creatives. It was simply that the room, as a whole, was not working. The stories were not flowing. What should be fun had become a form of slow torture. Something had to change. So I made the call. And things did get better in the room and the stories flowed again.
But that may have been coincidence. Writing for television is not an exact science despite all those who try to turn it into an exact science.
The story room is very much a creation of television. Where there is a machine to be serviced, a beast to be fed, the most efficient way of filling all those on-screen hours is by locking a bunch of writers in a room until they come up with enough story to keep the machine functioning. The form of television we, rather disparagingly, call ‘soap opera’ is the prime exponent of battery story-farming, but the story room has also become the industry standard for pretty much all series television. Many brains make lights work.
“You sit at the Table of Pain, you are fair game.”
Back in the early-1990’s, when I was doing my time in the story-mines of Shortland Street, the table around which the storyliners sat was known as the Table of Pain. And on some days that is what it was. But on most days, sitting at the Table of Pain was great fun. Intelligent, lively people, throwing ideas into the mix to see what sticks and what doesn’t.
But the never-ending grind of the Shortland Street table was never really my thing. I lasted a couple of years (plus another year, much later, when I foolishly agreed to go back, but that’s a story for another time) before leaving it to those who can thrive in that world. Generally speaking, those people are younger, keener, more ambitious and less prone to bouts of laziness than I. Excelling at feeding the serial beast takes a certain mindset, and my mind is not that mind.
“I believe in the God of the Storyline. The Storyline comes to pass.”
Story tables, however, have remained a huge part of my working life. So much so that, by now, I think even I have managed to figure out (in part at least) what makes a table a good table, as opposed to one that is actually, psychologically painful.
A good story room is a safe space. Not only in the sense that bullying and prejudice are not tolerated here, but in the sense that this room is a space in which you can open your mouth and say anything you need to say. More than that, you are expected to open your mouth and speak your mind, if you feel the need to speak it. You are here to contribute so, ipso facto, if you do not contribute, if you let your personal filters get in the way, then why are you even in the damn room?
What you say can be rude. It can be controversial. It can be deeply, agonizingly personal. Outside of this room it could very well be hugely defamatory. But if you’re sitting at a Table of Pain, surrounded by fellow writers, then you have to say what you feel needs to be said, if you think it might contribute to the group objective, which is to tell fucking good stories.
What you need to say can even be stupid. Sometimes ideas that are prefaced with “this is going to sound stupid, but…” are not, in fact, stupid. Usually, yes, they are stupid, but sometimes walking through the stupid door leads to finding the Path of Not Stupid. Or at least a better version of stupid, that kind of works in the context of the world we’re creating here. By knocking off time it doesn't matter how you got there, just that you have fed the beast
Of course the flipside to having a license to say stupid shit is that you have to be able to handle rejection. Chances are no-one else at the table will actually say “well that was fucking stupid idea, dipshit” because no-one wants to share a space with that sort of overly judgmental person for any length of time. No, the most common form of rejection, round a Table of Pain, is through silence. Tumbleweeds. Then someone moves the conversation on.
Tumbleweeds can be a hard form of rejection to deal with, at first, because the fact that everyone is silent sends a very strong message. But you need to remember, in the silence, that all you uttered was an idea, a passing notion, within a conversation that will traverse vast distances across a day of storylining. Don’t dwell on the silence. Suck it up. Move on. Because everyone else has.
[And do not make the mistake of hanging on to the stupid idea in the hope that it will make more sense if you bring it up again later. If there was even a kernel of something good in there, then it is someone else’s job to say “hang on, going back to James’ stupid thing earlier…” The Baton of Stupid has been passed.]
“In this room, to create, you sit at The Table. Without The Table all there is is a bunch of dicks staring at each other across The Void. The Void is not a good place for storytelling.”
A good story room is not afraid to go off topic. Sometimes way off topic. Gossip. Intrigue. Complaining about the boss. Spontaneous therapy sessions. These are all fair game, because anything that bonds those sitting at the Table of Pain makes the Table of Pain stronger. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, talking shit about anything other than story can solve the story problem you are avoiding by talking shit. The path to good story is often not a straight line.
Of course, spending all day bagging the bosses or dishing dirt on people is, ultimately, not a productive way to pass the day. It might be fun, but there are beasts to be fed.
This is why a good story table should always be a benevolent dictatorship. Or at the very least an oligarchy. One, or sometimes two, people sitting at the table are responsible for the table producing the required amount of story and determining the path those stories should take. They have names like Showrunner or Story Producer. Respect the fact that when they say it is time to move on, then it is time to move on.
Of course there are stories of Showrunners with monstrous egos, running tables that sound way too painful for even an old hack like me. To me, a good table has someone running it who is happy to let the other voices have their say, to argue their points, but then to be the one to make the decision. In or out. This way or that. Ultimately a story table is not a collective and while consensus can be a good thing, stories decided by consensus run the risk of being safe and, therefore, dull.
“We live bigger lives through our characters. Hasn’t made me a better person, but it’s fed the beast.”
The more I write here, about story rooms, the more I realise there is to be said about them, as a method of story-telling. Like finding the right combination of writers to co-exist in a room for prolonged periods of time. Like how the room deals with the needs and demands of those who are not in the room. Any Table of Pain survivors who want to share their thoughts and experiences, please do – by commenting or chatting. As I said above, this is not an exact science and there are as many ways of doing things as there are things to be done.
But for now that’s enough from me, I reckon.
And we will come back to the Table of Pain on another day.
FYI: the quotes here are from my play Serial Killers, in which I shamelessly trawled my experiences at Shortland Street and turned them into something very different.
Other FYI: if anyone is interested, the name of this Substack - Hey, Writer Guy – comes from Ep.7 of Serial Killers, the TV series in which I shamelessly trawled my play and turned it into something very different. For NZ subscribers (it is geo-blocked) it can be found here.