Glee Part 1

It's the talk of the town, right? Everyone, even non-TV watchers are buzzing about the show...but I'll get to that in the next post.

I'd like to use this one to talk about finding your place as a writer. And no, it's not tied in to "Don't Stop Believing" -- though that's a valuable mantra in this business.

Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee, is also the creator of Nip/Tuck and Popular. I've never actually seen more than five minutes of Nip/Tuck (I have a thing about doctors, which somehow only disappears for Grey's), but I was a huge fan of Popular.

Just to refresh your memory, Popular was a show about cliques in high school, centered around two seemingly opposite girls -- Queen Bee Brooke and anti-conformist anti-popular Sam. At the end of the pilot Sam and Brooke discover that their parents are engaged, and the once mortal enemies are now on their way to becoming step sisters. The show explored the social scene in high school, basically focusing on how every teenager is insecure, even the most popular people have issues with which they struggle, and as much as people would like to crossover between groups, as much as people would like to live outside the labels high school slaps on them, it's hard.

Then, take Glee. So far it's about a high school teacher, former Glee Club star (back when the club was the coolest thing) who takes over the Glee Club in the hopes of returning it to its former glory. Except at the school now, Glee is the rung below the bottom rung on the ladder. Cheerleaders and jocks rule the school. Luckily, the teacher persuades a jock to join the club, hopefully giving it credibility among the popular kids -- but it seems from the preview that it may just stir up trouble. To top it off, the teacher struggles with his wife who's pregnant and wants him to get a better paying job to support the family. In his own way, he's doing the uncool thing by sticking with Glee, when he can have a high-powered more respectable job. Hooray for plot mirrors!

Popular and Glee are two different shows -- one is musical, one wasn't. One is a little more adult, one was clearly for middle school and high school kids. But the themes of the shows are similar. They both deal with social hierarchy in high school. Just in totally different ways.

Ryan Murphy clearly has a story he wants to tell about high school. The subject matter moves him in some way, and so he continues to reinterpret the basic core theme that is attractive to him. He's establishing himself as a writer with a certain tone (from what I understand, Nip/Tuck is pretty snarky, Popular was as well, and Glee seems to be that way too), and a certain genre. It's fairly obvious what his voice his, what his stories are, and most importantly...WHO HE IS AS A WRITER.

There are many more examples of writers who have successfully established themselves in a certain genres...Josh Schwartz. The OC, Gossip Girl, even the sadly not-picked up Lily spin-off. Shows about rich kids growing up, impacted by their setting, but at the end of the day still kids. With a little bit of soaptastic drama thrown in. Alan Ball is the master of sexed-up, sort of creepy but so good you have to keep watching, death hanging over the story stories. Joss Whedon -- sci-fi, funny, quirky, layered, suspenseful dramas that create an entirely new world that feels more real that ours. They all know who they are as writers, what they want to write about, and how they want to write it. And more importantly, Hollywood and their fanbase know it too. See, you can't quite have a fanbase without having a clear persona.

So my question to you is, who are you as a writer? If a bigshot producer stopped you on the street tomorrow and said, "Hey, aspiring screenwriter, what sort of stuff can I expect from you?" how would you answer? It's important to know who you are, what stories you are compelled to tell, and how you will tell them.