Hadley's Three Laws of Television Writing

The community of writers, to which I belong by virtue of having written four (soon to be five!) books, is a great one for rule-setting. I mentioned in a recent Substack essay that being a writer nowadays means being confronted with a whole series of rules, many of which do their very best to stifle any kind of creativity you might have: don't use flashbacks, don't include prologues, don't make your chapters too long, don't this-or-that-or-the-other. (You'll notice almost all of these rules start with Don't.) 

Well, that got me to thinking, and this being a television site and all, you can probably guess where this is headed. If there's a rulebook for book writing, there ought to be one for television writing as well. And who better to come up with said rules than yours truly? 

I was spurred to this decision by a recent episode of Adventures in Paradise that we watched a couple of weeks ago. I've mentioned before that Adventures in Paradise isn't a great show; sometimes it isn't even a particularly good one. It is, however, often a fun show, and Gardner McKay is a compelling lead, a genuine example of an actor who has true star power even though he's not the world's greatest actor. This particular episode, however—it was, and is, called "The Trial of Adam Troy," from the third (of four) seasons—was so bad, and broke so many obvious rules, that it seemed to me a good time to set the key rules down, and use this episode as an example of what not to do when coming up with a storyline for an episode.

Note that this list is not meant to be all-inclusive. I've overlooked some of the more obvious rules, for instance, the one that characters—especially regulars—should behave in ways that are always and everywhere consistent with the establishment of their true characters, the qualities that they've displayed throughout the series. If someone suddenly acts in a way that's totally contrary to how they've behaved in the previous seventy-five episodes, then you've either got a problem with your writers or your lead has suddenly developed schizophrenia. 

It's my feeling that rules like that one should be, as Jefferson might say, so self-evident that they don't even need to be set down. There are others, however, that might not occur to you at first thought—that might, in fact, not even be on the radar until you actually see a violation in an episode of one of your favorite shows. And it is to this purpose that I've chosen to present to you Hadley's Three Laws of Television Writing™.

The first rule of television storytelling is one I've brought up many times in the past: Do not put the hero in a situation where we already know the outcome. You've experienced my rants about false jeopardy before; basically, it involves a storyline that puts our main character in a situation where he or she is supposed to be at risk, but one in which you and I know is obviously impossible: being accused of murder, for example, or being in a life-or-death situation from a deadly illness or accident. We know the outcome is predetermined because Sergeant Saunders is not going to die as a result of the wounds suffered during an attack in Combat!, Perry Mason is not going to lose to Hamilton Burger, and Joe Mannix is not going to be convicted of the murder for which he's so obviously being framed. Unless the actor playing the character is in a contract dispute, there's no way he's going to be killed off, jailed, or otherwise put out of the way. So you've created a storyline in which one of the major sources of suspense has already been eliminated. Yawn.

Now there's one exception to this, and it's a flimsy one: the resolution to the fake jeopardy has to be so compelling, so exciting, so fraught with suspense, that it overcomes any doubts you might have about the outcome. In Combat!, for instance, we know that Sergeant Saunders and his men are going to get out of that German ambush (we're not so sure about the guest stars, though); what's compelling is in watching just how they do it. The solution usually requires some foresight, some manuever executed due to the experience Saunders has gained from the years spent fighting in the war. In other words, cleverness counts. Likewise, if Mannix is able to escape from police custody long enough to track down the real killer, we may buy it, but only if the outcome is so propulsive, so fraught with suspense and surprise, that we watch just to see how it turns out. I mean, if you know who didn't do it, the payoff has to come from the unwinding of the story to see who did. (It also helps if Mannix beats the hell out of the killer before the police arrest him, but that's another story.)

The long and short of it is that false jeopardy is always a loser unless you can knock the viewer's socks off with the resolution. And, having watched a lot of television over my lifetime, I can tell you that this does not happen very often. When it does, it can save the episode. When it doesn't, that's when I usually start checking my email.

Closely related, but not exactly the same, is my next rule: Do not require something just short of divine intervention to get the hero out of a jam. This one gets violated more often than I'd like to admit, and when it does, it often leaves me feeling disappointed. My feeling is that a truly heroic television character always remains in control of his fate. A sports analogy here may help out. We've often heard an analyst say that Team A has their fate in their own hands, meaning that if Team A wins the remainder of their games, no matter what any other team manages to do, Team A is going to win the championship. On the other hand, many times a team will be in the position of depending on external factors out of their own control. Team A's chances of making the playoffs may depend not only on their winning the remainder of their games, but also on Team B losing at least once. But as we've seen above, if Team B wins all their games, then Team A is out of luck.

Now, obviously, television shows would be pretty dull if there weren't some manner of suspense involved. If your hero is Superman, and all of his opponents are mere mortals, you can be pretty sure that no matter what life has to throw at him, he's going to come out of it on top. He doesn't need any stinking badges, or anything else for that matter, to get him out of trouble. But suppose your hero isn't Superman, just Jim Rockford, and that he and Beth are being held hostage by a killer who's determined to eliminate them both—permanently. There are a number of ways for this to happen, but for it to be effective, it has to pass through what I like to call the "Plausibility Meter." 

In writing, I use the Plausibility Meter to determine whether or not I should pursue a particular storyline. Now, by plausible, I don't mean that this has to be the only outcome, or even the likely one; it just means that it has to be realistic enough that the reader is going to buy into whatever it is you're proposing, without requiring a suspension of disbelief so massive as to be virtually impossible. To go back to our situation with Rockford and Beth, if Dennis knows that Jim was headed out to that deserted factory to find the clue pointing to the identity of the killer, and if he knows the killer is also headed for that factory, then it's entirely plausible that Dennis will head there as well; therefore, when Dennis shows up (invariably) just in the nick of time to save our hero and his girl, we're going to buy it. It might not have been the most likely resolution to the situation, but it's certainly a plausible one. We can buy the cavalry coming to the rescue at the last minute if we know that a cavalry exists, and if the cavalry knows there's trouble afoot. 

On the other hand, when the hero requires a virtual Act of God to get out of a jam, then we're apt to roll our eyes. Which is what I mean when I say that the hero's fate should never be out of his own hands. Rockford works with Dennis, knows Dennis, trusts Dennis (at least most of the time). Therefore, being rescued by Dennis is, in a very real sense, a result of Rockford's own action. But when we see the equivalent of the two scientists standing at the blackboard working on a formula which can only be completed by inserting "and then a miracle occurs," we're in trouble. If the hero's survival depends on a change of heart by a heretofore cold-hearted character, or if the bad guy is knocked out just before pulling the trigger by a falling ceiling beam that just happened to have come down exactly where the bad guy was standing—well, then, Houston, we've got a problem. A very good series is entitled to a mulligan like this every once in a while, but the series has to be very good, and the frequency of this happening has to be very rare.

And now we come to Hadley's Third Law of Television Plotlines: Don't deny the viewer the pleasure of the payoff. The mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers once said that for a mystery story to have a payoff, justice has to be visible; the balance of right and wrong must be redressed. It is why, in her opinion, any story in which the bad guys won was a violation of the natural law of things. If justice is not dispensed in a story, there can be no equilibrium, no restoration of truth.

You may think that this doesn't come into play in the examples we've been looking at here. If Saunders and his men win their battle with the Germans, if Rockford is rescued, if Mannix finds the real killer, doesn't that mean that justice has triumphed? Well, yes, but remember that storytelling is a visceral experience for the viewer or reader. In other words, the payoff at the end has to make everything they've experienced worth it. We all know by now that writers manipulate our emotions all the time; they make us hate the villain, love the heroine, boil at the sight of injustice. If they really do it well, we're not aware that we're being manipulated, but whether or not it's done well, that's what they're doing. And for this manipulation to have been worth it, we need a payoff.

What do I mean by this? Take the story of a particularly heinous criminal, a murderer, a child rapist, the worst of the worst. The capture of this vermin by the end of the story is a given (unless we're dealing with a true story, or the writer is trying to prove a larger point, which is itself an iffy proposition), but admit it—you don't want to see the detectives just slap the cuffs on them, and take them away, do you? Of course not. In a story like this, that's too good for them. You want to see the hero beat them to within an inch of their lives. You want to be assured that not only will they suffer in the process, but their future suffering is also assured. You want a visceral form of justice to prevail. If you've never felt that way, you're not human.

One of the things that makes Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer books so satisfying is that you're assured of this kind of payoff at least three or four times in every book. You live for that moment when Hammer locks the door, rolls up his sleeves, and turns the radio up high, so that nobody will hear the perp's screams as Hammer puts the fist, the boot, and the butt of the gun to them. Maybe you don't need to see all the gory details, but you need more than a subtle fade-out to the next scene to be satisfied. It's a variation of Chekhov's Gun, the principle that every element introduced in a story must be significant and relevant to the plot. In other words, if something is mentioned, like a gun, it should have a purpose later in the story; otherwise, it shouldn't be included at all. If the bad guy is as vile a character as you've been made to believe, you sure as hell want some kind of satisfaction at the end.

In the case of the Adventures in Paradise episode I mentioned at the outset, this story managed, unbelievably, to violate not one, not two, but all three of these principles before it had ended. To recap the episode, we find Adam Troy (Gardner McKay) facing the loss of his captain's license, and possibly more, due to his negligence in the death of a passenger while on a voyage. Said victim was a young man with a background of wealth and privilege, with a father determined to avenge his son's death by whatever means necessary—in this case, by blaming Adam for his son's accident. 

Right away we're faced with a clear-cut case of false jeopardy: since we're in the middle of the third season, and since the very premise of the series involves McKay's adventures on his schooner, we know damn well that he's not going to be found guilty here, of negligence, or of anything else. So already we've had the violation of Hadley's First Law: the main character is in no real danger, regardless of what the writers want us to believe. We know Adam wasn't negligent, through the extensive use of flashbacks (whoops!) that show us what really happened. The trick is to get the authorities to believe it, when the only possible evidence is the testimony of a girl who can't be found, having been stashed away by the rich kid's father, henceforth known as the Rich Bastard.

Now, let's give them credit that they probably realize we're on to this trick, and therefore, they've tried to inject as much suspense as possible. Will Adam be able to find the girl in time and convince her to testify on his behalf? And here, I have to give them a little credit, because they do try to string us along for a bit. Adam does manage to find her, and she does tell him the truth, but guess what: she lies on the witness stand, because her father works for the Rich Bastard, and if she tells the truth, that the son was responsible for his own death, then daddy will find himself out of a job. But guess what? At the last minute, Dad stands up and says he'll not allow his daughter to perjure herself on his account, and insists she tell the truth.

This obviously breaks Hadley's Second Law, in a couple of ways. First, Adam had to put his trust in his ability to persuade the girl to come to his defense. This isn't necessarily an outright violation, but it does start to put a strain on the Plausibility Meter. But then we get this out-of-nowhere statement from Dad, which basically saves Adam's bacon. Who could have anticipated that? There simply wasn't enough time in a one-hour drama to develop the characters to the point that you can buy a turn of events like this. Therefore, it becomes a textbook example of being bailed out due to an improbability—a miracle, if you will.

So good triumphs over evil, Adam's name and reputation are cleared, and the Rich Bastard winds up losing. At least that's what we're told, for we don't see him actually suffer the consequences. Does he go to prison? Do the shareholders revolt, does the bad publicity cause the business to suffer, does he face public shame for his nefarious actions? Who the hell knows, because none of it gets played out on screen. There is no payoff: no comeuppance, no visible punishment. Adam doesn't even get the chance to belt him in the mouth, which was the least to which he was entitled. And us too, by the way. What is it that Mick says about not getting any satisfaction? It really had the feel of an episode in which they ran out of time and had to sum it all up in a sentence or two. 

Now, lest you think I'm picking on Adventures in Paradise—well, in a way, I am. It was a disappointing episode, without a doubt. But it's far from the only series to fall into these traps, to break Hadley's Three Laws™, and it hasn't stopped us from continuing to watch. 

It is rare, however, to see a single episode that manages to violate all three of these laws in the same story; a trifecta, if you will, or maybe a triple crown. Not one I'd want to win, though, because with an episode like this, there are no winners. TV

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