I will be honest. I thoroughly disliked the original premise for Mr. King's Party. It came out of our second writers summit and I had concerns that the story ideas being pitched this time round were becoming too generic. Party was one of them. It felt like you could replace Mr. King with Little Bear or Franklin and have the same story. (Please note I love Little Bear and Franklin.)
Andrew and I struggled with finding the right approach for this one for quite some time. It was originally going to be Mr. King throwing a surprise party for Chanelle, who didn't like surprises. (The theme here was also a little too close to an earlier completed script.) Then it was Mr. King throwing a party for himself but not thinking about what his guests would like. (Closer but still on the generic side.)
Sometimes when I'm stuck on a direction I try swapping out one character for another and seeing if their personality is a better fit for the story. This time, however, every character we tried to swap ended up with the story still feeling generic. Then I thought of what other characters we already had designed and came across a snail. Ironically we had some generic snails that were used in another episode and suddenly it felt a lot funnier to have Mr. King throwing a surprise party for a snail. I pictured the frustration and anticipation of Mr. King waiting for the slow moving snail to show up. Suddenly the story felt less generic. And just like the party I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out.
Moon Adventure
Moon Adventure was the first professional script that I have ever written. I can tell you it's far easier to give notes on a script than it is to write one. Sounds obvious but keep in mind I knew this show inside and out. Knew all the characters and how they sound. I had already gone through 31 episodes working with Andrew on editing them in to what they would become. You would think I would have a pretty good idea on writing one. Well in theory I did. I now thoroughly understand the significance of the writing for television process. Springboard, Premise, Outline, 1st draft, 2nd draft, Polish, Final. Any of which could have a "revised" attached to it. This is to make sure you don't spend all your time rushing to the finish line without knowing what race you're running or where you're going. Andrew and the group were very supportive and helpful throughout and in the end I had completed a fun and whimsical script. Now for the big lesson. When this script went out to be storyboarded. my storyboard artist emailed me to let me know that she was half way through roughing out the board to the natpause(rough dialogue track roughly timed out like a sort of radio play) and it was already well over our 7 minute episode length. Close to 10 minutes overall! Essentially I had written too much action and a bit too much dialogue. I asked her to stop and send me what she had. I then went through and edited two and a half minutes out. (I alluded to this event in an earlier post.) The whole experience was great and I definitely learned to be much more focused with my approach to the second script I wrote. In the end, watching the completed show, I don't think you'd ever realize anything was missing. I particularly enjoyed Neil's use of theremin in the underscore.
Mystery
Mystery was another episode that originally felt a little on the generic side. However, the idea of seeing fog in Kaleidoscope Woods was too intriguing. And who doesn't like a mystery. The big challenge with this episode was that it also came in really long. I tried for quite some time cutting it down to time but struggled to get it under the 8 minute mark. It was then that I knew I had to make a very difficult decision. I needed to cut one of the characters out, and it would have to be Chanelle. She was our only female character in the ep, and I really wanted to keep her in, but it would require a major re record to find lines that would work with removing one of the others instead. So in the end I just had to grin and bare it. Once she was gone the story fell neatly into place and within the 7 minutes we needed. It actually gave me a little more time to fill out a few other scenes which were feeling a little too quick paced. Some times a good thing has to go in order to support the greater good. Mystery solved.
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