Writer Training

PAULA has organised a surprise party for RAY's sixty-ninth birthday. Not his seventieth. She has been very clear with everyone that this is deliberate, because next year everybody will do something and this year nobody will, and Ray should get one that is not on a round number. Forty minutes ago VALENTINA told Ray, because she assumed he knew, because she cannot imagine a version of this family where she would be told last. Ray is now doing an excellent job of not knowing. Paula has just walked in and can tell. DANE is holding a banner.

The world

Single-camera mockumentary, family ensemble, with talking-head confessionals cut against what actually happened. One extended family in three households on the same side of one town, close enough that nobody can avoid anybody and far enough that everybody tries. Warm and fast. Every week resolves without pretending anything is fixed, and the last beat is sincere without apologising for it. Nobody is a monster; everyone is somebody's difficult relative, including the people telling you about their difficult relatives.

Three households, one story. A problem in one house is in all three by the second act.
Nobody is a monster. Every character is somebody's difficult relative, and knows it about everyone but themselves.
The confessional contradicts the scene. What they tell the camera is what they wish had happened.
Generations misread each other in both directions, and both readings are partly right.
Land the sincere beat and do not apologise for it. Undercut before, never after.
The third line is the funny one. Let the first two be true.

Comic engines

The thing said about one relative, in front of another, in a family where everything travels.
A small untruth told to protect someone's feelings, which then requires two more households to maintain it.
The person being managed as a problem turns out to be the only one holding the situation together.
A choice between your own household and the wider family, made in front of both.

Cast

RAY DEMPSEY The father; remarried, 68

Wants: To still be the head of all three houses, without ever having to ask whether he is.

Flaw: Expresses love as instruction, and cannot say the direct sentence even when it is the only thing that would work.

Talks like: Gruff and short. Allergic to a feeling named out loud, and physically leaves rooms where one is about to be. Compliments by criticising something adjacent to the thing he is proud of.

Choose your comic engine

Required before grading

Put the beats in order

inciting-mess
complication
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