#kill me!!!!

I know a few writers shut their brains off and "let the characters take over", some do writing exercises in solely the voices of the characters to really nail them, or some pull from personal experience, just to name a few examples! I'm just genuinely curious on how you crafted such a beautifully written conversation between two characters and would love to know the process you used/are using to do so! The Shippen Effect™ has to be the most beautiful and painful and chaotic phenomenon to dissect and I cannot thank you enough for it---and as a side note I am going to be so annoying about Phantom Pulse as soon as it comes out !!

I apologize for how long this question was, but it's been grueling in my mind for definitely over a year or two and I just remembered that asking it was a thing! 😅 Thank you so much for your time!

oh my gosh, this ask has made me smile so big, thank you so much!!! this is truly so incredibly kind and also means so much to me because I love-love-love that episode. I loved writing it, I loved recording it, I loved editing it, I loved getting it out there. as a writer, you don't always get to look at your work and say "yeah, that turned out as I hoped" but that episode comes really close.

seriously, this is so nice. the Shippen Effect! I'm sobbing!! I wish I had a good answer for how I wrote that episode but it's a) been sooooooo long (almost a decade!?! how!?!) and b) so much of @thebrightsessions was written in a complete fever dream.

I would be completely remiss if I didn't begin with: that scene and those characters work because of Andrew and Charlie. I've said this a million times, but after the first take of their first episode in the beginning of season 3, we all stopped and look at each other and were like...whoa. that was something.

as individual actors, both Andrew and Charlie could have chemistry with a cardboard box and it turns out that putting them together is just absolutely lethal. so a huge piece of Mark and Damien's arc in the show is because those two people had something crackling between them when taking on those characters. Andrew is really good at digging into all of Mark's broken places and Charlie has always viewed Damien as the hero of his own story (which is what a good actor does when taking on a villain role), so she's able to make him heartbreakingly human.

all to say, by the time we got to season 4, I was following a lot of what Andrew and Charlie had brought out in those characters. Damien being in love with Mark was not the plan; Mark being actually receptive to that was also extremely not the plan, but again, surprise chemistry! you have to indulge in it, imo!

but to actually talk about the practical writing of it: all the things you mentioned, letting characters take over, writing exercises, personal experience...all those things factored in. I think, also, Sam and Mark's arc contributed a lot to how I approached Damien (someday I will be able to articulate the Sam-Damien of it all). I'd spend a lot of time thinking about why and how Sam loves Mark and vice versa and why and how Damien loves Mark and vice versa, and then scripted out every possible rip cord that Damien might pull in order to keep Mark.

and a huuuuuge piece of that - and of writing scenes like this in general - is about what isn't said. Damien says "I made mistakes", "I'm not a threat", "you just need time, I'll be patient"...he even says "I'm sorry", or at least tries to. but he couldn't say "I love you". I'm not sure I've ever actually said this particular thing before, but as I was writing it (this I do remember!) I did type that line out for him before backspacing and being, like, "nope, that's too self-aware for you, buddy!"

but "I love you" is under every desperate plea (both subtextually and in direction I gave to Charlie). and for Mark...well! under a lot of what he's saying is "make me forgive you. give me a reason to forgive you". he both wants to be convinced that Damien is unredeemable and also, a little bit, wants Damien to just decide for him. there's a tiny dark part of it him that wants to crawl down into the darkness with Damien.

if I'm being completely honest with myself, I think a lot of what works with that scene is that I was still figuring out how to write and didn't totally trust myself to go to the darker places. for this scene in particular, that restraint actually served me well.

that's on my mind because I'm in the midst of drafting Phantom Pulse and I'm a much more confident writer now and more secure in myself and my tastes and well...that show is dark! it goes to some dark places! and I'm having to make sure that characters don't just come out and say the terrible thing, because that's not really how people work in the real world. maybe that doesn't make a ton of sense, and maybe I'm totally wrong, but it's something I'm thinking of.

the other thing I'm thinking about with Phantom Pulse in comparison to TBS is...by the time I got to "Mark", I'd spent a lot of time with these characters. I'd built up to it. I'm still figuring out how to write great scripts off the bat when I'm not living/sleeping/breathing a show every week for years. making TBS was really unique and special in that way, and in being able to be reactive to actors. I can't do that now for any first seasons for budget reasons (we need to record the whole thing at once) so all I can hope for is the opportunity to do more and eventually get to that place. but spending time just writing your characters helps a lot, which is obvious advice, but deserves to be said.