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Mark, you have no idea how much I appreciate this. Every critique I've gotten in this thread has been so in valuable.
I totally get what you're saying about the characters having goals and obstacles. I'm kind of going for something where I kind of just have these self involved characters who make bad or no decisions at all, and end up in a bad place despite their lack of obstacles. Dan is absolutely meant to be whiny, neurotic and hateable (he's based on yours truely :p ), and I kind of want these season-long arc where each character just floats along, does nothing, learns nothing. Does that excuse my complete lack of dramatic tension at all?
Well, I don't actually know much about teleplay structure. But tension is not an optional thing, under any circumstances.
If your characters want to do nothing, that can be a goal. Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiam often has goals of avoiding doing things. For example, he wanted to avoid going to a charity event. He'd much rather sit around doing nothing and occasionally playing golf. Yet he's thwarted at every turn by this guy who keeps running into him and asking him about the charity event. Leading to a web of lies so tangled that Larry's forced to turn his fake trip to New York into an actual vacation. The obstacles end up creating all the tension and humor.
In real life, there are obstacles to doing nothing. I would love to sit on my ass and do nothing. If someone locked me in a room with cable and netflix and an xbox I'd be completely content. They'd open the door after three months of isolation and I'd tell them to shut it cuz I'm right in the middle of Sopranos.
There are always obstacles. You have to make money to pay the bills. People call you up to do stuff. Jehovah's Witnesses knock on your door. You seem to be describing a concept that's less realistic and much less interesting than real life.
I think you mentioned Lena Dunham's Girls as an influence. I've never actually seen the show, but I highly doubt the characters float along doing absolutely nothing. I am willing to watch it to see if that's the case (actually, I've been meaning to watch it anyways). I will stunned if there aren't goals, obstacles, and scene to scene tension throughout.
`Ok so GIRLS is a great show and the characters are def not doing nothing.
But Ben I think what you're going for is character driven not action driven which is fine. I do the same thing with my scripts. But the thing with character driven shows or movies is that the action has to come out of the characters personalities and goals.
Say you have a character who is a slacker. Cool. He may well not do anything all day but play video games...the catch...he is one of the top performing execs at a media firm. People find his slacker ways somehow savant like. He may say something so simple that it's brilliant so on and so forth.
You can do that and still have a slacker at heart.
I read both actually..in fact I believe I commented on the film version but I also talk to myself a lot so maybe not lol...
If you're confused about the last part..it was just an example and had nothing to do with your script. I may not always comment but I do read most scripts on here.
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