Not Wasted on the Young

Youth show writers share insights on their particular craft–a genre in which Canadians excel.

By Philip Moscovitch

Jordan Wheeler knows when he’s got a line of truly authentic teen dialogue. His kids–one’s a teen and the other’s a young adult–groan when he speaks it.

“If they groan when I start saying stuff, I know I’m on the right track–because they don’t want to hear that stuff coming out of my mouth,” says Wheeler, supervising producer on the teen drama renegadepress.com.

Canada has a long history of producing successful youth shows for both domestic and international consumption. Among the current crop, the family sitcom Life With Derek can be seen in the US and much of Europe, as well as Latin America, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. You can catch Naturally, Sadie, a half-hour show about a high school girl with a predilection for viewing the world from a naturalist’s point of view, in Japan and New Zealand, among other countries. And the hard-edged older teen drama renegadepress.com is seen in France, with other international sales pending.

How do you write for teens?
So what does it take to write for teens? The short answer is–whatever it takes to write for any TV show. Most of the writers interviewed for this story got into what they were doing out of a passion for writing television–not necessarily writing for kids. It just worked out that way.

Jeff Biederman, executive story editor on Life With Derek, says his original goal was to go to the States and try to make it writing sitcoms. Instead, he wound up writing Canadian youth shows, “and I love what I do. Life With Derek is the biggest hit I’ve ever worked on.”

Biederman draws an analogy between Life With Derek and Family Ties, and he says, “If you look at the scripts, you’ll see that really they’re written like old-fashioned half-hour family comedies.”

Brent Piaskoski was executive producer on Naturally, Sadie for its third and final season, and is now running his own youth show The Latest Buzz (likely set for a fall premiere).

“What makes a kids show successful–is write for yourself. Don’t write for kids,” says Piaskoski, whose credits include Life with Caitlin and Radio Free Roscoe (a show Biederman worked on as well). “I just think you write with heart and passion, and write something you’d want to watch.”

No matter what audience you’re writing for, says Will Dixon, senior story editor for the most recent season of renegadepress.com, “A half hour is a half hour. You can basically find one main plot and let that drive the story, and then break it into a teaser and two acts, with maybe a B-line running through it. That’s pretty consistent for every half hour I’ve worked on,” says Dixon, whose past credits include Mentors and Psi Factor.

While Biederman agrees that basic story structure doesn’t change, for him, the magic of writing for tweens and teens lies, not in the stories themselves, but in the characters’ dialogue.

“It’s what I’ve been doing for almost nine years–writing teen dialogue,” Biederman says. “The stories on a half-hour sitcom to me are never... I don’t want to say they’re not that interesting–it’s just that I know what the story is. I know there’s an A plot and a B plot... But what happens in between, that’s really what I care about. ‘Can you change the storyline?’ I’m like Fine. Don’t care. I care about how they sound.” 

Talking ‘Teen’
Dialogue can be tricky for adults writing for teens. Wheeler could be speaking for many writers when he says, “I think initially I was more apprehensive about it than I needed to be. We were apprehensive about coming across as old farts.”

In no other genre can a false line of dialogue be quite as devastating and destructive to credibility. Any sense that you are talking down to teens, or not getting them, and they won’t stick around to watch your show.

Biederman says, “The ability to write dialogue that teenagers watch is a challenge. I’ve been on sets where producers in their 40s are talking to the actors: ‘What are the teens saying today?’ If you have to ask, you’re in a lot of trouble.”

Writers on youth shows do have one major advantage though–the young cast members they work with.

Miles G. Smith, who served as story editor on Naturally, Sadie, says the truth would come out at the show’s many table reads. “You see what they react to and what they respond to. It’s such a great barometer.” If a line was particularly good–or bad–the cast’s reaction would be obvious. “They wouldn’t be able to hold back, you could see it in their faces,” Smith says. “At least once per table read there would be a word in the dialogue that they’d all get stuck on. They didn’t know what it was. That would be a good reason to take it out.”

Of course, a lot of the chatting that teens do isn’t verbal at all. It’s done through instant messaging, texting, and messages sent through social networking sites. And that presents a serious challenge for writers.

On Naturally, Sadie, Smith says, the broadcaster rule was very straightforward: no mention of specific websites, and not much mention of the Internet at all. On the one hand, that was a definite limitation. But, as Smith points out, “It’s not that exciting to watch kids typing anyway.”

The situation is more complicated on renegadepress.com–a show which has as its premise an online magazine started by a pair of teens, and which has drawn on a variety of online phenomena (like massively multiplayer online role-playing games, cyber-bullying, and a chat-room suicide pact) for storylines.

Sara Snow, the show’s consulting producer, says the focus on online activity is one of the elements that sets renegadepress.com apart from other shows. “Let’s say the story is about cyber-bullying, or–this is new–people getting beaten up on purpose so the video can be posted online. We show as much of the physical non-computer stuff as possible, or go back and forth,” Snow says. “We balance it out with the visuals from the rest of the show.” 

Knowing the rulebook
While the renegade writers face the challenges of incorporating new technology into a TV show, they don’t face many of the restrictions that come with other youth shows. The drama’s lead broadcasters are APTN and Global, and both seem to be offering a fairly free rein. The show prides itself on storylines “ripped from the headlines” and the headlines ain’t always pretty.

Deal with a broadcaster like Family Channel or Disney though (they air both Naturally, Sadie and Life With Derek) and you’ve got to know the rules. The many, many rules.

Smith lists off some of them, including no naming specific websites–especially social networking sites like Facebook so popular with teens, and no brand names. And, of course, the famous four on the floor rule, which Smith says came up a lot.

“All four feet must be touching the floor if the girl and her love interest are touching each other,” Smith explains. He notes that there was a scene in season three in which Sadie was tossing a football around with her love interest, when a tackle sent them tumbling to the ground. That had to go.

To an outsider, the rules might seem restrictive. But Smith says writers quickly become accustomed to them. “It comes naturally... There are certain guidelines that shows have anyway. Every show has a unique voice, and that voice has to include whatever rules children’s television at large has, or whatever rules the broadcaster decides that show has to have. We can work with the four on the floor rule as easily or naturally as Sadie always having to have nature references, or her best friend being really into fashion. It just blends into the show after a while and you don’t think about it.”

Piaskoski says he has run into his share of overly restrictive notes–the silliest being one asking for the name of the town of Drumheller to be cut because, as he puts it, “it has the word hell in it and Americans could be offended.”

Overall Piaskoski doesn’t find himself feeling limited in what he can do. The rules are part of the landscape. But he notes that “what goes on in the room is different. If you come up with a dirty joke that gets a laugh, and someone comes up with a clean version that’s sweet, then great.”

Biederman can sound downright passionate about the rules surrounding what’s OK and what isn’t on Life With Derek.

“I’m shocked when I get a script submitted from a freelancer and it has the word ass in it,” Biederman says. “Really? You really think we can say ass? You’ve just shown me that you can’t write for this show. There are certain words you can’t say, like ass, or fart. If you feel constrained by that, or your episode depends on that, you’re in big trouble.”

He adds, “Sometimes writers are like, ‘Let’s push the envelope.’ But I don’t think that’s my job. Sometimes when you worry about pushing envelopes, your characters suffer and your storylines suffer. It’s what you do within the lines that’s more interesting.”

See the Summer 2007 issue of Canadian Screenwriter for the complete article.