#i literally don't think the protagonists have ever all been out of custody at the same time for more than 24 hours

[katastrophekidarchive]

[pynkhues]

Since you're a writer, I'm hoping you can shed some light on this. IMO the writers were chasing viewers in S2 and trying not to get canceled. Personally, I hate when writers toy with their audience, it means they don't have a clear picture of their characters and narrative. How do you feel about writers making it up as they go?

Ah, this post got really long, anon! Since you asked me as a writer, I’m answering as one (I hope you don’t mind! I also hope this doesnt come out as too Creative Writing 101 for people either. This is just lessons I’ve learned and use in my own practice, so I’m applying them here.) 

(Also I have drawn horrible diagrams on my very pink notebook paper - I am so sorry, haha)

So first thing’s first - no. I don’t think the writers were chasing viewers (at least not beyond the way any writer is wanting an audience), and I don’t think they were making it up as they go really, but I can understand why you would think that way! 

It won’t be a surprise to anyone that I love this show a lot, but coming from it as both a writer and editor - this show does have narrative problems, and the biggest ones, particularly in s2, are in execution, escalation and pacing. 

I think heading into the season they had certain character arcs they wanted to follow which married well with the story they wanted to tell. In particular, I actually think the writers have a very strong handle on the girls (I will say that I’ve had a few asks telling me Beth’s characterisation is all over the place, which I’m curious about, just because I personally find her very consistent, and when I’ve asked for clarification, I’ve never gotten any reply, so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

I mean, look at their s2 arcs on paper, right? 

Ruby tries to negotiate Stan’s lowered opinion of her after the reveal of what she’s done, then has to negotiate him telling her to turn Beth and Annie in. She manages the situation painfully but pulls them through and they’re close again as Ruby navigates the increasingly lower depths of their crime life. When Stan acts to save Beth for Ruby and is arrested, it only escalates – the case on him driving Ruby to extremes to try and save him, including robbing a Quick Cash and using counterfeit money to bribe a lawyer. On top of that, she’s being targeted by an FBI agent who’s after her best friend who she gives up and then saves and then who tries to sacrifice herself for them. Ruby finishes the season the most morally compromised she’s ever been.

Annie gets back together with her ex only to find out that he’s gotten his not-quite-separated-wife pregnant. She splits up with him, but is heartbroken and it’s only amplified by the fact that they’ve been given a job by their Crime Boss to murder a man who tried to rape her but who’s grandmother she has a relationship with. Her sister can’t kill him, and Annie doesn’t get the chance as MP beats her to it. Upon disposing of the body though she endures a whole lot of pain as a result of both her ex’s new family and knowing she’s robbed a woman of her own. Annie goes on a guilt tour – tells her son, helps Marion, helps Nancy only to eventually find an absolver of her guilt in Noah, who builds her up and tells her she’s more than what life has given her. She lets herself have it for a while, before realising he’s FBI and there to trap her, and Annie tries to use him only to realise she can’t, and she finishes the season in a lot more hurt than she started it.

Beth struggles with guilt after getting Dean shot, gets the job to kill Boomer from Rio, can’t do it, gets support and encouragement from him (in various states of animosity), but in the end doesn’t have to find out if she can do it because MP does it instead. She’s rewarded by Rio in a way she probably never has been by anyone, her husband further subjugates her, so she has sex with Rio, starts to entertain a future with him, but he undermines her, so she seizes control from him. They work together. Dean forces her to break up with him due to jealousy, she struggles, goes back, but Rio’s stung, so unhelpful, and they play a little cat and mouse before he bails then kidnaps her and she shoots him.

With the exception of that very last sentence, I think all of those are narratively really strong pathways to have explored. Like I said above though, the issue is in execution, escalation and pacing.

But to talk about those things, I think I probably need to talk about story. 

SO!

Stories have a shape.

Kurt Vonnegut talks extensively about this, and while he’ll talk about a few different types of story shapes, they really all boil down to this bad boy here:

Look at this guy.

What a beautiful thing.

He’s a story.

It doesn’t matter if you’re reading Dr Seuss or Charles Dickens, when you read a story – when you strip away its words and its characters and its settings – this is what it looks like.

Or, well.

Not quite.

Really, it’s this guy:

But we’ll talk about him in a sec.

Right now, let’s talk about that first little inch: 

The Beginning

The fact that stories have a beginning is not a surprise to anyone. Stories need them. In some ways, they’re the most important part of your story. After all, the job of the beginning is to set up the world your protagonist is about to leave behind. That is essential in grounding a reader / viewer – orienting them to the world that they’re in, and getting them invested in the story you’re about to tell, if not the protagonist.

Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Game of Thrones are all excellent example of this (and frequently used in teaching) because in each of these cases it’s literal. Frodo leaves Bag End, Harry leave Privet Drive, Luke leaves Tatooine, the Starks leave Winterfell. There is a literal departure from the world before the crux of the story, and that departure is what signifies the start of the ‘hero journey’ aka the main part of your narrative.

Of course, it’s not always literal – in fact, it’s usually not. Usually that world is symbolic – it’s the single, uncertain world before the Bingley’s buy the house next door in Pride and Prejudice or the dry domestic sphere of Breaking Bad before Walt decides to make meth. It’s a marked shift, whether that’s internal or external.

In Good Girls, it’s internal.

The beginning is actually pretty perfect. The world it sets up that we’re about to (try to) depart is one of struggle and invisibility.

Beth’s in a loveless marriage promptly discovering that her husband is not only cheating but about to leave them destitute, Ruby’s getting ignored by the healthcare system and can’t afford to pay for her daughter’s wellbeing, and Annie is in a dead end job about to lose custody of her child.

Writing-wise – as a beginning, I honestly think 1.01 is close to perfect.

It sets up who these characters are, their personal conflicts, and the story world they share together, and the worlds they have on their own i.e. Ruby at the hospital and the diner, Annie at Fine and Frugal, Beth with Dean and Boland Motors.

Then:

BOOM

Inciting Incident.

The inciting incident is also often called The Point of No Return.

When I’m teaching, I personally like to call it the “You’re a wizard!” moment.

It’s when something happens that means everything set up in the beginning will be changed forever. It’s Romeo meeting Juliet, it’s Katniss volunteering for Prim, it’s Frodo deciding to take the ring to Mordor, it’s Jaimie pushing a child out a window, it’s Beth – deciding to take her little sister’s joke seriously and rob a grocery store.

(Again, I like to use Harry Potter because it’s literal – there is no return for Harry after hearing Hagrid tell him he’s a wizard. Everything is changed forever).

Inciting incidents are probably the most singularly important narrative moment, because they’re what everything else tumbles out of. Pretty much everything that happens in the story should be a direct or indirect result of the inciting incident. The inciting incident is ultimately the key of the story and what should unlock the overall arc.

When it comes to a series – whether that be a TV series, movie series or book series, each individual instalment (see: season of a show) should have its own inciting incident which – preferably – builds off the one established in the first instalment.

The Hunger Games does this really well. Katniss and Peeta being brought back into the games in Catching Fire is both an imitation inciting incident which allows the author to explore the story world further in an exciting way, and also an inciting incident that’s directly borne out of the first book / film – aka Katniss pissed enough people off during the first games that they’re going to try and kill her for real this time, which in turn gives us the opportunity to explore Katniss’ trauma, the ramifications of her actions in the first book on the broader story world, and to generate a new, compelling chapter based off of both.

Good Girls has a terrific inciting incident in s1 – which is Beth realising she’s about to lose everything.

That is our narrative point of no return.

And it works on a lot of levels – it establishes Beth as the driving engine of the story, fuelled by the chorus motivations of Annie and Ruby, rounding off both their collective and individual stakes, it sets us up for a strong narrative spine and solid characterisations.

Good Girls actually also has a terrific inciting incident in s2, which operates strongly on its own while also building firmly off the character arcs of s1.

The s2 inciting incident is Rio showing up on that park bench with Marcus, a gun and an order.

The story pivots here – giving Rio a lot of narrative thrust (get your minds out of the gutter kids), and making him a sort of secondary story engine. The core engine is still Beth, but her life is different now. She’s been traumatised and she’s exhausted, but Rio revealing his son to the girls (and tying their motivations up together in a neat little package) while forcing her to act, re-establishes her as the person who’s decisions are going to be the driving force of the narrative.

Ruby and Annie are, of course, story engines in their own right too, but they fall into line behind Beth usually, and their narrative push is actually usually away from the story throughline, but we’ll talk about that in a sec.

Rising Tension / The Middle

Okay, this is where things get a little tricky.

Do you remember this guy?

When we talk about stories, rising tension / the middle is the big guy. It’s the bulk of your narrative. It’s Where Things Happen. It’s where all the ugly stuff set up in your beginning and exploded by your inciting incident just - - grows a life of it’s own.

Or - -

Well.

Maybe not.

Forget about this guy.

Rising tension is this:

Rising tension is a series of ‘mini climaxes’ on the way to the main climax that raises the stakes, lets you know characters better, and pushes your characters onwards to the main climax.

Each of these little climaxes should be followed by a ‘narrative rest’. (that’s the dip after each spike)

Which - - I don’t know, might sound weird? I know when I started writing I was like ?? but it’s true! The closer you get to a big narrative climax, the more important rests are! Rests are – I personally think – one of the most important components of storytelling, because they re-ground an audience, remind them of what’s at stake, before thrusting everyone back into danger.

Again, Harry Potter is a gift in this sense because this is all really clearly paced out. Think about the first instalment – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s / Sorcerer’s Stone.

Harry and Ron save Hermione and Ron from the troll!!!

Then they become friends and enjoy school and quidditch.

Harry loses control of his broom during a quidditch game!!!!

He’s okay and then it’s Christmas and Harry gets the invisibility cloak and feels connected to his parents for perhaps the first time in his life.

Harry, Hermione and Ron go through the trapdoor to get the philosopher’s stone!!!

And - - okay, you get the point.

Each mini climax ups the stakes, but we feel those stakes upped because of the time we spend with characters during the ‘narrative rest’. For instance, while Harry and Ron saving Hermione from the troll might have sparked an interest in her, it’s the narrative rest scenes between that and her setting Snape on fire during the quidditch game that makes us invest in her as a character. 

This is where things get a bit hairy with Good Girls. Good Girls does a tremendous job of giving us both great climaxes and wonderful moments of narrative rest. The issue, for me at least, is that it’s not always the best at balancing them. When I talk about escalation and pacing, this is a big part of what I mean.

Remember how I said this was the shape of a story?

Well, I think Good Girls s2 looked more like this:

We had a lot of solid movement in the first half of the season that sort of flattened out into a lower stakes, more meandering middle (which gave us 2.08 through 2.12). Which - -

Look.

The story changed gear, and it didn’t work.  

Think of it this way:

2.01 – mostly character-based fallout from s1 + inciting incident of Rio handing them the gun

2.02 – almost entirely rising tension culminating with the girls bribing Boomer and Beth lying to Rio

2.03 – which thrusts us straight back into rising tension with the girls trying to kill Boomer and ‘succeeding’ via Mary Pat

2.04 – which gives us a very satisfying narrative rest as we explore Rio and Beth’s relationship outside of an overall narrative thrust – he gives her a key, she shies away from him, only to fall entirely back into him culminating in sex which itself brings about a new climax (no pun intended!) in the scene with Beth, Rio and Dean at the dealership. It’s also a strong character episode in closing certain plot threads – ending Annie and Greg’s relationship + ending Ruby lying to Stan about what they’re doing – while establishing major new threads – i.e. really colliding Turner and Mary Pat.

2.05 – and after the rest, we’re back to almost entirely satisfying rising tension! Building off of the threat of finding Boomer’s body and the new tensions that Rio and Beth’s intimacy brings.

2.06 – a mix episode! Very much building to the strong climax of Beth seizing power, but also an episode that plays around with character, has a lot of strong ‘rest’ moments i.e. the girls sorting pills and talking which gives us a lot of information as to state of minds, etc.

2.07 – again, very strong mixed episode which is focused on one single, extreme climax – Jane being missing, but building a very character-centric episode around it. Also introduces Noah though? Which is a mistake. He should have been introduced - I think, in 2.05, but that feels like a whole other post.

2.08 – narratively speaking the same as 2.07 in the sense of a single climax (the girls failing to get the money back / the Beth-Ruby confrontation), but has the added bonus of flashbacks.

2.09 – we have a slight narrative thrust with the robbery of the Quick Cash but it proves very quickly to be low stakes. This is an alllll emotional stakes episode, which means narrative tension is slowing.  

2.10 – again, a character-focused, narrative rest episode devoted to Beth struggling with getting square. A few small climaxes – Annie and Ruby in Canada and Turner at the dealership being the big ones, but both quickly prove toothless. The heft / strength of the episode again is in character moments, not narrative thrust. Again - slowing it down. 

2.11 – oh, what do we have here? Another character-focused, narrative rest episode? I love this episode – it’s one of my favourites of the show, but it’s intensely character focused. Very much centred in waving away the smoke around both Noah and Rio for Annie and Beth respectively. No dramatic climaxes. Slowing the story down even further. 

2.12 – another narrative rest episode. A lot of slow exposition of Mary Pat and Jeff, which is good to know, but I’d argue placed badly in the season. This season’s already been slowing down despite the narrative timeline tightening, but this episode only further pushes on the brakes for Dean’s new job, Beth and Dean’s divorce, Beth and Rio’s break up. Two very small climaxes - the lawyer telling Ruby he knows about the money and the Boomer reveal but - in the context of the season - actually pretty low stakes. Again. Slowing down the narrative. 

2.13 – A BIG CLIMAX EPISODE WHAT IS GOING ON???

What I’m saying in this is that the pacing in the back half of the season was, to me at least, fundamentally off. They hadn’t steered a strong enough narrative spine to take us through the season, and got heavily invested in character moments and not-entirely-thought-out-fallout in the back half of the season – it didn’t understand it’s own narrative thrust well enough to get us through. It also established a certain pacing with us in the first half of the season and shifted gears halfway through.

You can’t have your first three or six episodes be high-stakes-high-action, and then make the back end of your season same-stakes-low-action and top it all off with an explosive, poorly built-up finale in the way that they did.

There wasn’t enough thrust to push us through to the scene in Rio’s loft – neither narratively or in a character sense, and as a result, those last few episodes fall apart. Even beyond that though, the season escalated quickly then - - didn’t really know what to do with those escalations? It plateaued, which is indicative of bad pacing across the season. 

I actually do think it’d be a relatively easy fix? I’d bring the Noah arc forwards and actually fiddle with the Beth and Rio break ups - get one even closer the tinale and make it more painful. Make it a climax in itself. 

But anyway, haha: 

The Resolution

All stories have a resolution too of course.

The resolution can be 30 seconds or 30 minutes – it’s a time to tie up loose ends and to reassure your audience that the journey they’ve been on is worthwhile.

(After all – you’ll notice the story diagram is not symmetrical – we never finish where we began).

I’m not going to talk too much about resolutions because at the end of the day – resolutions should fall fairly naturally out of your beginning, your inciting incident, your rising tension. It should tumble out like the double wedding at the end of Pride and Prejudice, but I will say that the s2 resolution was...err, not good. In no small part because it didn’t fall out of what we’d been told all season. They’d established a certain throughline and then taken it back, and that was nagl to be honest. 

On the plus side though - it wasn’t a finale, so I have my fingers crossed they can fix it!

But yes, back to your ask, anon. 

No, I don’t think that the writers were pandering. I think they went in with a sketched outline and that they probably got lost in the back end of the season and weren’t quite sure how to drum up the final act, which meant that final act didn’t work.

Ah, this post got so long! I hope it wasn’t boring or too self-indulgent or silly, and that you got something out of it! I am, of course, always happy to answer writing questions, and I hope you liked reading my story ramblings ;-)