How does the need to create absolute, irreversible change in the protagonist’s life work for TV series and serial characters? Robert McKee explains.

Quotes of the Week

“Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while I’m walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.”

– J. Courtney Sullivan

“Mad Men would have been some sort of crisp, soapy version of The West Wing if not for The Sopranos. Peggy would have been a climber. All the things that people thought were going to happen would have happened. Even though the pilot itself has a dark, strange quality, I didn’t know that that was what was good about it. I just wanted an excuse to exorcise my demons, to write a story about somebody who’s thirty-five years old, who has everything, and who is miserable.”

– Matthew Weiner