Welcome back to your television serial making guidelines. If you need a recap we had already seen the fixed forms of necessities like storyline, characters or sets. Now let's move on to moving ones.
The Story and Dialogue Writers: Having only one writer is just a risky proposition. You need to ideally have a board of writers, if one fails to blow out of his/her mind others deliver. Teri Meri Dooriyan The endless storyline needs a similarly endless method of getting dialogues to carry on the show episode by episode. In a certain scene you will have to create the maximum possible dialogues and for this the board of writers would come as a bonus. When they quarrel over it, that is only natural, maybe you get a fresh twist-wish idea to include new angles-triangles or why not a good hyperbola in the story that could again generate new streams of dialogues. You will have to keep a watch on viewers too; boring them now and then is okay, but you have to never drive them mad. The channel producers, remember?
The Director: Since you will be the director you must be the toughest nut to break. Okay it's your baby and naturally you prefer to be the leader and friend-philosopher-guide. However in actual practice you have to be a ruthless dictator taking decisions unilaterally and respecting nobody nevertheless the channel producers. If a particular character actor is creating problems s/he must get killed in the serial; on the demand of the producers a dead character may need to be brought alive; many others may need to be replaced; ushering in a time transition or injecting one and more absurd characters into the serial; and, so on. Katha Ankahee All these situations demand your decisions only. We advise you to keep one or two episode directors too as is the case in many soaps. We have good reasons. First, one director is directly identifiable and is just a sitting duck for irate viewers, if any. Second, the endless monotony may be a lot of for you and you might lose your sanity. Third, as for the channel producers the buck will always stop exclusively at your end only.
The Time Pass: Now pass is from the viewpoint of serial makers, not viewers. Making an endless serial is never easy. So you have to carry on creating rooms for frequent time pass tactics. You do it by having merry go rounds of dramatic reaction shots parading all of your characters in the hall that could get you over more than one episodes; by having dialogues that never cease; giving extreme shock treatment to more than one characters who lose their ability to speak and communicate only through loud music that could last up to more than one episodes; by bringing in absurd characters and making their stories count; and, by the like.
Conclusion (?): Since all these guidelines are enforced relentlessly some normal doctrines like good wins over evil get neutralized. Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai serial Evildoers in serials carry on doing evil that could include even murder as police authorities are never called in, because entry of police may veer the serial to a logical end. You merely compensate by creating temporary relief measures now and then. Thus, the antagonist becomes the key to the success of endless serials. At the receiving end we could only try get accustomed to it.
So, make your serial in India and have endless fun!
Chinmay Chakravarty is just a professional specialized in the creative field with over 2 decades of experience in journalistic writing, media co-ordination, film script writing, film dubbing, film & video making, management of international film festivals and editing of books & journals. Proficient in providing professional services in these related fields. Presently working in Mumbai Doordarshan as a News Editor.
