People be doggin Flight Risk but I swear on the Delta wings that Sally the flight attendant gave me on a flight from Chicago to Cleveland when I was 10 years old that it was a good script!
Plus we gotta give Lionsgate credit. The studio only gets two number 1 films a year so we just celebrate it when it happens!
I’m not here to talk Flight Risk though.
I’m here to talk American Primeval.
The show has exploded on Netflix, becoming the most watched new show on the streamer.
Let me make something clear to every screenwriter: When you have a show that does well in a genre that the public typically ignores? YOU MUST STUDY WHY.
There are secrets in every breakout success so, if you’re smart, you’ll dissect why something that wasn’t supposed to happen happened.
I sat down and watched the pilot episode of American Primeval and have discovered all the answers.
Come in with a focused sympathetic situation
A lot of times with these TV shows that have a lot of characters, the pilot will jump around, covering a lot of territory, so as to set up the plot. The problem with this is that whenever you dilute the narrative, you lose narrative thrust.
So, I like when a pilot introduces us to a main character, or group of characters, and stays with them. It’s much easier to hook a reader that way. Especially if you create a sympathetic situation with those characters.
When we meet Sara Rowell and her son, Devin, they’re in a bind. They’ve arrived in a dangerous town on the frontier. They don’t have any allies. They’re two weeks late. Sara’s trying to meet up with her husband, yet nobody knows where he is.
We sympathize with that. Because we know that if they don’t find her husband, they’re probably dead. So, emotionally, we’re hooked. And that does sooooooooo so so so much work for the story. If you can get the reader emotionally hooked on your main characters and their situation, you’re golden. American Primeval does that right away.
Drop us into the thick of things
A mistake I see a lot in TV writing is, what I call, “SETUP ADDICTION.” All the writer cares about, in that pilot, is setting up the 15 characters in their show. I get it. TV has a lot of characters. It covers many hours of story. For that to work, you have to tell us who everyone is.
The problem is, when you only focus on that, you don’t actually hook us. You’re telling us, “bear with me while I describe all my characters to you. Then, once I’m finished, we can get to the good stuff.”
No. That’s not how successful storytelling works. You must entertain us ALONG THE WAY. That starts on the very first page. So, here, we’re not just setting things up. We’re immediately meeting two people, a mother and her son, who have arrived at a remote train station, both of whom are looking for the mom’s husband.
Every character we meet isn’t met to say to the audience, “Here I am. I will be one of the characters in the story.” Instead, they come in as dramatic accomplices or foils to our heroine’s goal. That’s how you hook a reader in a pilot. You start the entertainment on page one.
And here’s a pro-tip for you: Come into the story as late as possible. We could’ve easily come into this story with Sara on the train, on her way to town. And it probably would’ve allowed us an easier way to introduce her and her son. But, had we done so, we would’ve started off with a slower, more boring, scene.
By starting the story as late as possible – with her and her son already having arrived in town – we jumped right into things.
Introduce danger above and beyond what we’re used to
The average potential viewer dismisses Westerns because they find them boring. Westerns move slower. Plot beats take longer to get to. The setting is vast but often empty. This genre doesn’t feel exciting enough for most people.
Therefore, if you write a Western that leans into that template, we’ll dismiss it. But, it’s clear right away that American Primeval has no interest in typical Western conventions. It leaned into intensity as much as possible. Even in the slow moments, there were always scary-looking dudes lurking nearby – guys who could snap our heroine’s neck in a second if need be. There is no safety in American Primeval and that’s what’s drawing in people who don’t typically watch Westerns.
That’s a valuable lesson, by the way. When you give readers what they’re used to, they will react accordingly. Give them a bigger, scarier, more intense, Western, and they will clear their Thursday nights out to binge your show.
One of the things that really stuck out to me about American Primeval is when the local sheriff laid out to Sara why she needed to turn around and go back to Philadelphia. You’ve got a brutal winter, fearless outlaws, three of the most violent Indian tribes in the country, bears, wolves, and let’s not forget the crazed Mormons.
Unlike any Western I’ve ever watched before, it felt like there was no way to succeed. If you can create that belief, you will retain 99% of your readers. People are inherently curious about impossible odds. In contrast, if you say, “The goal is difficult but doable,” there’s no reason for the reader to keep reading. Cause you told them straight up that the hero will probably succeed. NO. You want them to believe that YOUR HERO WILL DEFINITELY DIE. That’s how to keep a reader invested.
Urgency In Non-Urgent Scenarios
This next tip is reading crack. Whenever you write period stuff, create an URGENT SCENARIO. Readers are so accustomed to stories set in the distant past unfolding at a slower pace. So if you can create a scenario that feels urgent, the juxtaposition will evoke an unfamiliar and exciting feeling in the reader.
Right from the start here, we learn that Sara’s husband left two weeks ago because she and her son were late. So time is of the essence. He’s two weeks ahead of them. They have to move now!
Give us truth
Finally, American Primeval is yet another example that writing rewards truth.
When you try and lie by creating scenarios that the reader knows are either factually or subconsciously inaccurate, they will turn on you.
One of the things that confused me when I looked into this show is that audiences loved it but critics did not (they gave it a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes). The deeper I looked, the more I realized that critics, who mostly favor progressive storytelling, dislike when Native Americans are portrayed poorly. So they never give stuff like this a positive score.
This opens up an opportunity for anyone who wants to portray controversial aspects of history truthfully. There were some savage natives back in the Wild West and by simply showing that truth, you give the reader a show that feels different from every other show they’ve seen.
If you look at Killers of the Flower Moon, there are no bad Native Americans in that film. Only bad white people. That’s mostly how things are portrayed these days. As a writer, your job is not to mimic what other people think is right. It’s to seek out the truth and show it. Cause if you can show that truth, you are giving people an authentic experience, which is something audiences rarely experience these days.
All of this is what’s led American Primeval to be the most popular show on Netflix. I was only surprised by this BEFORE I found out who wrote it. Mark L. Smith is a great writer. What better endorsement can you get as a writer than Quentin Tarantino hiring you to write something (he hired Mark to write his Star Trek film).
I also chat with Mark every once in a while. I beg him for that Star Trek script but he always says the same thing. He’d be kicked out of Hollywood if he gave it to me. But I’ll keep trying!
Unless you can’t handle extreme violence, I recommend ALL OF YOU watch this show. It’s a spectacular example of how to write a great pilot script that hooks the reader.
