Creating a Credible, Alternative Reality

In science fiction, we’re presented with a world that bears some resemblance to our own. But how does this sci-fi world differ from ours? Here are some basic questions for you to consider as you develop your series’ mythology:

• Are we in present day or in the near or distant future?
• Is it a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world?
• Is it a space colony?
• Is it overpopulated or are there very few survivors?
• Is the environment sustainable?
• Is the air toxic?
• Is the Earth burning up or flooding or arid and arctic?
• Do animals and/or other anomalous creatures live among us?
• Are humans the dominant species?
• Are food and supplies in abundance or is there poverty and famine?
• Is your version of the future or this alternative world light or dark?
• Who governs?
• What kinds of laws keep the order?
• Is it a militant state? Anarchy? Somewhere in between?
• Who enforces the laws?
• What kinds of weapons exist?
• What kind of special abilities do the police and citizens have?
• Is there a class or caste system or equality?
• Does artificial intelligence exist?
• Is the world on the verge of singularity theory?

Humans versus Cylons

In Battlestar Galactica, a human civilization has migrated from their home-land of Kobol to a group of distant planets known as the Twelve Colonies. For decades, the Twelve Colonies have battled against a cybernetic race—the Cylons—whose mission is the annihilation of the human race. The Cylons wage war against the Twelve Colonies and the Colonial Fleet of starships that protect them. These attacks devastate the Colonial Fleet, destroy the Colonies, and virtually all of their populations. Of the entire Colonial battle fleet, only the Battlestar Galactica, an enormous battleship and “space-craftcarrier,” manages to survive the Cylon attack. Under the leadership of Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos), the Galactica and the pilots of “Viper” fighters lead a fugitive fleet of survivors in search of the fabled thirteenth colony—planet Earth.

What was most revolutionary about Battlestar is its showrunner Ronald D. Moore’s resistance to old school science fiction mythology. In his manifesto, “Naturalistic Science Fiction, or Taking the Opera out of Space Opera,” Moore makes a provocative pronouncement: “Our goal is nothing less than the reinvention of the science fiction television series … [and to jettison] the stock characters, techno-double-talk, bumpy-headed aliens, thespian histrionics, and empty heroics.” Moore set out not to make another Star Trek or Star Wars; rather, he’s after something much more nuanced, with the character complexity and contradictions of The West Wing or The Sopranos. Moore’s manifesto goes on to proclaim: “We want the audience to connect with the characters of Galactica as people. Our characters are not super-heroes. They are not an elite. They are everyday people caught up in an enormous cataclysm and trying to survive it as best they can. They are you and me.”

Perhaps the best way to sum up Battlestar Galactica’s approach to mythology is less is more. Rather than a strict adherence to the tropes of the scifigenre or even the laws of time and space, Moore and his writing staff were cognizant that the audience actually connects to the people—not the mythology and technology. You can create the biggest, most mind-blowing, climactic battle sequences ever, but nothing trumps those small moments of character emotion.

Welcome to Doomsday

In The Walking Dead pilot, we enter the arena after some sort of zombie apocalypse. We’re not sure if the cause was biological, chemical, nuclear, or environmental. All we know is that virtually everyone is dead—but then resurrected as a zombie in constant need of living human flesh in order to survive. In season 1, the small group of survivors makes their way to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. The episode teases us with an explanation of the apocalypse, but provides no clear-cut answers to this cataclysmic mystery. But we do get one horrific piece of news via the Director of the CDC (Noah Emmerich) who whispers something cryptic into Rick’s (Andrew Lincoln) ear before they both depart (Rick leaves with his fellow badass survivors; the CDC Director kills himself). SPOILER ALERT: By the end of season 2, Rick tells his comrades the ominous news: all survivors are already infected with the virus—and it’s only a matter of time before each one of them is going to turn into a zombie—whether they’re bitten or not. In other words, inside each one of them is a ticking time bomb. How’s that to ruin your whole day? At this point, we have also become well versed in the Rules of the Zombies:

• They have very low intelligence and live only to eat living human flesh.
• They do not talk or communicate with one another or use technology.
• They congregate in flocks and each new prey causes a feeding frenzy.
• They’re not smart enough to scale walls or climb over fences.
• They can’t deliberately strategize, set fires, or use weapons or explosives.
• They can’t pick locks or operate cars and other machinery.
• They don’t eat each other, but will feed on animals.
• They can’t procreate.
• They can be killed by non-zombies, but only by crushing their skulls, thereby destroying their brains.
• If an uninfected human is bitten, there is no antidote; it’s just a matter of time before he or she will transform into a snarling, vicious cannibal.

At press time, these rules have remained constant. The series is based on a series of comic books of the same title, but I haven’t looked ahead to find out what’s going to happen next because the TV series doesn’t always follow that roadmap. I can only prognosticate and hope for zombie evolution over time. For example:

• What if the zombies can start to learn and aren’t simply the Walking Stupid?
• What if a zombie accidentally fires a gun or gets behind the wheel of a truck?
• What if they start to be able to communicate in some sort of zombie language (à la the book and movie Warm Bodies)?
• What if all that rotting flesh and septic wounds cause bacterial and viral infections and those viruses started to mutate?

So many possibilities—or maybe the show’s creators and showrunner plan to keep all the rules constant?

When I interviewed the now former showrunner of The Walking Dead, Glen Mazzara, I asked him if the viewers were ever going to find out what caused the zombie apocalypse and why? Glen’s response was a definitive no. In his view, it didn’t matter. To him, the show was all about survival of the fittest and how to build a new civilization amid chills and thrills. To him, this was/is a horror show, so he preferred to keep the scientific gobbledygook to a minimum. Our motley crew of survivors are all on the endangered species list, overwhelmingly outnumbered, and there is no escape. See also Revolution.

Blood Is Thicker Than Water

In the science fiction/fantasy series True Blood, created and produced by Alan Ball and based upon The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels by Char-laine Harris, we’re indoctrinated into a fresh, new twist on the classic vampire genre: they feast on synthetic blood (brand name: Tru Blood) that’s readily available in all convenience stores, like six packs of beer or bottles of ketchup. The show’s mythology is that vampires have been living among us for centuries, and it’s only recently that Japanese scientists have created synthetic blood to enable vampires to “come out of the coffin” now that they no longer need to feed on humans to survive. But as with every revolution, there are inherent politics. Some vampires desire to join and integrate with the human race. But hardcore vampires are resistant and feel it’s against their violent nature.

Set in the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, the series’ main protagonist is Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a “Halfling,” who is later revealed to be a human–fairy hybrid with telepathic abilities. Sookie works as a waitress at Merlotte’s Bar & Grill, owned by Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell). Unbeknownst to most of the townsfolk, Sam is a shapeshifter. Sookie meets and falls in love with Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), a sexy 173-year-old vampire who looks about 30. Also in this phantasmagoria are: Sookie’s sex-crazed brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten); the Sheriff of Area 5, Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård)—who also happens to be a thousand-year-old vampire; and then there’s Lafayette Reynolds (Nelsan Ellis), a flamboyantly gay, black, fry cook, drug dealer, and medium. In this show’s universe, mythological beings (and Tru Blood) are, more or less, the norm.

In contrast to the well-defined, narrow parameters of, say, The Walking Dead, we get the sense that virtually anything can happen in Bon Temps. And so, in addition to the proper care and feeding of vampires, the show also explores the humanity of fairies, werewolves, witches, and a Dionysian cult. The “sweet spot” of this series is how its authors skillfully correlate these fantastic, esoteric, sexy supernatural plotlines to relatable contemporary issues, such as racism, homophobia, drug addiction, faith and religion, pervasive media, and the quest for identity. At the core, this is a show about “family” values, and the blood ties that bind us together and rip us apart

On a supernatural series, the mythology deals with the rules of magic. Here are some basic questions for you to ponder as you conjure:

• Who has special powers?
• How do they work?
• What is their limitation?
• How are they activated?
• Can they be neutralized or reversed?
• Is there a totem or book of spells or amulet or material device needed to invoke the magic?

In the pilot episode of Once Upon a Time, we learn that the sleepy town of Storybrooke, Maine has stopped and that every resident is a fairy-tale character with no memory of that life. Henry (Jared S. Gilmore), a young resident of Storybrooke convinced that he knows the truth, runs away to Boston and persuades bounty hunter Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) to come back home with him. Once Emma enters the town, time starts moving again, telling us that Emma is an important cog in Storybrooke’s clockwork.

When Setting Up the Rules for an Unfamiliar World, Bring an Outsider into the World to Help the Audience Get Up to Speed

In the Once Upon a Time pilot, we cross-cut between the fairy-tale world and Storybrooke and learn that the Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla) has placed a curse on Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) and relegated them to Storybrooke where there would be no more happily ever afters (which is the Evil Queen’s own happy ending). Emma’s arrival upsets the balance and overrules the curse. We also get to witness how each character in Storybrooke has a double (or doppelganger) counterpoint in the fairy-tale world. The creators and showrunners (Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz) were careful to ensure that the rules of their Storybrooke world were clear, simple, and easy to understand. And they provided us with Emma as our guide to navigate it. As an outsider trying to make sense of the place and her role in it, Emma got to ask questions that the audience would ask and investigate for us.

The Ethos of Westeros and Essos

On Game of Thrones, created for HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, adapted from a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, seven noble families (the houses of Stark, Lannister, Baratheon, Greyjoy, Tully, Arryn, and Tyrell) fight for control of the mythical land of Westeros. The political tensions between houses build to an epic “modern” war. On the continents of Westeros and Essos, summer has lasted a decade, and the impending winter is foreboding as the lore of its mythical monsters (or “White Walkers”) foretells.

Showrunner David Benioff tagged the series “The Sopranos in Middle Earth,” referring to the ruthless rivalries among powerful families; killing sprees, steely coercion, murder, and a self-serving code of ethics within its medieval Europe–inspired, fantasy setting.

The series also offers allusions to Hadrian’s Wall, the decline of the Roman Empire, the legend of Atlantis, Icelandic Vikings, and the Mongols (known on the series as the Dothraki), along with elements of the Hundred Years’ War and the Italian Renaissance. Author George R. R. Martin and series creators/showrunners, Benioff and Weiss, brilliantly succeed at weaving these contrasting elements into their own alternative history, replete with balls of fire, White Walkers (reminiscent of a zombie apocalypse), and flying dragons.

With its enormous cast of hundreds (the largest of any TV series, ever), it can sometimes be difficult to keep track of every character and subplot without a crib sheet. Nevertheless, the series succeeds by tapping into mythic structure that’s hardwired into our DNA. Its legions of fans across the globe aren’t daunted by backstory, and can recite the show’s complex mythology, chapter and verse, as if it’s a badge of honor.

What’s truly amazing about Game of Thrones is how all the rules of the world relate to each other and the theme of “fire and ice.” By creating rules around these opposing forces, it fuels constant conflict. And who is to say which is stronger: fire or ice? There is speculation that the final battle will come down to Jon Snow (Kit Harington), representing ice, and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), representing fire. The main quest is to take the Iron Throne (although Jon Snow isn’t after the throne), so it seems for each character that the main obstacle will either be fire or ice. If you wanted to get obsessive you could probably link each of the main contenders to either of those elements. For example, Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) used wildfire to win the battle at Blackwater Bay. Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane) worships the Lord of Light (fire). Robb Stark (Richard Madden) is from the North (ice).

In terms of Game of Thrones’ mythology, here are the lists of rules for the dragons, White Walkers, and Lord of Light.

Rules for the Dragons:

• They were thought to have died out 150 years ago.
• They hatch from eggs exposed to extreme heat (fire).
• Humans can have some dragon traits (extreme heat doesn’t affect Daenerys), but it’s not clear how she can be a descendent of dragons.
• They are extremely loyal.
• They can be trained. Can learn to respond to a vocal command. (Daenerys can command them to breathe fire.)

Rules for White Walkers:

• They have not been seen for eight thousand years.
• The wall was erected to keep them out.
• If you are killed by a White Walker, you can also be reanimated by them in order to become one of their servants.
• White Walkers have scaly white skin and blue eyes. Servants have pale skin and blue eyes.
• Both fire and a special artifact can kill them. (Interesting tie-in with the fire and dragons.)
• Considered by most to be legend. (I consider this to be a rule about them because it sets up how people react to them or any mention of them.)

Rules for Lord of Light:

• Centered on one, all-knowing god—the Lord of Light. (What does that sound like?)
• Lord of Light is represented by fire. (More fire tie-ins.)
• Priests/priestesses have the ability to bring people back from the dead.
• Shadows can be manipulated by practitioners to do their bidding. (Shadows are created by Light.)

Taking Dramatic License

There is also historical mythology. These series, such as The Tudors, The Borgias, Vikings, Hatfields & McCoys, and Spartacus, are loosely based upon (and in some cases merely “inspired by”) “true” historical events. But they all take dramatic license to serve the needs of drama, suspense, and overall marketability. They are historical series, not documentaries, so the audience is willing to suspend their disbelief to come along on the journey. Henry VIII was an unattractive, corpulent, sickly, petulant bully. And yet on The Tudors, Henry was portrayed by the virile, handsome movie star Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Don’t get too bogged down by meticulously adhering to historical details.

NL: The question for this chapter is “What’s the mythology?” I read that you had this idea for awhile—even before you were on Lost. Where did the idea come from and why did this interest you?

AH: The idea came from almost ten years ago now. We had been writing on Felicity on the WB. That show ended its run. We were sitting around talking about what’s the kind of show that we would want to do.

EK: Because our agent was like, “Why don’t you guys think about a pilot?”

AH: Yeah, which led us to talk about things that we loved, stories that were formative to us, that got us going which led to a discussion of fairy tales. I had just read this book called, The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim, which was about fairy tales and their influence on kids.

EK: At the time Smallville was out, but no one had really done fairy tales. We realized what we loved about them was the open canvas. What was great about Lost was that one week you were writing a show about a guy who won the lottery and the next week it was about a con man. You never just wrote only cops or only lawyers. So when Adam read this book, he started talking about fairy tales and about how much it would suck to be the Evil Queen [Lana Parrilla] because you were literally in a place where everything had a happy ending, but everything you do, fails. You get a working oven inside a gingerbread house and that stupid blind witch can’t kill two kids? So that was our genesis of: “Where would she go to win?” And that was our world. That was our premise.

AH: And what we had cooked up almost ten years ago is pretty similar to what it is now. In terms of there was this woman [Emma played by Jennifer Morrison] who came to this town who is the daughter of Snow White [Ginnifer Goodwin] and Prince Charming [Josh Dallas]. And there was a curse and a kid. But there were various incarnations.

EK: In one she had two kids and in one she had no kids. In one, she didn’t know she had a kid which was a weird one.

AH: We played with a version where she didn’t know she had a kid. She didn’t know she was pregnant. She was in a coma and the kid was delivered, but she never knew. We thought it was a cool idea, but we could never figure out how to make that work as a series. I think the problem was that in 2002 or 2003 that we just weren’t ready to concoct such a big canvas. But I think what we did know that if we wanted to do our own show, we wanted to do something that would allow us the freedom to do many types of stories but finding an umbrella under which they all could exist.

EK: It wasn’t until we got to Lost that we thought, “Oh, this is how you could do it.” That was our learning experience. I remember going into the last season we were having dinner with Damon Lindelof [Executive Producer/Creator, Lost] and he asked us what we were thinking of doing after this, so we pitched him our show. He said, “That’s a good idea.” And then once the show ended, we said this is what we wanted to do.

NL: Did you go in and pitch it to ABC?

EK: Yeah. We had a general meeting with ABC Studios with Barry Jossen and Patrick Moran. They had a couple of books and properties in mind, but they asked, “Do you have anything?” And we pitched our idea. And they said, “This one.” What happened was that Adam and I went to Damon about going to pitch Paul Lee at the network.

AH: We pitched them what the broad strokes of the pilot would be. Paul Lee said to go ahead and write the pilot. Everybody seemed very enthused and excited. All these ideas from all these years that had been swirling around. It was a huge, massive challenge to figure out how to turn that into a fifty-page script.

EK: We literally had four outlines that we threw out. We just couldn’t figure out the way in. Plus, we had a movie coming out called Tron. It was our first experience having a movie coming out which was very stressful and distracting. We came back after Christmas and ABC said, “You understand you have two weeks before you’re out of the cycle.” So we were like, “Fuck, this can’t be done. We have a good idea that we can’t figure out.” Damon came down and the three of us were talking and we were just going to tell them that we couldn’t do it. And then it turned into, “Well, there’s really no show unless you do this.” And then someone said, “And then you do that.” And then all of a sudden, we found it.

AH: I think one of the breakthroughs for us was that we always in the many incarnations of the outline had talked about opening it with the birth of Emma and the dwarfs seeing the curse come in. Then it hit us, “Wait. That shouldn’t be the opening of the pilot—that’s the story running concurrently.” Because we had so much backstory for all these characters and once we realized that we shouldn’t just shove it all into the pilot and be done with it. Let’s take all that mythology and all that backstory and make it part of the show.

EK: We were so late in the process that we went in and pitched the outline. We literally pitched the pilot beat by beat.

AH: We literally spent an hour with the network.

EK: Scene 1, scene 2, scene 3 … and when we were done, they said, “Okay, go write it.” We had ten days to write it before it was the final deadline. They had already started picking things up.

AH: This was late January of 2011.

EK: We handed it in on a Friday and it got picked up on a Monday. Of course, there were still notes and things to be done, but that’s how late we were in the process. It was like we started six weeks behind.

NL: Sometimes writing with that kind of pressure and terror, you don’t have a lot of time to second guess yourself.

AH: I also think what was helpful was years of thinking about it. It wasn’t just a case of writing a pilot in ten days. Once we found the way we could see it and execute it, then all of those pieces fell into place with that script and we wrote it relatively quickly.

NL: Where did the rules of the world come from? One of the things that’s so tricky about this show is that I watch it and think, “How did all of these elements come together?” It’s so impressive and seems so seamless—now that it’s come together.

EK: I think one of the hardest things to do is to be simple. Figuring out the way to make rules for your world that are seamless that when you’re watching you don’t have to think about them. If you have a lot of scenes where you have characters always explaining what is going on and then your audience has to take notes on it, it just doesn’t work. If you can come up with rules that feel intuitive, then you’ve won.

AH: And for us, we knew there would be a mythology, but we never wanted it to overwhelm the character. We were much more interested in why Grumpy was grumpy, why the Evil Queen is evil, why the Mad Hatter is mad. We may not have planned out the whole season, but for questions like, “Why does the Evil Queen hate Snow White?” We knew what her story was. Once we had those stories in place, then we were able to tie them together. The key was always what does the character want, and you build your mythology around that. We knew from the start of the pilot process that the Queen was casting this curse. We had come up with the story that she had lost her love and blamed Snow. Basing the curse around a queen who had lost her love, that became the cornerstone behind the first mythology that we unfurled in season 1. That’s how we make a mythology. Just thinking about what the character wants and what their issues are with the other characters. And then all the other stuff about the magic and curses just needed to be tailored to fit that. We feel that if an audience is invested in why a character wants her revenge then they’ll go with all the other stuff.

EK: Damon and Carlton [Cuse, Executive Producer/Creator, Lost] gave us a great note when we were on Lost which helped our writing a lot. It was, “What am I supposed to be feeling in this scene?” It was this weird note that should have just seemed obvious. The thing about Lost is sometimes it would be two scenes about people trying to find water, but there was such manufactured intensity to it because of the emotions behind it. So what is the Queen feeling at this wedding? She’s feeling pain because she is staring at everything she wanted and never got.

NL: Because you have two different sets of rules for the forest and the magical realm and for Storybrooke. It seems that right around the halfway point was a benchmark because it was the first place it’s been revealed that Belle (Emilie de Ravin) is being kept … it seems as though you have central questions running through both worlds. One is that Emma doesn’t believe what Henry (Jared Gilmore) is telling her and then by the end of the season, she finally believes. And then she is transported to the other world. It’s the first major crossover for Emma. Did you have some of these benchmarks mapped out structurally?

EK: It was one of those things when we started to break story for season 1 that we knew that it was going to be about Emma believing. We had to figure out where that would happen.

AH: We actually thought we would never get away with it past eleven— that people would be horrified and annoyed. And then we got to episode 7 because the death of Sheriff Graham [Jamie Dornan] is going to hold her back. Then we started to realize that her believing was something important which was why we introduced Pinocchio [Eion Bailey]. We didn’t want to just put it in a middle episode. We wanted to try to earn it. Because the realness of it would help it sell better and, for us, she could not believe unless it was her son who got her to believe. Look, we thought we’d be cancelled after two episodes.

EK: And, by the way, every critic in town predicted us to be the first cancelled. We were opening against the World Series and the Super Bowl and by the fifth critic I read who predicted us to be DOA, I was then like, “OK, fuck it Adam, let’s just do six great episodes.”

AH: You just cannot predict what an audience will watch. We just tried to balance big ideas from where the series could go with the big ideas of where a season could go. We tried to set up things that hopefully we’d have a chance to do in season 1. Then we started to construct our tent poles around that. [Episode] 109 was when we introduced the Stranger [Eion Bailey] and there was no way we were going to wrap up that story in three episodes. We knew we wanted to do this bigger thing. By the time we were in the back half of the season, we were able to ramp things up and build to a finale with the curse breaking.

NL: And Emma and Regina aligning against a common enemy.

AH: What was cool about that for us was finding this idea that your protagonist and antagonist both want the same thing which is this kid. In many ways, their motivations are both laudable, but it’s how they are going about earning Henry’s trust that creates conflict between Emma and Regina. Then it’s fun to find situations where the two of them do have to work together for the common good.

NL: It’s interesting that you said that Henry was not part of the original concept because his book and his role in the show is so significant in terms of explaining things and getting us up to speed.

EK: Yeah, that was the breakthrough when we realized that we needed to write a ten-year-old version of ourselves coming to get our mom. Henry is the heart and soul of the show. He’s the true believer. Our show is for believers. We wanted to make this show about hope and not be cynical—which is tough in today’s world when usually anything that is cool is cynical. We wanted people once a week to feel the way I felt when I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the boy got the golden ticket. For me that personally was important. I like that feeling and it’s important. Henry embodies that.

NL: When you conceived of Storybrooke, this weird combination between a 2012 beach town and something stuck in the 1950s where there are rotary phones, but are there also cell phones. How did you make that decision?

EK: We felt that these stories were timeless, so Storybrooke had to be timeless. Originally, when we set it, we said that the fairy tales would be the Spielberg side and that the town would be our [legendary film director] Hal Ashby side. But then we realized that Storybrooke became our childhood. A lot of it is little things from our youth that we may remember or that stuck out at us. We just love the metaphor that Storybrooke is timeless because these stories are timeless. We loved the aesthetic of both a rotary phone and that someone could still check their e-mail. We called it faded glory. There was this Reagan documentary that the two of us and Mark Worthington, our production designer, saw. They went back to Reagan’s town where he grew up and there was a bandstand—it was the way downtown Disney is. And now, it’s abandoned like a ghost town. For us, it was the way you would go see a band in an old theatre. In the 1920s, it was beautiful, but now it’s been shit on with stickers. That was Storybrooke. So Emma’s car coming in was the first bit of color—and that’s why we had the yellow bug coming in.

AH: One of the challenges was, how do you make a cursed town a place people want to spend time in?

EK: Yeah, it was cursed, but not so cursed that you wouldn’t want to be there.

AH: For us, the answer was making it reminiscent of places we love, but not quite able to get back to. Emma becomes the catalyst for revitalization.

NL: Theme has been the most polarizing topic for both this book and my last book on film. Where do you stand on theme?

AH: We’re theme guys. There’s this balancing act, too, between theme and story. For us, if you get them to all coincide, that’s the greatest thing for us. And some work better than others. Ultimately, you want the audience to be engaged to care about the story. For us, theme is a means to that end.

EK: It’s a unifier. We don’t sit down and say, “What’s the theme about?” We actually talk about the character. What does the character want? “Well, this week, Regina needs to do _______.” And then you start talking about what she wants. And then you say, “What’s the theme? What is she learning?”

AH: We’ve done it many different ways. Sometimes the theme reveals itself clearly.

EK: Beauty and the Beast is the easiest example because Rumple [Robert Carlyle] couldn’t love himself.

AH: Sometimes we have an idea that we think is really cool for a story with these characters and then we try to figure out what’s the theme. Once we do that, then sometimes the story changes and molds to it. Ultimately, we like to land on a theme which can unify things which helps guide us into making each scene feel like it fits into the show and feels necessary.

NL: It seems like in the Hansel and Gretel episode that you start off with the children planting the candy bars in the backpack, and then you have the kids in the other realm who are told they have to go into the house made of candy. So sometimes the stories between the realms feel very parallel and sometimes they’re not.

EK: Some of my favorite ones are when they are not parallel, but the Hansel & Gretel one, we felt that these kids were homeless and they needed their dad, so it had to carry through.

AH: Sometimes you can do it, but sometimes it’s too matchy. You can have the connective tissue be more of an emotional issue that both characters are going through in each world or even a thematic question that they’re both dealing with. It doesn’t have to be so literal.

EK: In the Dreamy episode in the past, all he wanted to do was run away with the Blue Fairy and everyone was telling him not to do it. And in the present day, it was a festival where he had to sell candles. And people were like, “What?” But we said it would work because you’re seeing the dream right now. And one of my favorite moments was when we were at the Paley Festival and we were showing that episode. One of the act outs was when Grumpy [Lee Arenberg] smashes all the lights in the town and Mary Margaret [Ginnifer Goodwin] says, “What are you doing?” And he says, “I’m selling candles, sister.” And the whole audience started to cheer as if Spider-man had just saved the bus. I looked at Adam and I said, “I can’t believe it worked.” Because really the story was he’s selling candles.

AH: That was a case of us trying to attach it to something emotional. He was in love with this woman. And he didn’t think that he could be with her, so he was trying to find a way. It was also that he and Mary Margaret were trying to redeem themselves in the eyes of the town, so that was also the connective tissue.

NL: Once you have an arc and you know where this is going, how do you make the decisions of breaking them down? Are you trying to get them all to dovetail at a certain point?

EK: I feel that oftentimes the episode dictates it. It’s an organic process where you want to reveal why the Queen hates Snow White. You plan to do it in episode 15, but then you start to tell the stories and you go, “Oh, there’s a little piece before that happens that you want to get to, so then it gets pushed.” As you’re telling the story, the story starts to reveal itself with what is necessary to be told. You have to be flexible about your plans with what the needs of the stories are.

NL: What I love about your series is that you don’t rush things. When you’re a kid having a story read to you, you don’t want it to end.

EK: That was something we learned on Lost. It’s funny because in today’s world of the Internet, there’s a more impatient public. For us, we had a plan for the season and we wanted to give each story its due. People come along for the ride. They are not watching your show for answers because once they do that, then they don’t care about anything but the answers. We never want mythology to overwhelm character. We always felt that at the end of season 1 we were going to break the curse because we didn’t want every episode to be, “When are they going to break it?” We want people to enjoy Grumpy and enjoy Ruby.

EK: Exactly, so for me, one of my favorite scenes is when Emma wakes her son up—now she believes. Yes, it broke the curse, but that’s secondary to the fact that she saved her son’s life. To me, that is the perfect blend of character and mythology.

NL: How much do you trust that your audience is going to be able to keep track of the mythology? Do you put little reminders in?

EK: Sure. You try to build in little reminders, but ultimately, I feel like if you can create within the episode, an engaging story for that character in that episode, the audience will go along for the roller coaster ride—even if they don’t remember every detail. For the audience who wants to go closer, then you reward them by saying, “Look, this is how it fits into the larger tapestry.”

NL: Audiences are really smart.

EK: Yes, Lost was intricate, but go look on the blogs. Everyone got everything. Everything. People loved that the show wasn’t dumbing down for them. As long as you do what Adam said and give them something engaging, then they can enjoy it.

AH: Audiences crave meaning. They want things to matter. They want there to be something more to everyone. I think it’s that questioning nature that makes people like stories. If you can dig a little deeper and find something behind the story, I think that’s very rewarding and makes an audience want to see more.

EK: It’s funny because one of the greatest lessons we learned on Lost was what Damon and Carlton said when we joined, “This is a character show. Mythology cannot overrun character.” We’ve taken that to heart on this. And when you think about Lost and your favorite moments, at least for me personally, it’s the character moments.

AH: Or the episode where Sun [Yunjin Kim] goes to the Medical Hatch and sees the ultrasound that says she is pregnant which is super emotional, but then we’re also in a Dharma Hatch and there’s all this other stuff that’s unfolding about the larger mythology, but it’s attached to a story of a woman who didn’t think she would be pregnant and then realizing it is Jin’s [Daniel Dae Kim]. It was based on what a character wanted—and yes, in that episode, you may have gotten a download about the Dharma Initiative, but it was always tied to a character mystery. For us, that’s how we try to approach this show with thematic character-based storytelling.