Finding The Best Ideas In Your Story: Agent Carter, Netflix

I recently watched season 1 of Agent Carter, a Disney/Marvel/ABC television series of two seasons (2015-2016). The first season had many virtues that I enjoyed: A female lead who was not only physically attractive and skilled but also had good ethics, smarts, and self-confidence. She was heroic. She also had a great backstory, as the former ally and lover of Steve Rogers/Captain America. The story of season one featured a clever plot to steal and use Howard Stark’s brilliant but dangerous inventions for evil purposes and was dramatic and engaging. The show was well produced, especially its stylish 1940s look and benevolent tone.

But as I was watching the show, I kept saying to myself: This story is good but it’s not great. Why? I kept feeling that the story lacked a key element or layer.

Finally, I figured out that this omission was related to Steve Rogers/Captain America. I hasten to add that I have not seen or do not remember the plots of the Captain America movies/shorts, but in this series Agent Carter was set up as the now deceased Captain America’s former lover who grieves for him. This poignant story element, however, was not played as a key dramatic conflict throughout the events of the story.

A missed opportunity.

Creatives often believe that editing a story is about finding problems to fix. It isn’t.

A vitally important part of story developing and editing is to find the most dramatic ideas in the context of the main character’s life and the general story idea.

Season 1 of Agent Carter, as good as it was, I think would have benefited from focusing much more on Agent Carter dealing with overcoming her deep and profound grief over the loss of her beloved Captain America. Interestingly, in the climax of the final episode this was the focus of the story. A loss that this conflict wasn’t deeply and explicitly dramatized throughout the whole story.

The Writing Tip Takeaway

The lesson here for creatives is that you must find the most dramatic ideas in your story, not just good ones. (And have an outside objective story person help you vet your ideas.) For example, in this first season of Agent Carter, the main personal conflict of the lead was her struggle with the sexist men she is working with. Now that conflict did work and was often fun and interesting, but I believe that story arc is not as dramatic as Carter learning to overcome her profound grief to continue in her noble work as an agent. That’s a universal and poignant issue for an audience to watch being played out and resolved. And it is also intimately true to Carter’s life at that time.

When creating a story, a storyteller has to be acutely aware of the full context of the protagonist’s life and person and use that terribly against him or her. It is not easy to find these essential issues but doing so is vital to creating the most dramatic and involving story that is possible. And a long running series.

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