Ok so you write an amazing book, or story etc, but then..

[Doctor Amadeus]

Ok so you write an amazing book, or story etc, but then, Hollywood comes a knocking, here is the thing, they want to sign you to an amazing deal where you will right and produced 22 Shows a year and a guaranteed 4 Year contract for 150 million. So you take the deal.

Now you have this story or show and you have not done 4 seasons you have done 6, so here is the problem. You have no more story to tell, you literally run out of ideas. The problem is, the show is even a bigger hit, than it was when you started.

Here is the question.

The Studio wants to back up another Brinks Truck to your house if you will only sign on for another 4 seasons, knowing you have nothing left, and at this point you are almost already doing redos of past episodes.

Would you sign another 4 year deal if your show is the biggest success in the world, even though you don't have anymore story in you, what would you do?

Personally if I have enough money, I might provided I can bring on younger writers and advance it in a satisfactory way if not, I would say no.


Also what how do you feel about other TV-Shows or serials in the same situation?

I think like Game of Thrones which I didn't watch, I had a great deal of respect for what they did at the end. I am not really a fan of giving fans what they want to expect in a story.

[Skizzit]

It's very, very rare that a single person writes every episode of a TV series. Even if they are based on an existing work by a single author, they still bring in other writers to turn it into a TV show. Even Mr. Robot, a show where Sam Esmail not only wrote on every single episode but he also directed 39 outa 46 episodes still had a number of other writers on staff as well. So yeah, you would lean more on the rest of the writing staff to help come up with more story to keep it going. Unless you have major pull and are in a position to tell a netowork that no, you told the story you want to tell and it is done. Again, very rare. The recent Watchmen series did that. Lindelof straight up said one season is all the story he had to tell so that's it. But! If you have that pull or a contract that gives you the power to do that, then I guess it would come down to how much you value your work ending the way you want vs. making lots of money.

As for Game of Thrones. That was a totally different situation. It was not a matter of them ending it the way they want and not giving the fans what they expect. It was not where the story ended so much that upset fans, it was the way it got there. The last season, a season HBO wanted to make longer but the showrunners said they only needed 6 episodes, was so rushed and sloppy. Characters personalities completely shifted on a dime with no build up or anything. It was very clear that Benioff and Weiss were getting huge offers for other projects and just wanted to hurry up and be done with GoT, they didn't care about telling a good ending, just hurrying up and getting there. It totally backfired on them too. All those huge offers vanished like a puff of smoke thanks to the backlash. Sorry fellas! No Star Wars trilogy for you! Ya done goofed!

[xenogear3]

To be fair, ending is always the hardest.
I just don't see how you can have a happy ending for GoT.

[Doctor Amadeus]

It's very, very rare that a single person writes every episode of a TV series. Even if they are based on an existing work by a single author, they still bring in other writers to turn it into a TV show. Even Mr. Robot, a show where Sam Esmail not only wrote on every single episode but he also directed 39 outa 46 episodes still had a number of other writers on staff as well. So yeah, you would lean more on the rest of the writing staff to help come up with more story to keep it going. Unless you have major pull and are in a position to tell a netowork that no, you told the story you want to tell and it is done. Again, very rare. The recent Watchmen series did that. Lindelof straight up said one season is all the story he had to tell so that's it. But! If you have that pull or a contract that gives you the power to do that, then I guess it would come down to how much you value your work ending the way you want vs. making lots of money.

As for Game of Thrones. That was a totally different situation. It was not a matter of them ending it the way they want and not giving the fans what they expect. It was not where the story ended so much that upset fans, it was the way it got there. The last season, a season HBO wanted to make longer but the showrunners said they only needed 6 episodes, was so rushed and sloppy. Characters personalities completely shifted on a dime with no build up or anything. It was very clear that Benioff and Weiss were getting huge offers for other projects and just wanted to hurry up and be done with GoT, they didn't care about telling a good ending, just hurrying up and getting there. It totally backfired on them too. All those huge offers vanished like a puff of smoke thanks to the backlash. Sorry fellas! No Star Wars trilogy for you! Ya done goofed!

So yeah, money even though there is no story to tell, or keep making money spoon feeding people material they want.


Tabling the speculations, my experience as someone who didn't watch GOT's but know many who did, the complaint that made most of the rounds was how it ended rather than it being rushed, such as one of the main characters commuting mass murder. Trust me after I heard about it, I was actually sorry I never watched the show, I personally like those strokes of input.

[Kyphael]

Um... take the moral high ground, or... continue making more money doing something I love even if creatively bankrupt...



Pretty sure I'd strut all the way to the bank.

[oplawlz]

The idea that there is no more story to tell is a fallacy. The only limitation is the creativity and skill of the writer. A story **arc** can end, but there is always more for those willing to branch out beyond their initial vision.
The issue is the same in cinema as it is in literature - writers fall in love with certain characters and are unwilling to put them to the side to progress a tale.

[Skizzit]

So yeah, money even though there is no story to tell, or keep making money spoon feeding people material they want.


Tabling the speculations, my experience as someone who didn't watch GOT's but know many who did, the complaint that made most of the rounds was how it ended rather than it being rushed, such as one of the main characters commuting mass murder. Trust me after I heard about it, I was actually sorry I never watched the show, I personally like those strokes of input.

Since I am not a creative type of person in any way, I can't really put myself into that sort of head space where I can balance my integrity as a writer against the desire to make money. So bring on the cash!

I am sure there are many people who felt that way, but I can pretty much guarantee that if said character's turn leading up the mass murder was well told, people would not have disliked it at all. The hints were there in earlier seasons that said character may go in that direction but there was no build to the shift. They went from one min, "Let's all work together and go defeat the evil and save the land!" to "Evil baddie hurt one of my friends so now I am going to murder thousands of innocents to get to them and then I will be Medieval Times Hitler to make it no one is hurt by war again." It was poor writing that killed the final season, not the story turning out different than people wanted.

The idea that there is no more story to tell is a fallacy. The only limitation is the creativity and skill of the writer. A story **arc** can end, but there is always more for those willing to branch out beyond their initial vision.
The issue is the same in cinema as it is in literature - writers fall in love with certain characters and are unwilling to put them to the side to progress a tale.

There can always be more story, sure. The question becomes, is it a story worth telling? Quite often a story is finished and it is better left alone. There is a reason why most sequels are not as good as the originals. Sure, you can tell more stories about the characters, place, time, or whatever but is it worth it? Or would it be better off telling a brand new story that doesn't carry the baggage of the first?

[qwerty123456]

Do I get full creative control? If so sure I would but I would change the direction of the show into something more inspiring.

[BrintoSFJ]

Yes I would! I am a poor ghost, with that amount of money, hell I will even write disgusting scenes like two children having sex. Not joking here, it is the fact. Poor people would do almost anything to live better lives and this is just writing.

[Kathranis]

To be fair, ending is always the hardest.
I just don't see how you can have a happy ending for GoT.

Nobody wanted a happy ending, that would betray the tone of the show. The problem was that the last few seasons were poorly written and rushed.

The first four seasons pretty faithfully adapted the first three books. Huge cast of characters with strong motivations and character development, lots of realistic political intrigue, battle strategies, etc.

Then they basically scrapped most of the plot in the fourth and fifth books and crammed what was left into season five. That's when the show started going off the rails.

After that they were almost completely out of source material. Season six took most of the remaining book plot lines and concluded them via a mix show original plots, GRRM's outlines for the sixth book, and reworking prevously scrapped elements from books four and five.

With those stories complete, it was basically left to the showrunners to invent their own finale and close out the two remaining plot threads: the White Walkers and Dany's return to Westeros. Having now greatly diverged from the books and with virtually no source material, as well as a strong desire to get the show over with and move on to new projects, Benioff and Weiss decided to try and conclude everything in two abridged seasons despite HBO pushing for more.

And with that, everything fell apart. It's obvious that they couldn't keep up writing the complex relationships of the large cast, so they started killing off all but the fan favorites, and so one of the most beloved aspects of the show was rapidly replaced with shallow reunions and rivalries. The political scheming was likewise gutted, reduced to simple, unrealistic betrayals and alliances, without meaningful consequences. Like, what used to be season-long conspiracies involving spies, advisors, and heirs is reduced to individual scenes where one guy literally stabs another guy in the back and everyone else just goes along with it.

With only a handful of episodes remaining they also had to quickly move characters around, removing all sense of scale and time; characters simply started conveniently appearing where they needed to be. People are now jumping back and forth over distances that used to take entire seasons to travel in a single episode.

The rushed final two seasons also had a horrible impact on character development, with incredibly rushed romances and, most egregiously, Dany's madness, which was more or less depicted as a 180 degree turn over a couple episodes instead of a gradual descent stemming from paranoia and grief.

All this to say, they fucked it up really bad. The list of problems goes on and on, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

[XDurionX]

I honestly don't know, 150M is already so abstract to me. I'd never have to care about money anyway.

[Shadowferal]

Plenty of amazing movies that should have stopped at the first movie.
Looking at Matrix, and Now You See Me.

[Hellobolis]

just negotiate a position where you direct the writing team instead of doing the legwork yourself.

also, if your story was so great, why didn't it reach an ending point after the 4-6 seasons? you obviously have an insane amount of creative control in this scenario so who could have stopped you?

[Devilyaki]

Your best ideas come when you have none left. Or something.. I don’t know but would take the money and just take it somewhere new.

[Mirishka]

I could make $150m last 10 lifetimes, I wouldn't need more.

Hell, I'd give most of the initial money away.

[Astalnar]

Easy, take the money and hire some wuxia fantasy author to churn out more new stuff. Those guys know how to expand the plot and the setting in new and exciting ways.

[Soulwind]

<snip>

GRRM isn't one of the best writers in human history, but credit where it's due, he is good at creating intricate plotlines that seem organic and chaotic, but surprise you with satisfactory endings. And one can't really tell how good he is at that, until someone far more incompetent tries to do the same.

[Hellobolis]

GRRM isn't one of the best writers in human history, but credit where it's due, he is good at creating intricate plotlines that seem organic and chaotic, but surprise you with satisfactory endings. And one can't really tell how good he is at that, until someone far more incompetent tries to do the same.

ironically he also made the "more money" decision if OPs scenario were applied to a IRL example, just instead of being out of ideas and continuing, he is starting sideprojects and never finishing the work that made him great.

[Kaleredar]

If you can’t set up a comfortable life for yourself after 150 million in the bank, what’s more money going to do?

At any rate, if the world of the show you created was rich enough I suppose you could tease out another few seasons on some other tangentially related aspect. But as others have noted... people really don’t just write shows by themselves. There are whole teams of writers doing that. And sometimes the studio forces your hand, in a sense. If you’re the show runner, but they own the rights to the show... you might not get a choice as to whether or not it continues, merely whether you want to be in charge of it or not.


As an example, I’ll use legend of korra as a follow up/spin-off of avatar: the last airbender. Basically the situation described in the OP: a show finished it’s run, but they’re given more money to do a follow up. And then that sort of thing happens again within the actual legend of korra run.

it was supposed to be a one-off season, which I thought was decent and tied itself nicely, as most kids shows do, with two characters confessing their love for one another and two other characters carrying out a murder-suicide. You know, as you do. But all the characters were in their place at the end.

Then Nickelodeon gave them a second season they hadn’t planned for which really went off the rails into weirdsville where they sort of midichlorianed the whole spirit world and it ends with two giant spirit people duking it out like Kaiju.

Then they got their stuff back together for season 3 and put together a compelling narrative with great, insidious villains with compelling motives and a far more grounded story. At least as far as a world with people that control elements through martial arts is concerned.

Then Nickelodeon short changed them in season 4 and made them truncate the season while shifting it to online only, necessitating a rapid sort of wrap up for season 4s villain, a pretty out-of-nowhere romance, and a gigantic mech suit battle climax that comes out of friggin’ nowhere.

So you have the whole gambit of “the ups and downs of a continuation of a series,” from being a unplanned spinoff to having unplanned seasons.

[Shadowferal]

Take the 150mil...then sell the IP.
When the inevitable happens and it goes to shit, offer to save the show for a hefty fee.