The Dragnet Theory Of Writing

Last Updated on Thursday, 3 April 2008 01:45 Written by Brian! Thursday, 3 April 2008 01:45

I didn’t mean to talk about it so soon, but what the hell, it’s on my mind.

I’m often asked what my inspirations are for Atomic Robo scripts. My answer is that if the scripts I write feel like they could come from Buckaroo Banzai, Indiana Jones, and the Ghostbusters, then I’m on the right track. I omit my final primary influence because those first three present a coherent answer that requires no further explanation — you hear it and you instantly know whether or not Atomic Robo is for you.

But that final influence? Dragnet. It’s easy to see how sci-fi comedies might influence a sci-fi comedy, but Dragnet’s a police procedural. It’s about as far from sci-fi or comedy as you can get. Which requires a little explaining.

The first police procedurals were novels, but it was a radio (and later television) show called Dragnet that really crystalized the genre. It’s easily the most influential police procedural ever produced. While Law and Order has had a significantly longer lifespan and several successful spin-offs (which, themselves, helped to invent police procedural sub-genres), all of those shows draw a line straight back to Dragnet. Even those shows that deviate from the Dragnet formula do so consciously — that is, even in changing the formula, they are still working with it.

It’s a formula that’s been going since the ’50s and it’s never stopped being popular with audiences. Clearly, this is pretty good stuff. So, what is it?

First and foremost: realism. For Dragnet this went as far as using actual LAPD case files and changing nothing but some names. All you really need is the sense that the events could happen or, even better, that they probably did happen. This element’s gotten a little lax in recent years. L&O, and more-so it’s spin-offs, has made some fascinating leaps in forensics — including, but not limited to, “Enhance!”-ing blurry security tapes into near-HD resolution — and CSI basically is science fiction.

But the whole point of the police procedural is that it’s supposed to be grounded in absolute realism. Everything else comes from that or plays into it.

Second: never talk down to the audience. This means no exposition. These shows would grind to a halt if they had to stop every three minutes to explain a particular piece of jargon or the legal minutia behind why an obscure law or certain kind of evidence will make or break a case. Interestingly, the jargon of law (and especially that of police work) has entered into common usage in large part due to Dragnet’s adherence to this part of the formula. Cutting away all exposition keeps things punchy and fast paced; it keeps your dialog and action from falling out of step into an awkward digression. And this ties back to realism. People who share specialized knowledge will naturally speak in jargon and it makes no sense for them to explain what it means to each other. You have to trust your audience to figure things out for themselves on the fly.

Third: focus on the job. The show wasn’t about the characters, it was about the characters doing their jobs. This doesn’t mean that characters or characterizations are unimportant or even secondary. It just means that what we learn about the characters comes through the lens of their jobs — their interactions with co-workers, subordinates, superiors, the public, etc. Again, this ties into realism. The workplace isn’t where you talk about your feelings, personal motivations and life goals, but you can learn everything there is to know about a person by observing them in the workplace.

And it’s that final piece that really makes the Dragnet formula work. Through discreet moments of characterization, any given episode of Dragnet is as good a starting point as any other. The same goes for any good police procedural on television today. Since characterization is inherently nuanced and delivered in minute doses, you have to continually communicate enough about the character in every episode to keep him “alive” and to move his or her story forward without bringing it into the foreground where it might disrupt the flow for regular viewers and confuse new ones.

And since the doses of characterization are small, regular watchers aren’t turned off by any repetition — it’s come and gone in three seconds anyway. Small doses favor the newcomer as well — if you don’t know the context or history around those moments, then they feel like slices of life and it’s only natural that you’d not know the full contexts or histories around them yet.

What this boils down is is that if you enjoy any given episode, then you are almost guaranteed to like all episodes. Repeat customers are the best customers.

This philosophy runs the risk of making episodes feel very similar to one another. While this is a greater problem for a cop show — “Is this the episode of Law and Order with a murder?” — something like Atomic Robo ought to be able to use the strengths of episodic police procedurals while drawing from a large enough pool of weird history, weird science, and weird people to keep things relatively fresh.

Or so I hope.

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