5 KEYS OF THE SUCCESS OF LOCKED UP
A ground-breaking Spanish TV show.
Iván Escobar is one of the most important writers in Spanish television today. Throughout his career, he has worked in shows such as “El Barco”, “Los Hombres de Paco”, or “Los Serrano”. He has also written the screenplay for the movie Kamikaze, which was based on his own book.
He is one of the architects of the recent success of Spanish fiction, and his most significant contribution to this day is the television show LOCKED UP, where he is the showrunner.
What makes Escobar such an exceptional writer? How did LOCKED UP connect with such a wide audience?
That’s what we’re going to try to discover here:
1. Connection
“Whenever there are human conflicts it does not matter in which environment they occur.”
Escobar has written about places where he could not have been, and about experiences that are not his own, in series such as “El Barco” or LOCKED UP. How does he do it? Could it be that the “write about what you know” rule does not apply to him?
Not at all! When Ivan embarks on a project, the first thing he looks for is what he calls his “grounding”; this is the connection he finds with the characters in the story. It does not matter if the story develops in a fantastic environment, or in a women’s prison, human conflicts are always the same everywhere humans go.
Greek theater and modern TV shows talk about the same things, human problems!
2. Empathy
“When writing the screenplay of a TV show, work that you do not do alone, you must get into the heads of several characters. That’s where the essence of the screenwriter lays.”
Similar to the previous point. Nowadays TV shows are increasingly complex and with more interesting and diverse characters. Writers have to project the experiences of these characters into themselves and vice-versa. They have to understand them to write them well.
As difficult or impossible as it may seem, screenwriters have to put themselves in the shoes of sexual predators, criminals and abused women to convey their stories truthfully.
Being a screenwriter is a continuous exercise in empathy.
3. Read more and experience more
“Today, many writers learn how to write by watching TV shows; I think you have to read, you have to live [to learn how to write].”
It’s no secret that to write well, you have to read a lot. Watching all the TV shows that come out is a great way to maintain the pulse of the culture, of what’s being produced, but that is not enough to achieve writing at a professional level.
Books explore different narratives, new ideas and they expand the writer’s vocabulary and technique. Essential tools for any screenwriter.
But reading is not enough either! They have to live.
Experiencing new situations and moments expands the area of emotions that writers can talk about. Surely they are not the same after parachuting themselves from a plane at 13.000 feet.
Audiences are continually searching for new things, and creators must do the same to keep their demand satisfied.
4. Decision Making
“Being a showrunner means taking 100 or 200 decisions a day.”
Having clear ideas and making decisions at the moment is a crucial tool to be a showrunner. The production of the different episodes run at the same time, the writer’s table continues writing the end of the show, and the scene that they are shooting right now does not work! To be a showrunner means being able to solve all those problems in a single day because tomorrow he will have to face more.
To make such quick decisions, you have to know what you’re doing. Years of experience in the sector have given Escobar the ability to make such choices swiftly, he has already faced similar problems before and knows their solutions.
There are certain things that you only learn by working each day.
5. Staying in touch
“People no longer want comfortable stories; they want stories that talk about their lives, about their problems, about their surroundings, about things that afflict them, that worry them, that give them pleasure …”
It’s no secret that the TV industry has completely changed in a few years. The irruption of American TV shows into the Spanish market has made creators evolve, not only in their way of storytelling but in what stories they choose to tell.
In LOCKED UP Escobar takes a huge risk telling raw and real stories, intense emotions that come to a spectator who is prepared and eager for that sort of fiction. TV shows are no longer mere companions at mealtime or comforting fables for bedtime.
Escobar knows that TV shows can tell exciting and complex ideas which can be explored and developed throughout seasons.
LOCKED UP has been a success because its creators faced the challenges of making modern and transgressive fiction at a moment when the Spanish industry needed it the most.
Thanks to shows like this one, Spanish TV fiction is beginning to bloom in the rest of the world.
And we need more!
