As a show producer for Amazon Prime Video StickyBrian Donovan turns one of Canada’s most bizarre true crimes—the 2011 maple syrup heist in which thieves stole more than $18 million worth of syrup—into a film that could become The most exciting and unique comedy series on television.
The series stars Margo Martindale, Chris Diamantopoulos and executive producer Jamie Lee Curtis. Donovan and Ed Herro co-wrote the pilot and oversee the series.
A senior writer whose credits include the series neighbors and american housewifeIn Donovan, Donovan reveals how he turned this tricky plan into a story filled with interesting characters and humor. Donovan tells ScreenCraft how he approaches plot, how acting can help your writing, and how you should (and shouldn’t) write comedy.
plot guidelines
Donovan says that whether he’s working on a solo project or co-creating something with Herro, his main goal is always “to write something that no one has seen before.”
Aspiring to achieve this goal is no easy feat. It’s difficult to surprise your audience, which is why it’s important to be an educated writer with diverse tastes. Read a lot of scripts, watch a lot of movies and TV, and don’t get stagnant or get comfortable.
In his writers’ room, he said that when anything feels too familiar or rote, they remove it.
“We try very hard to make every example surprising,” he said. “You can do it a million different ways. You can have a regular conversation about a robbery you’re planning. This scene has been seen in a billion shows. But this is on ice in the middle of a Canadian lake. Did it happen between two people fishing? No, probably not.
Of course, this is a true story, so Donovan admits the team also wanted to honor the truth of these characters. Real life is sloppy, and sometimes solutions to problems are messy.
“How do people who have never stolen $20 million worth of syrup know what to do?” he said. “It gave us a lot of interesting questions and interesting dilemmas, and we just embraced those. Going toward weird, hard answers, that always leads to the best scenarios for you.
It could also be a good way to deal with writer’s block, he said. When you feel stuck, think about what a person (or you) would actually do in the situation you created in the story.
Read more: 5 reasons to include true story scripts in your portfolio
“Clingy” (2024)
How acting helps writers
If you’re a writer, especially one in the comedy field, you’ve probably heard the advice that a background in acting or improv can help you become a stronger writer.
Donovan, who grew up in New York comedy classes with Nick Kroll and others, started out as an actor and later started writing through one of his connections. Although he’s figuring it out as he goes, he’s happy with where he’s landed — and not just because writing is more stable than acting.
“It’s very helpful,” he said. “I write from my perspective as an actor. If I didn’t have an acting background, I’d be a worse writer. I don’t know if I could do that?
Being a storyteller means you perform a lot, especially during promotions. But Donovan said he also used his writing as a tool to market talent, writing parts he knew would resonate with other actors.
“It’s much easier to do this knowing how actors approach their craft,” he said. “What are they looking for in the parts. It makes it easier and more fun.
The experience also helped him in conversation. He wanted to write the dialogue that he (and the actors) wanted to say.
“The second piece of dialogue I write is to fulfill a story mission, like trying to set up a backstory or trying to get some information that the audience needs to know. If it feels like a ‘conduit,’ we call it a ‘conduit,’ if it feels like a background Same story, you did it wrong,” Sticky said the show host. “Because people don’t talk like that.”
But even if you’re never in front of an audience as a performer, you should aim for natural dialogue, and the words on the page should indicate to the actor how to read their lines, whether through word choice, subtext, or voice.
“If I were an actor and I read this, if I was supposed to be in this scene, would I know from these words what to do?” he said. “If I don’t know, I have to figure it out. You have to guide the actors to tell the story you want to tell.
Read more: 15 Movies Screenwriters Should Watch to Study Dialogue
“Clingy” (2024)
Don’t try to make things interesting
Amid all the talk here about tone and balancing drama and humor in a story, we wondered what advice he would give to writers trying something akin to drama in their own work.
He said you should never “try to do something funny.” Instead, rely on your character.
If you’re writing a conflicted story (and you probably are), then your characters are going to be in conflict. Such bickering, he said, creates a natural sense of humor. this is the case Stickyin which the characters all want to achieve their criminal goals in different ways. Let them argue, he suggested.
He added, “Try to find characters that you understand might have humor for them, put them in humorous situations, and then make them honest, let them act on their own terms, and the humor will emerge.”
Honesty in writing is very important to him. Honesty will help you find humor and stories.
“The sense of humor comes! We are essentially funny, contradictory, ridiculous people,” he said. “So just being honest, the fun is going to be there, but the drama is going to be there too.”
Tell fewer jokes and focus more on keeping the humor authentic and letting the characters provide the driving force, and you’ll create comedy that’s relatable and surprising.
Read more: Is your script “based on” or “inspired by” a true story? What’s the difference?
