The ability to be writing towards something that was actually going to be a whole series was a really big lure.
Tim KringI really enjoy the pastiche storytelling of watching separate stories slowly collide with one another. The audience gets to participate in trying to guess and decipher how one story will connect with another.
Tim KringNow, the relationship the storyteller has with the audience is a much higher quality relationship. You treat them with a lot more intelligence because the truth is that it's not my fault if you don't know what's going on. There are plenty of ways for you to find out. You can talk to all kinds of people, and you've got access to all this information. The onus is no longer on us, as a storyteller, to tell you. You can go out and find out yourself.
Tim KringYou can very often start a new season with a lot more viewers than you had, leaving off the season before. It's a chance to pull the show into a train station, stop the train, and let all these new viewers on, so you can tell a new story. In some ways, a second season is a chance to tell a brand new story that you can wrap up, at the end of it.
Tim KringIn the shows I've done serialized storytelling with, there are big open questions, but you like every episode to be identifiable as what it is. It's also very important that each season is identifiable. There's usually some big thing that you're trying to wrap up. There are big bows that you're trying to tie, by the end of the season, that you would do anyway because it's just good storytelling to tie those things up.
Tim KringTou don't have to spoon feed things to the audience. They have to work at things. Oftentimes, with binge-able stuff, second and third viewings are really important because you see, "Oh, that character I didn't like, that was supposed to be that way because, in Episode 9, he turned out to be a turncoat. Now, I'm going to go back and watch all those moments that I felt that way about him." That's what's fun about it.
Tim Kring