How Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night Blurred the Lines Between Comedy and Drama

Writing a screenplay can seem like a daunting task. Often, an idea sparks and forms the basis of a story. But is that story destined to be a television series or a feature film? A comedy, a drama, or both? Here, award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, the creator of A Few Good Men, The West Wing, and Sports Night, a two-season narrative sports news show, divulges his process for untangling the web of characters and plots and figuring out the proper medium in which to channel each story.

Sorkin was born in 1961 and raised in New York City. As a youth, he discovered an early love for the theatre and dialogue. Aaron devoted his life to stagecraft and studied acting at Syracuse University where he graduated with a degree in the subject.

While searching for work as an actor, Sorkin’s fascination with dialogue boiled over, and he began to explore dramatic writing. After many misses, he wrote the stageplay A Few Good Men, which became an instant hit on Broadway. He later adapted the story into a feature-length screenplay. Upon the film’s release, Sorkin’s Hollywood career exploded. He eventually turned to TV and created Sports Night.

The TV series was a critical hit. It featured a star-studded cast, including Felicity Huffman as Dana Whitaker; Josh Charles as Dan Rydell; Peter Krause as Casey McCall; Joshua Malina as Jeremy Goodwin; William H. Macy as Sam Donovan; Robert Guillaume as Isaac Jaffe; and Sabrina Lloyd as Natalie Hurley.

The show went on to win a number of Emmy awards for directing, writing, and cinematography. Sorkin himself was nominated for the episode “The Apology.” Another episode, titled “Small Town,” which aired in the show’s first season, was nominated for multiple awards that year.

However, ABC canceled Sports Night after only two seasons.

But despite its short run and its half-hour episodes, Sports Night went on to have an outsized influence on television. And with its huge failures and wins, it’s also a great case study for aspiring screenwriters who are learning how to frame their work.

When Sorkin was first working on the concept that would become Sports Night, he was envisioning a full-length feature film. But, he says: “All the stories I was thinking of were short stories. They weren’t long. And I said that to my agent, who said ‘Well, it sounds like you’re describing a television series.’” According to Sorkin, there are two distinguishing factors between TV shows and feature films:

1. 1. Setting. For television series, the setting informs the story and provides a constant well of inspiration for storylines, plotlines, and characters. In feature films, the setting is important, but not quite as much as the story itself. For example, in Sorkin’s Sports Night, the setting of an after-hours sports show (inspired by ESPN’s Sportscenter) allows for natural comedies as well as tensions to arise between editors, network executives, and athletes. Look to some of Sorkin’s other television shows—such as The Newsroom and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip—which follow a similar format.
2. 2. Character arcs. Consider the characters in the first few feature films that pop into mind: the main character is often on a journey, driven by an intense need or desire to accomplish a goal. When the character reaches his or her goal, the story is over. Sorkin says: “If the characters, metaphorically speaking, die at the end of the story—if there’s no more story after that—then it’s a feature.” Now think of your favorite television series: the strength of the characters, who are tethered to their settings, allows the story to go on, and on, and on, and on...

Once Sorkin knew Sports Night would be a television series, he had to determine whether it was a comedy or drama. This was in the late ‘90s when networks were adamant on placing types of shows in buckets. Sorkin’s dry wit and subtle humor infused the writing, however, which nudged the show towards sitcom territory (at least in executives’ minds).

Sitcoms, at the time, featured a laugh track, a throwback to the time when all television was filmed in front of a live audience. The laugh track on Sports Night has been talked about, rehashed, and even blamed for the show’s short run. Sorkin never wanted it in the first place.

His writing could speak for itself, and his plotlines and character development surpassed a single genre—in fact, part of Sorkin’s aim with Sports Night was to play with the whole concept of stereotypical sitcoms, bringing drama into a form that previously featured only comedy. The New Yorker’s Tad Friend wrote that “because the American sitcom is so tradition-bound, what Sorkin is proposing is truly revolutionary.”

When you’re writing your own screenplay, don’t be afraid to fuse humor with tragedy, drama with levity. Sorkin paved the road for future hits like the mock docu-series The Office and his own The West Wing, which focused on politics in America.

• Be bold and experiment with bending genres.
• Develop your characters and work on getting to truly know them. Firmly plant them in your setting and see what stories unfold.

Even though Sports Night had a short run and was canceled so many years ago, its legacy lives on today as each new wave of Sorkin fans and aspiring screenwriters come to discover it and appreciate its role in the canon of revolutionary American television. For aspiring screenwriters hoping to create their own television series, refer to Aaron’s MasterClass for how to develop characters, find story ideas, incorporate research into your plot, and set productive writing habits.

Find more screenwriting inspiration in Aaron Sorkin’s MasterClass.

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