Imagine you wanted a show with a huge cast and a story spanning over a hundred years. Now imagine you wanted the show to slip between characters at will, despite the time gap. How would we keep our audience grounded, while keeping the different arcs intertwined so that the momentum never stalls but simply swells?
Well I’ve been watching Dark on Netflix recently, an incredibly well written show, that’s relentlessly ambitious and complicated.
In addition to it’s convoluted structure, it’s an off-beat mystery show, so it’s inevitably hard to work out what exactly is going on from the puzzle pieces we’re given.
So with such wide variance in what we’re watching how do the showrunners manage to create a sense of congruence throughout the show, so that we always know where we are and what to expect.
Tone.
There is a pervasive and ever-building sense of dread in the tone of the show. No matter what character we’re following, what time we’re in, it follows us like the stench of death in the air. This helps everything feel congruent. When things take a turn or we begin to follow an entirely new storyline, instead of having to build momentum from the beginning it naturally slots into the monumental tone of suspense.
Every single scene adds to this tone, swelling it, feeding it. Becoming enveloped by it.
So Tone becomes our anchor, whether we’re deep in the past or revisiting a character we haven’t seen for 8 hours it bouys us from scene to scene swelling word by word, image by image.
That’s the power of tone. When used expertly it can become more than a character in itself.
*Of course this varies by genre, Naked Gun has a very clear tone, but certainly not a swelling one.
The Fellowship Of Ink 
Have always wanted to check out Dark, and even Stephen King was raving about it, if I remember correctly. Thanks to your post, I might very well check it out now. Thanks for sharing, fellow writer!
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