Help with a show being created

[Diablo27]

So I've got a small team (building up, just friends and a family member so far) helping to create an animated show we hope to get on television. It started five years ago but in the last year we've started to get quite serious with it and I can see it happening, but I need your help.

Basically, it's a fantasy about a huge war with evil and good and resistance and magic and everything but lines will be blurred between good and evil. The ends justify the means you know? And I need help with coming up with ways that the main characters could disregard morality for good, there's the obvious sacrificing of innocents but I don't know how to work that in. I need more than that too, and how it would happen because these characters are actually really good people, though one is very proud and arrogant, another is a host for a demon (don't worry, it's much different than Naruto, it just sounds similar) that sometimes takes control and uses his body to do horrible things but that doesn't mean he's breaking morality, it means a demon is breaking morality it never had.

Help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Frybird]

So I've got a small team (building up, just friends and a family member so far) helping to create an animated show we hope to get on television. It started five years ago but in the last year we've started to get quite serious with it and I can see it happening, but I need your help.

Basically, it's a fantasy about a huge war with evil and good and resistance and magic and everything but lines will be blurred between good and evil. The ends justify the means you know? And I need help with coming up with ways that the main characters could disregard morality for good, there's the obvious sacrificing of innocents but I don't know how to work that in. I need more than that too, and how it would happen because these characters are actually really good people, though one is very proud and arrogant, another is a host for a demon (don't worry, it's much different than Naruto, it just sounds similar) that sometimes takes control and uses his body to do horrible things but that doesn't mean he's breaking morality, it means a demon is breaking morality it never had.

Help would be greatly appreciated.

First off, the usual downer-debbie realism: The chance of breaking into television out of the metaphorical garage is very close to impossible.

But that's what the Internet is for.

----

On Topic:

Creating grey-morality situations mostly comes from acknowledging that basically real life is nothing but grey morality.

Rarely anyone ever will admit to being evil, and people have reasons to do things that others might see as evil, sometimes even good reasons.

Also, people are being generally selfish, that should be a good starting point in forcing characters in fiction to act in conflict of thier own morals, be it because the character himself is flawed (In Fantasy Settings you are for example free to explore racism), or because he is dependent on people whose morality clashes with thier own.

For example, the characters may be really in need of a horse. There is only a farmer in the closer vincinty, and for him to give them a horse he demands that they will take care of some thieves that regulary steal from him. Only that those "bandits" are a bunch of starving people with no where else to go and nothing to trade or barter, and who were rejected by the farmer when they just asked.

Another real simple example is having heroes fight henchmen who turn out to be actually quite decent and normal people, but can't really just stop being henchmen because of thier beliefs, of thier conviction, out of fear or just because they need to bring food on the table.

EDIT:

Even though it's a pretty overlong video that is also rather about roleplaying than storytelling, you might want to see this on terms of basic conflicts of morality: http://spoonyexperiment.com/2012/03/08/counter-monkey-the-prisoner-dilemma/

 

[Thaliur]

So I've got a small team (building up, just friends and a family member so far) helping to create an animated show we hope to get on television. It started five years ago but in the last year we've started to get quite serious with it and I can see it happening, but I need your help.

Basically, it's a fantasy about a huge war with evil and good and resistance and magic and everything but lines will be blurred between good and evil. The ends justify the means you know? And I need help with coming up with ways that the main characters could disregard morality for good, there's the obvious sacrificing of innocents but I don't know how to work that in. I need more than that too, and how it would happen because these characters are actually really good people, though one is very proud and arrogant, another is a host for a demon (don't worry, it's much different than Naruto, it just sounds similar) that sometimes takes control and uses his body to do horrible things but that doesn't mean he's breaking morality, it means a demon is breaking morality it never had.

Help would be greatly appreciated.

So, an animated remake of Farscape? Sounds good. I'm afraid I can't really help you with it, but please don't screw it up.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

If you're not confident in your own writing ability, why not hire/recruit a writer?
People underestimate how much work and effort it takes to write professionally. They think, "Hey, I can spell pretty good, and I've got some rad ideas, how hard could it be?"

Very few non-writers seem to understand the amount of thought and effort that goes into plotting, world building, character development, pacing, dialogue, structuring, research, linguistics, conveyance, nuance, metaphor. Every plot point must arc to a satisfactory conclusion; every character needs depth and motivation behind each breath they draw; every sentence or second of screentime needs to be carefully balanced between pacing, exposition and character development, and when you add humour to the mix it becomes even more complicated. Good writing requires an enormous amount of foresight, attention to detail and constant revision. As they say, a writer should be judged on what they cut out, rather than what they leave in: a true professional will write a hundred words for every ten they actually use.

Coming up with ideas and plot points is the easiest and most fun part of the entire process. If you're having trouble with that, fitting those ideas into a narrative structure that flows with perfect timing while simultaneously maintaining your artistic vision and avoiding confusion or plot holes... That's going to be a hundred times harder.