Bonus: Five Essential Writing Lessons from HBO's Succession (Companion to Ep. 243)
In this special bonus episode, we’re exploring the brilliant—and often brutal—writing lessons behind HBO’s Succession. Host Tony Ortiz digs deep into the series’ power struggles, betrayals, and psychological dysfunction, offering five key takeaways that can sharpen your storytelling craft. Whether it’s:
· Creating flawed but understandable characters
· Playing with unstable power dynamics
· Fueling character arcs with internal conflict
· Revealing your story’s moral costs through outsider perspectives, or
· Mastering subtext-rich dialogue
This episode is packed with actionable insights to boost your creativity. Plus, there’s a free companion guide at Spuntoday.com to help you visualize and apply these lessons. If you’re ready to learn from one of TV’s best dramas and fuel your own creative process, this episode is for you.
🎧 Plus, download the free companion guide to follow along — complete with reflective writing prompts and scene-based analysis.
Download the FREE guide here: The Succession Companion Guide
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transcript
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transcript 〰️
Tony Ortiz [00:00:02]:
Hey everyone, welcome to another Spun Today bonus episode. In this one, we're diving into the dark drama of power struggles, betrayals, and psychological dysfunction in HBO's Succession. This episode is all about unpacking 5 key writing takeaways from the series and how you can use them to sharpen your own storytelling craft. If you want to follow along visually, You can grab the free Succession companion guide at Spuntoday.com. It's a quick breakdown designed to go hand in hand with what we'll be exploring here and has a few extras as well. For your convenience, I'll link to it in the episode notes. Now let's get into it. Lesson 1: Why Succession hooks us even when we don't like the characters.
Tony Ortiz [00:00:51]:
Succession introduces us to people who are selfish, cruel, and deeply flawed, and then dares us to care about them anyway. That contradiction is the hook. The writing takeaway for us there is you don't need likable characters, you need understandable ones. When writers give us access to the character's fears, desires, and internal logic, empathy follows, even when morality does not. Lesson 2: Logan Roy and the illusion of power. Logan Roy, the patriarch of the family, rules not through stability but through unpredictability. Power in Succession is never secure. It's constantly negotiated, revoked, and dangled just out of reach.
Tony Ortiz [00:01:44]:
The writing takeaway for us there is power can be most interesting when it's unstable. Let authority shift, fracture, and even contradict itself. Tension thrives when characters are never secure where they stand. Lesson 3: Kendall Roy as the tragic heir. Kendall's story is one of ambition colliding with identity. He wants to be his father and he wants to destroy him, often at the same time. A clear writing takeaway for us there is That internal conflict is story fuel. The more a character's goals contradict their emotional needs, the more compelling their character arcs become.
Tony Ortiz [00:02:30]:
Lesson 4: Tom and Greg as outsiders within the system. The characters of Tom and Greg offer a ground-level view of the Roy Empire. Through them and their machinations, we see how power infects even those who start with none. A great writing takeaway for us there is that secondary characters can reveal the moral cost of a system more clearly than the protagonists. And we as writers can use outsiders as mirrors for our world's values. For example, Tom and Greg reflect to us the grasp power at all costs world that the Roy family operates within. Lesson number 5: Dialogue as dominance. In Succession, dialogue isn't about communication, it's about leverage.
Tony Ortiz [00:03:25]:
Every line is a negotiation, a threat, or some sort of test. And the writing takeaway for us is that strong dialogue lives in the subtext. Let characters speak around the truth, not directly at it. What's withheld often matters more than what's said. And that's my bonus breakdown of Succession: writing lessons from power struggles, betrayals, and psychological dysfunction. If you'd like to listen to the full-length episode, go back and check out episode 243 of the Spontanate Podcast. And if you want to see all 5 takeaways slightly expanded and laid out in a clean visual format, Grab the free companion guide now at Spuntoday.com. It's designed to be a quick reference for your own creative process.
Tony Ortiz [00:04:15]:
A direct link will be in the episode notes for your convenience. And if you enjoyed this bonus episode, check out the other companion guides and bonus episodes like the one I did for Daredevil, The Penguin, and many more. These episodes are all about learning from great storytelling and applying those lessons to your own craft. Thanks for listening and keep writing.