Dying for Sex: A Lesson in Tone

Episode Transcript: Dying for Sex

Why Dying for Sex Is a Masterclass in Tone

This episode, we’re going to be talking about Dying for Sex, created by Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock. This is an absolutely extraordinary limited series, and we’re going to be using it to talk about a topic I haven’t discussed for quite a while on this podcast: tone.

We’re going to be looking specifically at episode 5, and at a very specific moment in that episode, to show you how you can control tone in your own screenwriting. Because one of the incredible things about Dying for Sex is the way it balances a comedic tone with one of the darkest and most complicated subjects possible.

Its main character, Molly, played by Michelle Williams — and this is based on a true story, based on a podcast by Molly Kochan — is dying of cancer. Molly has never had an orgasm with another person. And she goes on a journey over the course of Dying for Sex to achieve her orgasm before she dies.

This show about cancer is handled as a comedy that will also make you cry and think, with deeply fleshed-out characters.

So we’re going to be talking about how you handle dramatic material in a comedic way — or vice versa, how you handle comedic material in a dramatic way. How do you find that balance in tone? How do you juxtapose different tones within a scene or a script?

And most importantly, if your tone is not working, how can you use some of the lessons we’re going to learn from Dying for Sex to adjust your own writing so that in a rewrite, the tone you want rises to the surface.

Before we start, I want to warn you: I am going to spoil the hell out of episodes 1 through 5 of Dying for Sex. In order to understand these lessons about tone, you absolutely need to know the plot. I will not spoil the ending — I won’t spoil episodes 6, 7, or 8. But if you have not watched Dying for Sex yet and don’t want the beginning spoiled, now is a good time to hit pause, watch the show, and come back.

What Shakespeare Taught Me About Tone

I first learned about tone from one of my great mentors. Peter Saccio was my Shakespeare teacher at Dartmouth College. He was one of the world’s authorities on Shakespeare, and one of the strongest lecturers I’ve ever had the benefit of studying with.

Peter was giving a lecture on Henry IV, Part 2, talking about the character of Falstaff. You don’t need to know any Shakespeare to get the gist of this story.

In Henry IV, Part 1, Falstaff basically steals the show — he’s the Jack Black of the Elizabethan era, a comic clown that everybody fell in love with. He’s there to lend comic relief to this extremely dramatic story about Hal, who’s going to become Henry V.

And when everybody comes to watch Henry IV, Part 2, they’re coming to watch Falstaff. But Falstaff isn’t in Henry IV, Part 2. We find out very early in the play that Falstaff is dead.

And Falstaff’s death is reported by a drunk sex worker in an absolutely hilarious scene played for comic relief. What Peter Saccio did was a deep analysis of what this woman is actually saying.

Her monologue is hilarious because she’s so drunk she can barely get her words out. But underneath the comedy, when he actually showed us what she was saying beneath her discombobulation, it’s potentially one of the most devastating monologues ever written. I can tell you this because I watched Peter Saccio move a lecture hall of 250 students to tears with his deep reading of what was underneath that comedic monologue.

His theory was that Shakespeare had actually written the dramatic version of that monologue — the solemn version that reports the death of one of the most beloved characters in his canon. And that after writing it, he realized that delivering a dramatic monologue there would shift the entire feeling of the piece.

From that point forward, the play would not be a play about Henry IV. It would be a play about the audience’s expectations and their need to process Falstaff’s death. His theory was that Shakespeare, realizing the effect of that dramatic monologue on the tone and structure of the play, rewrote it and turned his dramatic monologue comedic.

Nobody knows if Peter Saccio was right — except maybe Shakespeare’s ghost. But regardless, the lesson he gave me was incredibly valuable as a screenwriter.

Lesson 1: Tone Is Something You Layer Over Your Script in Rewrite

All too often, if we’re really doing the job right — if we’re really writing our truth — in early drafts we don’t have a lot of control over how it comes out. We’re writing a broad comedy and something really dark comes out. We’re writing a naturalistic drama and a snake appears and eats the main character. We’re writing a romantic comedy and suddenly we’re writing something slapstick.

When we’re really recording what we see, hear, and feel as artists — doing what we call in Write Your Screenplay the “me draft” of writing — we are subject to what our subconscious mind gives us.

Many screenwriters get really scared when they find themselves writing the wrong tone. They’re writing a romantic comedy and suddenly they’re writing horror. What do I do with that?

What Peter Saccio taught me was: that’s not a big deal. If Shakespeare can rewrite one of the greatest monologues ever written and turn it into a joke, we can rewrite our scenes that don’t fit the tone of what we’re trying to accomplish. Tone is actually something you layer over your screenwriting. Tone is a rewriting tool.

Lesson 1: tone is something you layer over your script — not something you worry about in early phases. Any piece of writing can be translated to any tone.

You’ve written some magical realism? You’ve written the giant snake that eats your character in a naturalistic drama? No problem. Maybe that becomes a monologue. Maybe that becomes a dream. Maybe that becomes a feeling you press down into your character, and you allow it to affect their actions and dialogue in a naturalistic way.

From a writing process point of view, we want to accept our truth rather than trying to push our truth through the meat grinder of what it’s supposed to do in our script.

Lesson 2: Juxtapositions of Tone Can Be Highly Compelling

The first play I wrote was called The Funeral. It was very serious, very dark. I was in college, life was hard, and I needed everyone to understand how hard life was. The Funeral was dark as hell, and I wrote every single thing to be dark.

I called up my buddy — the darkest actor I knew — to play the lead role. He went on to have a huge career; he is now one of the most famous actors in the world. But he called in sick the day we were supposed to have our first reading, and I didn’t know what to do. So I called somebody I knew would show up. I called my friend Jay.

Jay was a comedic actor. Because there was so little lead time, he didn’t have time to read the play before the reading. So he showed up cold, and he played every single line for comedy.

He played this incredibly dark character in a comedic way. He worked against my intentions — not on purpose; he just assumed, what idiot would cast him in a dramatic lead?

Jay saved my play.

What I realized as I watched the reading was that the darkness of the piece would have been so isolating for the audience — it would have caused them to put up a wall to protect themselves.

What Jay’s performance did, by juxtaposing the darkness of the play with the lightness of his character, was allow the audience to let their guard down, to get seduced by the piece, to forget that it was going to hurt them — and to be much more emotionally moved than they would have been if my intentions had been followed.

Jay came up to me afterwards and said, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize it was a drama.” And I said, “Jay, you just saved it.”

Your piece does not have to be just one tone. In Henry IV, Shakespeare is writing a serious history play and he’s still got the comic relief. He does the same thing in Hamlet — one of the greatest tragedies of all time — with the funny gravediggers.

Your piece about cancer doesn’t have to just be sad, but also your comedy about cancer doesn’t have to just be funny. You can get away with a lot more when it comes to tone than you would expect.

Lesson 3: The Tone Monster and the Genre Monster

We talk often about feeding the genre monster. When I say genre, I don’t mean action movie, horror movie, thriller, comedy, romance. What I actually mean is the feeling that your screenplay delivers. Tone — and juxtapositions of tone — are part of the way we deliver that feeling.

You must feed the genre monster. If you’re writing an action movie, you’ve got to have badass action sequences. If you’re writing a romantic comedy, you’ve got to give us the feeling that love is possible and challenging. If you’re writing a slasher movie, there better be some slashing. If it’s psychological horror, there better be some psychological horror. And you need to do that on a repeated basis.

Tone is the way you choose to do that. And you can weave a lot of different tones into any genre.

Guardians of the Galaxy — big silly action movie that will make you cry. BoJack Horseman — dumbest possible show, a thousand puns per page, that will make you cry. Succession — dark, dark, dark drama that has this satirical element and makes you fall in love with these horrible characters. There’s a lot of flexibility in tone.

Think of the tone monster as a chorus. You get to feed all of them, or as many as you want. It’s not wrong to have one tone, but you have a lot more flexibility with tone than you do with genre.

The genre monster — every seven pages or so, you’ve got to feed it. If you’re not feeding it, you’re bait-and-switching your audience. In an action movie, you might write your most beautiful dramatic scene and then have to rewrite it so it happens during a car chase or while characters are trying to scale the side of a building.

Tone in Television: The Engine

This becomes even more important in television. In television — whether you’re writing a pilot, staffing on a show, or showrunning — we have something called engine that we don’t have in the same way in feature films.

Engine is the replicable elements that make every single episode feel like the same show. The audience in the pilot has a very specific genre experience, a tone experience, and a feeling experience. Some people don’t like that feeling and don’t watch again — those people are not your audience. But some people fall in love with that feeling.

Your engine is all the different elements that combine to create that feeling of both “the same” and “different” in every episode.

Feature films are generally about the times in our lives when we went through a profound change: one day this thing happened, I made these choices, and my life was never the same. TV series structure is different. It’s much more about the patterns we get stuck in — about how we repeat and then break out of the same patterns again and again.

Characters in a TV show both change and repeat the same pattern. If we fully arc a character before the end of a TV show, we break the engine. Suddenly the show doesn’t feel the same. The people who clicked “next episode” wanted to feel the same way again, but in a different way — familiarity and novelty at once.

So the pilot lands not only the change of your character, but also the pattern, the engine that’s going to drive every episode after that. Character, tone, genre, and other elements combine to create the special formula that makes your show feel a very specific way. Your pilot is a blueprint for everything that follows.

A limited series is an even more complicated creature. It does everything a series does and everything a feature does. Each episode needs to feel the same but different. But unlike a series that resets the engine at the end of a season, a limited series works like a giant feature film — by the end, the character is going to fully arc and the audience will reach a feeling of completion.

The danger is that if we just think of a limited series like a giant feature, episodes 1, 2, and 3 might not feel the same. And if they don’t feel the same, we break the engine and the audience won’t come back.

The Engine of Dying for Sex

Molly, played brilliantly by Michelle Williams, is in couples therapy with her husband Steve, played by Jay Duplass, when she finds out her breast cancer has returned — it’s stage 4, and she is going to die. There is only one thing Molly wants: to have sex with her husband. The reason they’re in therapy is that since her diagnosis, Steve will not touch her.

Steve is everything you would want in a caretaker and nothing you would want in a husband at this point. He is organized, he understands her condition, he is there for her emotionally — but there is no limit to what he is willing to go through as long as he doesn’t have to have sex with his wife.

When Molly tries to give him a blowjob, it goes absolutely terribly. He ends up weeping, telling her that her mastectomy scars make him sad and make him realize he’s going to lose her.

So Molly makes a huge decision. She is going to leave her husband — her caretaker — and go through this with her best friend, Nikki, played by Jenny Slate.

Nikki is everything you would want in a friend and nothing you would want in a caretaker. She is disorganized, anxious, a total mess of a lovely human being — completely unprepared for the demands of supporting a friend through cancer treatment. But she loves Molly more than anything in the world.

You can already see the engine and the comedy beginning. Wrong caretaker gone, messed-up caretaker present. Emotionally distant relationship gone, emotionally close relationship present. The pressure between these is going to be part of what works.

Molly’s dream — the engine driving all 8 episodes — is to have an orgasm with another person before she dies. She is finally, as she deals with stage 4 cancer, going to explore the sexuality she has never explored before.

And we also know that when she was 7 years old, Molly was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend — a fact mentioned by Steve during the blowjob incident. So the third element of the engine: a character who has never explored her sexuality, exploring it for the first time, but with this repressed trauma she has never dealt with.

Part of what keeps the show tonally a comedy is the running narration in Molly’s head. Like any good voiceover, there’s pressure between what the narration says and what Molly is actually capable of doing.

Over the course of four episodes, we watch Molly go from horrible internet dating and disastrous attempts at one-night stands toward actually finding what she likes — which turns out not to be traditional sex at all, but BDSM. She gets some advice from a wonderful character named Bee, who tells her that to be a “top” she first needs to learn to be submissive. Molly ignores that advice, which causes some unexpected emotional complications.

But by episode 5, Molly is doing pretty well. She has a little harem of BDSM partners. She has learned to express what she wants, to overcome her own judgment, to be both submissive and dominant, and that dominance is also about giving the other person what they need.

She has two particularly lovely relationships: one with a man who dresses up as a dog (known as “Pet”), and one with her neighbor — played brilliantly by Rob Delaney, known simply as “Neighbor Guy” — who at the beginning of the series seems like a jerk but who is turned on by Molly’s dominance and with whom she develops a genuinely beautiful relationship.

But — crucially — none of her partners know she is sick. Only Nikki knows.

We are only at episode 5. She can’t arc yet. If she does, episodes 6, 7, and 8 won’t feel like the rest of the series. The writers need to reset the engine.

Resetting the Engine: Bringing In Mom

One of the most powerful ways to reset an engine is by introducing a new character. In traditional TV series, this often happens at the start of a second or third season.

Consider The Sopranos: by the end of season 1, the engine is built partly on the fact that Tony’s mother is constantly manipulating every good thing he does and turning it against him. But by the end of the season, she’s pushed it too far — the engine is broken. So in season 2, the show introduces Tony’s sister, who plays the same role the mother once played, but with enough restraint to keep the engine running going forward.

When you introduce a new character in a TV show or limited series, that character is usually there to reset the engine — to get the problems going again in the way they used to, but in a slightly different way. And that character has to be fantastic. They cannot be a stock character.

In episode 5, the writers bring in Mom.

Think about who this woman actually is. Her daughter was sexually abused at age 7 by Mom’s boyfriend. Instead of being there for her daughter, Mom got addicted to drugs and went on a series of near-suicides — blaming herself for what happened — while Molly, the one who had been abused, had to take care of her mother and make sure she didn’t kill herself.

This could very easily become a one-note character. But the character we get is so interesting and complicated. She’s played by Sissy Spacek.

Mom is there because — despite Molly’s progress — two critical problems remain unresolved: none of her partners know she has cancer, and she has not dealt with the childhood sexual abuse. She seems to have found healing without addressing either. Mom is there to stir both problems back up.

Meanwhile, Nikki has genuinely grown into the caretaker Molly needs — which means that engine is broken too. And Steve has disappeared. Mom will bring Steve back into the mix.

How Mom Breaks Molly’s Secret

Nikki has a tooth that needs to be removed, which means she cannot attend one day of chemotherapy. Rather than force a sick friend to skip her dental surgery, Molly does the thing she doesn’t want to do: she calls her mom. Mom doesn’t even know the cancer is back. It has been 10 months.

We’re expecting Mom — from everything we’ve learned — to be terrible. But when Molly calls her, Mom says, “I will be there right now. Where are you?”

That’s not the mom we expected. She’s complicated.

Mom shows up with a three-legged dog. It turns out Mom is now adopting animals — she lives on a farm and saves all different kinds of animals. Again, not what we expected. But also: her daughter is immunocompromised and probably shouldn’t have a dog in her apartment.

Mom takes Molly to chemo — and then a distant cousin shows up. Mom has told everyone in the family Molly’s secret. She’s done it out of concern, but she’s doing the same thing Steve used to do: giving Molly the support she thinks Molly needs, not the support Molly actually wants.

And then Steve shows up too — also with food — inserting himself back into her care. Mom has brought Steve back into the mix. The engine is running again.

Molly texts Nikki, but Nikki is high after her surgery. Her boyfriend — who is finally getting a moment alone with her — lies to Molly and tells her the texts aren’t from Nikki. Like Mom, he is trying to protect Nikki in the way he wants, not the way Nikki wants.

When Nikki finds out he hid this from her, she will destroy their relationship. We’ve taken Nikki from the perfect caretaker who had found balance, and disrupted her again.

Having failed to reach Nikki, Molly texts Pet. He shows up at the chemotherapy and basically scares everyone else off — nobody wants to deal with the reality of the sexual life Molly has been living, including Steve, who has shown up with his new girlfriend.

Molly is in heaven. Pet’s total acceptance of her has given her what she needs. And now, honoring the support he showed her, she agrees to fulfill a wish he had nervously shared at the start of the episode: she takes him home and pees on him.

In the middle of this, Mom walks in. Mom berates both of them, then — in a moment of unintentional cruelty — tells Pet that Molly has just had chemo and he may be radioactive from her urine. He has an anxiety attack.

Molly can’t feel her hands enough to remove his collar, so she has to call Neighbor Guy to come cut it off. And Mom, of course, tells him too.

Molly’s secret has been broken to both of her closest partners. The problem she thought she’d sidestepped has come roaring back. And now two things remain: her relationship with Mom, and what happened to her when she was 7 years old.

Chemo Brain and Charades: Tone in Action

What has been set up is the darkest scene in the piece thus far — a confrontation between a mother who wants to love her daughter but is judging her for the sexual journey that’s brought her healing, who has blown up every relationship that matters to her, and a daughter who must finally confront both the parentalization she’s endured her whole life and the abuse she suffered as a child.

This is the level of drama we’re dealing with — a scene that could sit comfortably in The Celebration or a Lars von Trier film. And this is supposed to be a comedy.

So how do the writers adapt that? The answers to any problem in your script are not out there somewhere in the universe. They’re in what you already wrote.

This character has just come from chemo. That means she has chemo brain. And just by remembering that — by understanding that she is going to have the most serious and important conversation of her life at a time when she can barely recollect words — the writers add a tone on top of this dramatic conversation that makes it funny.

The scene starts around 24:44 into episode 5.

“How dare you!” — that’s Molly. We’re finally going to have this confrontation.

Mom does not respond with contrition. She responds: “What? How dare you tell him anything about me?” And then: “What is the big deal about telling people? Why does everything have to be a secret?”

We are in a dramatic scene.

Mom: “I’m helping you.” Molly: “No, you’re not helping me. It makes me feel like I’m—”

And then she loses track. “Fuck. I forgot the word I was going to say. Fucking chemo brain.”

Suddenly, this has become a scene about a woman trying to find the word to say what she’s always needed to say to her mother. It turns into a game of charades. Molly shakes her elbow. Mom guesses: “Weird?” Molly tries again. “Ragdoll? Little scary ragdoll girl?”

They are playing charades, and this scene that was so dark has become so funny. Two tones are happening at once: we’re in this dramatic confrontation, and it’s playing out in a comedic way.

It’s playing out that way because the writers didn’t just make the scene about what it’s supposed to do. They remembered who the character is — exactly how she is navigating chemo brain in this deeply emotional situation.

Finally, Molly finds the word. “Broken,” she says. “It makes me feel like I’m broken.”

If you take the game of charades out of this, it’s a purely dramatic scene — and in fact it would be a melodramatic scene. Characters saying exactly what they feel, with no subtext. Very well-written, but melodramatic.

Do you see what the tonal shift does? It elevates everything. It reminds us this is a comedy. But it also makes this confrontation between daughter and mother different from every other confrontation between daughter and mother we’ve ever seen. It gives it a level of specificity and character that makes us fall in love with this relationship.

Playing Against the Tone

Molly: “I don’t want you here, okay? I don’t want you here.” Mom: “Why are you doing this to me?” Molly: “I’m not doing anything to you. I am trying to—”

And then chemo brain again.

This time, Michelle Williams is doing the charades game, but look at the look on her face. The first time it was funny. Now she is playing against the tone — showing us her pain even as she plays the game again.

The writing synthesizes these two tones. We are in funny and painful at the same time. And the reason this works is not just her performance — it’s because this is what the show is. This is what we’re watching in Dying for Sex, episode after episode: things that are so silly and so funny existing alongside something so painful and so real and so dark.

Mom guesses “glue.” Then “weave a basket?”

Finally: “Heal,” Molly says. “I’m trying to heal.”

Mom: “I want you to heal. That’s why I’m helping you.” Molly: “No, you don’t help me. Maybe I let you think that you help me — because that’s what I’ve always done. I have to be the one to protect you.”

Do you see the drama of what’s happening? A daughter who has spent her entire life protecting her mother — making sure Mom didn’t take drugs and die, making sure Mom didn’t kill herself over what happened when Molly was 7 years old. A woman who has not expressed her own wants or her own voice her whole life, and who is now speaking the truth.

Michelle Williams plays this as if it’s the child speaking. She’s gone from the adult back to being in that moment. “I have to,” not “I had to.” Delivered in a childlike voice that makes us understand that a part of her is still there. And a great actor can only do that when you’ve really done your work as a writer.

Mom: “That was a very hard moment for me.” Molly: “I’m so sick of your guilt. Every time you look at me, you feel guilty.”

And then Mom shifts. Molly has spoken her truth, and Mom gets it. Maybe.

Mom: “I failed you. I’m the one who left you alone with that man — while I was passed out down the hall from whatever he put in my drink. I’m the one who let him ruin you.”

Molly: “I’m not ruined.”

She is standing up for herself. She is owning everything — the sexual exploration, the journey, all of it.

Mom: “You do blame me.” Molly: “No, I don’t blame you. It’s my fault too. I saw him put something in your drink.”

Whoa.

There are certain obligatory scenes — things that absolutely must happen in your script. But they can’t happen in exactly the way we expect. This is one of them. And there’s another layer we didn’t see coming.

Molly: “I saw him. And I didn’t say anything.”

Now we have Molly’s real shame. Because even though Mom didn’t do it perfectly — even though Molly had to fight to get Mom to say “I failed you” — that moment opens Molly up to finally share her actual experience. Her actual shame. Her actual guilt. With the one person she’s needed to tell her whole life.

Mom: “You didn’t know.” Molly: “He smiled at me when he did it. I liked that I had something you didn’t know about. I liked that he chose me over you.”

The next layer of shame. And now:

Molly: “So it’s not you.” Mom: “Well, it wasn’t you. Is that what you think, honey? It wasn’t you.”

These two women who have never been able to talk about this have given each other the healing they both needed.

But the characters can’t arc yet. We are only in episode 5.

Molly: “Maybe not. We’re not good for each other.”

They came this close — and then broke again. Maybe there’s a way we can love each other but be apart.

This is how TV works. In dramatic television, you can’t just watch a character fail to change over and over with no variation. The joy — even in Seinfeld, even in Curb Your Enthusiasm — comes from watching the character try to fight their way out of a pattern, try to change, only to find themselves back where they started.

In a limited series, we cannot create the full change until the final episode. Once we break the engine, the series is over.

Mom: “Just please — I don’t even care if you don’t mean it. Just tell me you forgive me.”

Molly shakes her head. “Forgive yourself.”

You can see how the relationship is broken again — but also how the path toward healing is pointed to. You can see that this is the theme of the piece. This is the journey both characters are going to need to go on. Forgiving themselves.

Mom: “Yeah.”

A great actor takes that “yeah” and gives it two different ways. I’m never going to get what I want from you. And maybe you’re right.

Tone Is a Layer You Put on Top of Your Truth

That is as dark and complicated a scene as you can have in a TV show. It’s a brilliant dramatic excavation of a really complicated relationship.

And without those two little moments of charades, that scene would completely shift the tone of this piece. It would change the genre. It would take Dying for Sex and transform it from a comedy into a drama.

But with those two small tweaks — just looking more specifically at one obstacle, the fact that she has chemo brain — the writers are able to take this fully dramatic scene and make it fit within the complicated tonal juxtapositions of this show. They make it both a comedy and a drama. And in doing that, they make the dramatic scene better — by pushing against what could become melodramatic and forcing the audience to let their guard down and fully experience what’s happening.

Think about the restraint and the bravery that takes. You’ve just written this unbelievable dramatic scene that’s going to make everybody cry. But this is a comedy. You’ve got to feed the genre monster, you’ve got to feed that tone monster.

Instead of trying to preserve the brilliance of the scene, these writers allow it to evolve — to do what the piece needs — in the same way that Shakespeare (at least by Peter Saccio’s theory) allowed his devastating monologue to evolve. Not getting rid of what’s there, but deepening, complicating, and adding tonal layers to it.

Tone is just a layer you put on top of your truth. Tone is a level of craft and rewriting and execution you use to deliver the truth of your content in the way that the project actually needs.

And tone does not have to be one note. Tone can be an entire orchestra throughout your piece — or it can be a single note. Both are valid. But you have far more flexibility than you might think.

So here’s what to take away.

Engine. Your TV pilot and Bible are not just about what happens — they’re about creating a blueprint and an engine for your show. Characters are the primary drivers of engine. Bringing in a new character is a big deal, and that character must be fantastic and complicated.

What it means to break your engine. You need to find ways to bring characters back to the pattern while still allowing us to feel them strive to do something more. In a TV show, the engine must keep running; in a limited series, you can break it fully only in the final episode.

Tone. Writing in the wrong tone for your show — as long as you’re writing what’s true — is not a problem. It’s a good thing. Tone is malleable. Simply by applying craft, you can adjust the tone of any piece of writing.

You could rewrite this scene as pure comedy. You could rewrite it as all subtext. You could rewrite it as broad farce or pure melodrama or anything in between. Tone is just craft that you layer on top of truth.