In this candid, rambling YouTube monologue, Tod Maffin outlines his upcoming fiction podcast series Mirror Falls, set in a fictional town on Vancouver Island that interweaves character‑driven, often comic stories with real Canadian history (e.g., the 1960s residential school “scoop” and Cold‑War secret projects). He cites creative influences such as the Vinyl Café, Lost, Fawlty Towers, The IT Crowd, and classic sitcom “no‑hugging‑no‑learning” principles. Tod explains that the first season will consist of 6‑8 episodes, each balancing light‑hearted, sitcom‑style arcs with a season‑spanning mystery that will only be revealed at the very end. He describes his background as a former CBC Radio producer who helped nonfiction storytellers, and he contrasts that experience with the difficulty he now faces in fiction: deciding how to let characters both fail repeatedly (sitcom model) and grow over time (McKee/hero’s‑journey model). He also wrestles with structural concerns—timeline consistency, integrating multiple narrative models, and ensuring the mystery unfolds without spoiling the plot. Throughout, he asks the audience for concrete advice on how to blend sitcom comedy, character development, and overarching plot structure while keeping timelines coherent.
Chapters
Hello, it's Tod. This is gonna be a different video. It's gonna be long and I'm gonna ramble and it's gonna be about fiction writing. So if you don't care about that, I will not be offended if you decide to swipe away. As some of you know, I'm working on a podcast series called Mirror Falls. It is about a fictional community on Vancouver Island. If you know where Holberg is, in my head this fictional town is where Holberg is geographically. It's not about Holberg or anything like that, but like in my head, that's kind of where I picture it. Anyway, so I'm working on this, and I'm struggling. If you're familiar with the Vinyl Cafe series or News from Lake Wobegon, it's sort of in the similar kind of a style, although obviously will not be nearly as good as either of those. And it's going to be a little different. It's certainly going to tell the stories of the people there, but it's also going to talk about real Canadian history. So, you know, there's a character that went through the '60s scoop. And we'll talk about the '60s scoop, and I'm planning bonus episodes of like actual interviewing people that lived through the experiences that are told in the fictionalized version of the podcast. See what I mean? Like, it's already getting messy. And I'm also like, I was deeply inspired by Lost, the ABC TV series 15 years— no, more than that, 16 years ago. Anyway, if you haven't seen Lost, best television writing in the history of television. Yes, even the ending. I am pro-ending. Basically, this planeload of people crash on a deserted, what appears to be a Caribbean island, but the island's really weird. It has polar bears, and there's other people there, and all sorts of stuff. And it's magical writing. And it had lots of moments. It was a— this was well before Netflix and anyone had heard of binge-watching, so you had to wait every week, and there was a really good cliffhanger. So, I'm writing this about Mirror Falls. And there is a single series-wide story that involves conspiracy and secret government plans and so on. So, like, it's more than just kind of like the saccharine good stories, although there are lots of saccharine good stories. And then every season has its own sort of arc. At the end of season 1, which will probably be between 6 and 8 episodes, something rather shocking happens. I'm having fun writing it. Here are some of my problems. So, and I will read the comments on this. I don't usually read a lot of my comments just because there's too many of them nowadays, but I will read every comment because I need your help if you're a writer. Years and years ago, I used to work at CBC Radio as a producer and a host. And for a lot of those years, I was a producer of freelancers. So people would write in, they'd email, and they'd say, "I have this story to tell. I live in this community and there's this wacky guy and he'd be really interesting." And I would have to, you know, kind of like pick the story through and try and find like, you know, all the components of a story. Is there a protagonist that has something at risk? And is he— does he fail several times? And does he change as a character and grow and learn? And I think I was successful. At helping those writers. And remember, these are real stories, right? These are documentary. I was on the documentary side. So these are real stories that people were pitching. And so we'd be like, "Well, can we get the protagonist?" And it worked. So then why, why is it so hard when this is fiction? Why am I struggling so fucking much with it? Like, is it because they can do anything? Like, At first I thought, like, "Well, they can do anything, so this won't be difficult." You know, like, if it were nonfiction, we're stuck with the realities of the actual real world. You know, "Wow, wouldn't it be great if he, you know, became a grandfather and learned about love?" "Well, sorry, he just— he didn't become a grandfather." "OK, well, we won't use that story." It's fiction. It's like, "Wouldn't it be great if he became a grandfather and learned about love?" We can do that because it's fiction. And I don't know why, but I am finding it so hard to Help, help me, help me, writers. How do you be true to your— how do I get it both ways? That's what I'm asking. How do I get it both ways? The other problem I'm having, which I could use your help with, is I don't know which model to go with. And in my head, I know that there's a million models, but in my head, I picture two models. There's the Robert McKee model of storytelling, the guy who wrote the screenplay Bible story, which is, you know, there's a protagonist, he has an object of desire, the protagonist attempts to get the object of desire, the protagonist fails a number of times, eventually the protagonist learns, there are characters that pull against, you know, opposing forces of their personality, eventually the protagonist wins and usually gets the object of desire unless it's an anti-plot. And so on. Protagonist tries, fails, learns, succeeds, and grows as a character, which I want. I want characters to grow. This is what frustrated me, actually, about Praerium Companion, and to some extent Vinyl Cafe, although to a less extent, was that they were beautifully told stories, funny as hell, but I didn't get the sense that the characters were evolving with me as I was learning about them, and that's what I loved about Lost. Was Lost sometimes would spend an entire episode on someone's backstory. Like, what, what an hour, what is an hour in real television time with commercials? Like 46 minutes? Half an hour of those 46 minutes would be devoted to one character's history before they even got on the plane that got them to the island. I loved that, and I want to do that, and I am doing that. But my God, like, so that's one model. The other model is the sitcom model, which I also respect. Which Stuart MacLean did brilliantly in Vinyl Cafe, which was character has a problem, attempts to solve it, and just fails spectacularly over and over and over. You know, like the turkey, the turkey story, Christmas turkey story that is legendary in Canada. Dave Gets a Turkey, I think it's called, Dave Cookes a Turkey or something. But in— and that's more of a sitcom model, right? And some of the best sitcoms, the ones that I think are the funniest, the ones that I think structurally artistically are the perfect example of sitcom art. Fawlty Towers, The IT Crowd, both British. But what I love about them is that the characters don't learn anything. You know, Fawlty— Basil Fawlty does not grow or learn anything in the 12 episodes of that show, ever. He's just bombastic and an asshole, and that's just his character. And I also like that. I want that too. As I've been studying this and reading about different models and structure and so on, one of the funniest things I read was that apparently in the writers' room of Seinfeld, they had a sign, and the sign said, "No hugging, no learning," which is like the characters were not allowed to learn anything, right? They were just themselves, and that was it. So I want it all, right? I want there to be a show a funny show which has— and there's— I've written 3 or 4, I think, episodes now. And it has— the structure is there. The structure is there. But I'm also trying to have them grow. I'm also trying to plug them into— I have to get them all to the last scene of the final episode of season 1 to get to the what the fuck moment. And then I also have to explain how they— that's the other thing, too, is timelines. Like, if I— I wish I had to go back and read and like write down everyone's timeline. And then I realized, like, they're all wrong. So I had to like redraw. Anyway, I— the only people who are watching at this point still with me— hello, by the way— I assume are fellow writing nerds. So I'm— this is probably old hat to you. And I hope that you're laughing with a shot of whiskey right now at me or something, because it is frustrating. I think I've got the timelines fixed. See, part of the problem— I don't know how much I can say without giving away the plot. Part of the problem is that there is a mystery about this town, and the people of the town are not aware of the mystery in the first season. They will be aware in the second season, but they are blissfully unaware. And in fact, you, the audience, are not aware until the last few seconds of of the last episode of season 1 as well. And the mystery is based on a real thing that happened in Canada, by the way. It's a fascinating story. It dates back to the Cold War. It's about secrecy. It's one of those things that I read, I'm just like, "Wow, that's a really cool story." And that kind of thing has been done before. Like, if you remember Camp X, or was it called X Company? It was called X Company. It was based on Camp X, which is like a real world— this is a TV show on CBC years ago. Which was based on like a real-world military camp that Canada had that was used for codebreaking. And the woman that like co-wrote it and executive produced it and showran it is a super creative woman named Stephanie Morgenstern, who I will brag happens to be my cousin. And they just did a great job of like putting the real history with a fictional thing. I don't know. Anyway, I don't know what I'm asking. I'm running out of time. I need advice. How do I get— how do I have the funny sitcom com arcs and also have the characters learn and also have the whole help, help me Obi-Wans. Help me. Anyway, and it's coming out probably in about 2 or 3 weeks or so. So there you go. Okay, thanks. Bye.
