For every argument on the page, there must be 90% of history beneath the surface. If two sisters argue about a burned casserole, the audience should suspect they are actually arguing about their mother’s death five years ago.

Whether you are writing a screenplay about a Texas oil dynasty or a novel about a suburban Thanksgiving gone wrong, remember this:

So, go ahead. Invite the estranged uncle. Open the old will. Burn the dinner. Your audience is ready to watch the world burn—one passive-aggressive text message at a time.

Families are ever-shifting battlefields. The audience should never be sure who is allied with whom. In a great drama, the wife sides with the mother-in-law against the husband for one scene, only to betray the mother-in-law in the next. Fluidity keeps the tension high.

The best family drama storylines respect this ambiguity. The audience does not need every wrong righted. They need to feel that the characters have seen the truth and chosen to continue the dance anyway. That is the tragedy and the beauty of the family: it is a voluntary prison.

Consider the most gripping storylines: The Godfather (business mixed with blood), August: Osage County (the toxic matriarch), Shameless (the dysfunctional survival unit), and This Is Us (the tragic backstory echoing into the present). Each of these stories relies on a fundamental truth: