“Fleabag” and What Professors Really Mean When They Say ‘Write What You Know’
One Woman, One Show, Multiple Emmies
Fleabag (2016-2019) is a phenomenal Masterclass in storytelling and writing to a medium. It’s quirky, funny, and does exactly what it needs to do without beating its seasons like a dead horse.
And the story isn’t necessarily high-brow or intensive in its world-building (I’m looking at you LoTR and Star Wars fans. Ah hell, even GoT) because it’s a simple story about a simple woman who knows how to craft one hell of a narrative.
We’ve heard it all before:
“Write what you know.”
“Those are the stories that really matter.”
“If it’s authentic, people can tell and will enjoy it.”
That’s all really useful advice and so many professors repeat it because they believe in it and it’s something their teachers and their teachers told them.
I’m here to tell you that they are all fucking liars.
As much as I love most of my English and writing professors in my 12+ year as a student (mandatory), they always asked the same thing of us, with varying degrees of disappointment upon completion of said task.
As pure and as worthwhile as the intent is, to “write what you know,” slapping that to a barely developed student who can’t tell a pencil from a blow dart abounds in unoriginal and boring stories.
And confusion. Oh gawd the confusion.
Because the intent when teachers say “write what you know” is reasonable and, dare I say it, actually useful.
The intent is to pull from your existing knowledge and experience and to craft it into a story that is compelling and interesting. To create emotional depth and characters that only you can speak and give voice to. Not necessarily write your daily life and experiences if you have nothing to say about it.
Please lord not a first person narrative of you waking up, fupping around, and then eventually eating a bagel. 9.9 times out of 10, that is not a very interesting story (unless you add a little s p i c e to it, and even then, debatable).
The application of these beats is a different realm altogether.
I cannot tell you. How many short films in film school I’ve seen about making a short film in film school.
I do not want to tell you how many stories in an apartment are talking heads and nothing ever happens but maybe a pizza guy shows up.
Writing what you know isn’t writing your day-to-day life down as a script and selling that as a story.
What many professors forget to add onto that adage is that writing what you know isn’t literally writing only what you know. It’s about research. Application. Using your personal experience to give depth and dimensionality to a 2D character.
Which, granted, is barely more informational than saying “write what you know.”
But after enough years in the ring with those words, it finally, somehow, makes sense.
And Fleabag does a phenomenal job of writing what she knows, in a succinct and humorous way that drives the story forward with as much drama and character growth as an hour long show.
Fleabag was originally a one-woman show by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who is also the titular character in this Amazon limited series. As much drama and comedy and development as this show packs into each bite-sized 20 minute episode and as much of it is as a genre piece, I truly believe this is a slice-of life.
We follow Fleabag and her failing café (and her myriad attempts to revive it) as she navigates the rocky relationship with the few family members she has left: an inaudible and barely coherent father, and an uptight and severe older sister. Also a bitch of a Godmother, but that’s beside the point.
We get some raunchy scenes, we get some sibling scenes (not at the same time you heathens), but I can absolutely guarantee you that every scene is a funny one.
Structurally, it is a dramedy of a café owner. The money is in the way that story is told, to reflect Fleabag’s experiences and her unique view on all of that.
That is a story we’ve seen a thousand and one times and is a story we will see until the end of time. The personality and the humor Fleabag brings to the table is nail-biting and gut-wrenching, through tears and laughter alike.
It’s the personification of the comedy/tragedy masks from Greek theatre.
A lot of slice-of lifes run the error of simply existing.
There is no impending conflict, nothing to push the story forward.
Fleabag has the great generosity of personally causing every bit of drama and conflict accidentally.
Because that’s life innit? Mistakes piled on top of each other and filling all the cracks the dull, dried bits have left behind.
She makes the most out of her life and even though she may not be a Kardashian, her life is so interesting and watchable. It has all the dull bits cut out for sure, but it arranges all the best (and worst) pieces of her life into something we can follow along from beginning to end, with a messy middle so that we can enjoy each episode.
One of the many things I love about Fleabag is how she commits to the medium. Never have you seen such perfect 4th-wall breaks since Deadpool, perhaps Gentleman Jack, The Office, Malcolm in the Middle. That being said, this style has similarly been done, many-a time before.
The absolute perfection is in the execution. Fleabag turns to face the camera in-scene, as if to share a secret with you, very much to invite you into her private dialogues which is always funny and always chaotic.
Every moment she breaks in the scene to look at the camera feels dangerous at first, like someone is going to notice her— but it becomes a tell of Fleabag about to do something that can only described as Fleabag-esque.
This style comes from her One-Woman show roots, but it does astonishingly well in the TV medium. The private conversations with us, the emotional journey she takes us on that just escalates and escalates and escalates is something built into the short form format and the limited series rendition.
[To imitate the emotional rollercoaster into an hour long format is possible, but it often leaves viewers emotionally drained, invested, but tired of the tense emotions. Having these short, bite-sized snippets of Fleabag’s life just to taste, enough to be interested and have a shot of serotonin, but not excessive enough to make it boring.]
And honestly? This is a short and sweet show of a measly 2 seasons. (Super easy to throw down in a lax weekend. Even more doable on a Friday night with Taco Bell.) I say measly endearingly, where the episodes and seasons are short but to the point, executed perfectly and with no extra fluff to make you bored out of your mind.
Every episode is poignant and bulldozes you into the next, desperately thirsty for more. Fleabag puts cliffhangers to shame, instead spilling the tsismis and then revealing that that was just the tip of the iceberg of her fucked up life.
When a friend asked me about the show and what I thought was the most important theme in it is, I answered love.
Specifically the enduring and unchangeable love between Fleabag and her sister Claire (Sian Clifford), but just love in general.
Because all of Fleabag’s problems stem from her inability to love herself and her pursuit of superficial, deeply physical love in its lieu. The inciting incident begins far before the start of the show and is revealed in short, visceral flashbacks to her best friend Boo and the emotional devastation of that [spoiler] loss.
Fleabag is in constant pain and uses her humor as a coping mechanism as a 30-something-year-old to push on through the agony of existing in a world where she no long knows where she stands. Her father has an unsettling relationship with her godmother. Her sister is married to an absolute fucktart of a creep. Her recently ex-boyfriend is so emotional and rooted in communication and feelings that she cannot fathom a healthy relationship with him. The closest relationships she has left are broken and ruinous in nature.
She can’t help but imitate that (I’m looking at the Boo pre-storyline oof) and further hurt herself because she can only accept the love she thinks she deserves.
In spite of all that. She never stops looking for love. She never stops trying to accept it. And Claire, for all her prudishness, never stops loving Fleabag either.
It’s a journey of love and love and love and never not loving no matter what (season 2 gets absolutely wild with this concept of love. I’m absolutely looking at you, Hot Priest LOL).
I wouldn’t classify this as a journey of self-discovery because Fleabag knows who she is. She is so confident and strong and independent already. This is a story of unlearning past traumas and in spite of being hurt over and over and over again, it’s about letting yourself love and loving in spite of all the pain.
With all your heart.
For all the right and wrong people.
This is a love story. From Fleabag, to Fleabag.
And we’re just along for the ride.
Thank you.
I adore this show so much—it's one of my favorites of all time.
She's a master storyteller, using humor to lure you in, then catching you off-guard with really intense emotions that hit like a freight train. The show gutted me by the end. It was so beautifully bittersweet.
I even bought "Fleabag: The Scriptures." It's a collection of the shooting scripts for every episode— bound in a book that resembles the Bible lol. It's incredible.