The Inspired Writing of the ‘Severance’ Series

If the TV series Severance teaches us anything as writers, it’s that there is no story idea too strange to be told — as long as the narrative is well-crafted.

Show creator and screenwriter Dan Erickson was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for his inventive story for Season 1 of Severance. From its Premise and Theme to its complex Characters and Action, everything about Severance’s unique story makes us as an audience lean in. (And the screenwriter in us sit up and take notice!)

As Executive Producer and Director for many episodes, Ben Stiller brilliantly helmed production and guided actors to many award nominations for Severance’s unique story. From production design (locations, sets, etc) through the final edit, he managed to craft a masterful TV series.

The way Stiller, Erickson and the amazing Severance writers weave psychological narratives together in Severance somehow languidly makes you lean back to be bathed in the ennui of the characters’ daily lives… yet also throws you on a rollercoaster of tense emotion as the overall story arc slowly chugs along. Episode after episode, the writers take the audience up and down through the complex characters’ lives, equally drawing you into the mysterious “Um, what’s going on here?!” world of Lumon Industries by day and humdrum suburban desperation at night. Brilliant.

Haven’t seen it yet? Stop reading and go watch it — right now!! Here’s where to watch Severance.

Or, if you don’t have access to it, here’s a brief summary of Severance Season 1:

As a screenwriter or novelist, you should be reading as many scripts/novels as you can find. Every story you read — no matter the format — whether they’re good, bad, or somewhere in between, will help you become a better writer. Why? Because the more you read and break down the kinds of stories you like/want to write, the sooner you’ll be able to write your own more easily. Before you know it, you’ll be living and breathing your genre!

Since Episode 9 above is a Shooting Script, you should NOT use this as an example of how to write/format your spec scripts — leave all of that work up to Production. (It’s a major red flag to readers to see these elements in a spec script – especially when Newbie writers spitball a “dream cast” for their show!) So, ignore the formatting and extraneous info in Episode 9; just concentrate on reading a fabulous script!

While Severance’s Lumon employees may be stuck in Lumon’s cold concrete building (above) and generic white offices all day, there’s nothing generic about this rich, layered Thriller/Mystery/SciFi/Drama story. (Just look at how many genres it takes to describe it!)

Stories that are getting picked up/sold these days are the ones that defy a single genre. They go deeper, mixing and matching genres to remix the old tried-n-true to make something new — like the “Dystopian Sci-Fi, Conspiracy Thriller, Psychological Drama” that is Severance.

Ninja Neno Visits Lumon!

The shooting location that doubles as “Lumon Industries” in Severance is actually the old Bell Laboratories building in Holmdel, NJ.

In its heyday back in the 1960s, “Bell Labs” was a bustling hub of inspiration and innovation. It’s actually the birthplace of world-changing innovations like the laser, cell phone, and even the Big Bang theory — nine Nobel Prizes were won by researchers from this very building. So, it’s quite appropriate that Production chose this as the birthplace of the Severance procedure!

Swipe through pics of Ninja Neno at this iconic location:

Ninja Neno got a peek into what it must’ve felt like when those world-shaping ideas were being born. As you can see from the pictures, the building is still in use, but now it’s a collection of random offices and businesses, not Bell/AT&T. (But who knows… maybe someone on a sofa in the main space behind Neno is brainstorming another life-changing invention… or just maybe an Emmy-worthy script, like Severance!!).

(And here is a little peek behind the scenes here at Writing Ninja…. Yep – all of our #Where’sNinja photos are just of this little 2-inch Neno sticker… small and scuffed and taped to a toothpick. 😉 )

Wondering where the inspiration for “Severance” came from? We were too! So we found a wonderful video that dives into what inspired writing Severance, which you can watch below. Or if you’re short on time, here’s the quick answer:

When asked “What inspired Severance?” during an interview at the 2024 Austin Film Festival, writer/creator Dan Erickson said that when he moved to LA to get into the film business, “the only job I could get was working at a door factory. It was in Pacoima, CA… and it was a little windowless office in their basement, where I would just catalog door parts.” He hated the job so much that he said, “I was walking in one day and just caught myself having this thought that I’d had a million times before, which was just, like, ‘God, I wish I could just jump ahead to the end of the day. I wish there was some way to not experience the next 8 hours of my life.’”

While Dan hated the “cataloging hinges and knobs” grind, he’s grateful for it. Because that fateful day, it spawned the premise of the Severance tv show: “What if there was a way to dissociate and not have to experience your work life. And then the show was, more or less, fully conceived within the next five minutes. It was like, the whole thing… that would kinda work.” And oh, was he right — his concept sure does work!

So that explains what “Severance” is inspired by… how the concept of “severing to skip work” came to the show’s creator because of his mundane day job.

But his basic concept still needed to be developed further before it could become the amazing show it is today. He went through many iterations of his Lumon workplace story, with different drafts of his Pilot script being passed around — and passed on — before it was finally discovered by Stiller.

Read on to learn about how the Severance show was developed.

Want to watch the Austin Film Festival interview on YouTube? Here’s a direct link to the Severance Inspiration section.

The pilot for Severance wasn’t born from sporadic bursts of inspiration — nor did it spring forth from Erickson’s mind, fully formed and ready to be shot. Nope. As with most “overnight successes,” Severance creator Dan Erickson’s road to selling Severance took a while.

Erickson says that after he had the initial idea at his horrible door factory job, “I wrote it over the course of the next… six months or so. I wrote the first version of the pilot. During that time, I left the door factory and went to work as a ‘registrar’ — I still don’t really know that is — at a trade school. It was a global company that had campuses all over the world. So that’s where I encountered a lot of this sort of… corporate speak that eventually made it’s way into Severance.”

After writing his pilot episode for 6 months and shopping his script around to places like the SyFy channel, Erickson’s pilot made it onto the (sadly now defunct) Blood List. “And then,” Erickson says he “got a call saying that Ben Stiller had read the script and sit down and talk.” Then Stiller and his company got involved and changed things up from Erickson’s original pilot. Erickson says, “There’s a lot of differences… the biggest being, that… it was much more heightened. The original script read much more like a Terry Gilliam thing.” (You can get that Severance Spec Pilot script above.)

As an inexperienced writer, Erickson thinks that because he was “trying to get attention… there were a lot of very big swings in there, which then.. first through working with SyFy and then later with working with Ben, we sort of figured out where the strengths were and what we should hone in on.”

A story arc like the one Severance had throughout its first season comes from a long, well-structured writing process that not only considers what is ON the page… but also what is BEHIND the page. It’s a story that had to be developed.

Stiller and Erickson “knew pretty quickly that it couldn’t just be about how work sucks. And it couldn’t just be about how we’re different people at work…. That’s like a very nice episode of the Twilight Zone, but that’s not going to sustain itself for multiple seasons. The more we talked about it, the more it became clear that it has to be about a greater sense of disassociation and how we hide from elements of ourselves, elements of our lives that we don’t like.” In other words, they had to discover what the story was really about before they could develop the amazing story that moved the Severance series out of development and into production.

And that’s what Writing Ninja does: it helps you discover all aspects of your story so you can write amazing, sellable screenplays or novels. It’s a one-of-a-kind story development platform designed to help you discover the best version of your story.

Are you ready to write your own Severance? Well, our fun, easy-to-use online software guides you through the maze of story development, one step at a time, making it easy to develop stories like Severance. The Brainstorm Boards® and Story Puzzle® offer a groundbreaking approach to story creation that frees your creative mind but ensures you have all the elements you need to write a sellable story. Within minutes, you’ll start to discover the best version of your idea, organize your thoughts, and start gathering everything you need to craft a compelling story. Whether you’re just starting or are already a seasoned pro, Writing Ninja’s all-in-one software can help through every step of story development.

You have a Writing Ninja in you… and it’s waiting to be unleashed!

So, if you’re an aspiring novelist or screenwriter with a story to tell, it’s time to stop dreaming and start creating! Just like Dan Erickson writing Severance; he had to start somewhere. Now’s your chance! Grab a Free Forever Writing Ninja account to spark your creativity and bring your story to life.