How to retain the audience in long dramas: real scenes, scripts and characters’ slow work

 After the announcement of the 33rd China TV Golden Eagle Awards, works such as - The Tree of Life - When the Mountain Flowers Bloom - The Year of Peace - once again entered the audience's discussion.Winning the award allowed these long-form dramas to be seen again, and also brought an old question to the forefront: short videos and micro-short dramas continue to separate viewing time. How can a TV series that requires continuous follow-up make the audience willing to stay?The creative process of several works gave quite specific answers.

《Tree of Life》The crew filmed in three locations in Qinghai, with an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters, and completed 188 days of real-location shooting in the Sanjiangyuan area.Lack of oxygen on the plateau and weather changes are working conditions that the filming team must face.The life of the mountain patrol team is closely connected with the natural environment, and the shooting also enters this environment, so the space where the characters move has a more direct texture.

This choice first affects the daily life that the audience sees.What kind of pressure does mountain patrol work bear, why a person is willing to stay here, and how to get along with nature, all need to be established through actions and situations.For a story to make these choices believable, it needs to make the environment part of the narrative.The details accumulated in real-life shooting provide a perceptible basis for the characters' judgment and emotions.

《When the mountain flowers are blooming》the method is to visit Huaping, Yunnan again and again.The main creator conducted many interviews and interviews, ate and lived with the prototype characters, and got in touch with the life of Zhang Guimei and local schools.The audience is familiar with the title “Randeng Principal”, but for a drama to stand up for the person behind this title, it also needs to show the difficulties she faces, how she gets along with others, and how decisions are made step by step.

This is where the difficulty of realistic themes lies.Deeds that are already widely known can easily be arranged directly into plots; characters require concrete relationships and daily experience.Long-form dramas have ample time to unfold the hesitation before an event, the resistance during the process, and the impact after the end.The details of life obtained through collecting the wind can save these passages from serving only the function of explaining the background.

Script development also takes time.The script of 《Silent Glory》 took seven years to be polished and revolves around a silent battle on the hidden front.Such a theme must not only explain the tasks and risks, but also describe how the people involved in it judge and bear it.After the audience understands the price borne by the character, a decisive line will have weight, and suspense can be connected with the character's fate.

《Tai Ping Nian 》after ten years of creation, he continues to question the situation of ordinary people in troubled times and machinations.“Drink a glass of hot wine during the Taiping New Year and turn your great peaceful wishes into a daily action.The scale of historical narratives can be large, and the lives the characters hope to preserve still need to be understood by the audience.The length of the play allows these wishes to experience conflict, wear and tear, and persistence, eventually forming a complete character choice.

The long narration also leaves more space for art and footage.《National beauty and youthfulness》Restore the costumes of the Tang Dynasty and the style of Chang'an. Clothing and the urban environment together constitute the external world where the characters live.If the good-looking appearance can be connected with identity, action, and relationship, the audience will gradually become familiar with the world while following the drama, and the visual details will also become clues to understand the plot.

《My Altay》 shot in 4K ultra-high definition, combining natural images with artistic conception of words.The landscape enters the characters' life experience, and the environment, mood and rhythm influence each other.It reminds creators that the viewing experience of a long-form drama can be built in many ways: tight suspense is one, detailed life and breathing pictures are another, and the key lies in whether the form suits the story.

There is another kind of detail in 《The Tree of Life》the characters use letters to talk about their ideals, care about their families, and also record the confusion of growing up.The simple text brings the larger themes back to personal feelings.When a person assumes public responsibilities, he will still care about his family, doubt himself, and hope to be understood.When the audience sees these emotions, it is easier to accompany the characters for a longer period of time.

Industry data does not support the simple judgment that ” of viewers have completely left long-running dramas.In 2025, the total viewership of TV series on star channels nationwide will exceed 250 billion, a year-on-year increase of 9%.This caliber counts the cumulative viewing scale and cannot be regarded as the number of independent viewers. However, the growth itself shows that TV series can still receive a large number of continuous viewings, and there is still a close connection between content quality and broadcast performance.

As artificial intelligence gradually enters the creative process, the labor of repeatedly elaborating scenes, dialogue, and character details is easier to re-examine.Tools can change part of the work efficiency. Whether the choices in the script are credible, whether emotions can be accumulated, and whether the shots fit the characters still need to be judged by the creator.Several long-running dramas that have received attention have left traces of how these judgments were formed over many years of work.

The most valuable capacity of a long play is its ability to present a period of time calmly.What the characters have experienced will affect their next actions, and relationships will change over time.Only by clearly writing these connections and integrating life into every important decision will the audience have a reason to continue watching.The work that was re-discussed after winning the award also made this slow work more clear: time needs to be spent where the story really needs it.