Before we get to today’s post, I just wanted to acknowledge changes to the website. I’m trying out a cleaner look, and slowly transitioning from a straight blog to an author website. You’ll notice a few small visual changes here and there, but for the most part, content on the blog will remain the same. I’m playing with some new backgrounds and color schemes, so what you see today isn’t completely finalized; however, I’d still love to hear what you think!

I just finished re-watching the entire series of How I Met Your Mother for the first time since the show ended. I love the characters and the acting, but the writing holds a special place in my heart. I think it’s one of the best-written shows of all time.

SPOILER ALERT! I will reference the infamous ending to this show, so if you haven’t watched it and may in the future, DO NOT READ FURTHER. It will change your entire experience of the show.

7 Things HIMYM Taught Me About Writing

1. Begin with the end in mind. The writers always knew how they wanted the story to end. The audience assumed that the end was Ted meeting the Mother, but there was a much bigger twist involved. (Bigger, sadder, and less idealistic, but very real.) Even if the show had been shut down in an earlier season, they had the ending filmed and ready. They had to, because the actors playing Ted’s future children would be too old to re-film the end. It locked them down, and gave the story direction. (Interesting fact- if the show had ended after just one season, Victoria would have been the Mother. That’s why they met by seeing each other across a room, as Ted only ever did with Robin and the Mother.)
2. Make the end surprising, yet completely plausible. There’s a famous writing adage that says the best endings are ones that the reader/viewer never sees coming, but afterward feels that it couldn’t have gone any other way. HIMYM was like that for me. For the entire series, especially the last two seasons, I’d been wondering how they were going to untangle Ted from Robin so that he could meet the Mother and move on. Which was why, when he ended up with Robin at the very end, it made so much sense. I didn’t see it coming, but it struck me as the perfect conclusion. (I know many people disliked this ending when it first came out, but I was enthralled by its brilliance. I am hopeful that some of those immediate naysayers may have come around to seeing it as the “right” ending after the shock wore off.)
3. Allow your main character to be emotionally vulnerable. We always knew where Ted was in terms of maturity level and readiness for commitment. He was always willing to put himself out there, even if he knew he was moving down a wrong path (like when he dated Zoe while she was fighting against the construction of the building he had designed). From episode one, he kept his heart on his sleeve (the blue French horn; saying he loved Robin on the first date).
4. Give your main character friends to live up to. Ted always had the quintessential role model for his lifestyle. When he was chasing marriage and commitment, he had Marshall and Lily’s relationship to inspire him, and when he was enjoying the single life, he had Barney to help him enjoy it to its fullest.
5. Keep it real. HIMYM’s plot lines included many difficult life situations. Ted’s heart got broken many times; Robin’s career took twists and turns; Barney had to face the father who abandoned him. Even the “perfect couple” Lily and Marshall broke up before their wedding, had trouble conceiving, and dealt with the death of Marshall’s father. And then there’s the ending. We spent the whole series waiting for the Mother to appear, and then we find out that she and Ted only got 11 years together (2 more years than he spent “searching” for her) before she died. It wasn’t Hollywood-idealistic television; it was realistic with a big dash of hope.
6. Show your beliefs. One of the major themes that only came out at the very end was that people can have a second chance at love; that it’s possible to have two “true loves” in your life. Ted had the Mother and Robin; Robin had Barney and Ted. Even the Mother had two great loves, the boyfriend who died young, and then Ted. Other themes included the adaptability of friendships over times and circumstances, and the continuing hope that the best is yet to come.
7. Foreshadow. When re-watching the series, I picked up on a lot more clues that Ted was not really telling his kids about how he met their mother; he was telling them how he fell in love with their “Aunt Robin” years earlier. Meanwhile, the audience enjoyed clues about the Mother, from the yellow umbrella to meeting her roommate in one of the later seasons. I noticed one really interesting clue this time around. During the episode where they’re experiencing a hurricane, a newspaper was flashed across the screen. The headline was about the hurricane, but a sidebar read, “No One Is Safe. Not Even Your Mother.” Whoa.

What’s your favorite TV show? Have you learned any writing or life lessons from watching it?