The Innies and Outies of Changing Relationships

Every two characters in a story have some kind of relationship. It doesn’t mean they’re best friends or arch rivals. Being a complete stranger to someone describes a relationship.

But what if you could be a stranger to yourself?

Severance has a core premise where the employees of Lumon Industries undergo a medical procedure as part of their onboarding. A chip is put into the brain that is triggered by going into or leaving the office. Your memory from inside is partitioned so you can’t remember it while you’re outside.

Your Innie goes to work. Your Outie lives the rest of your life.

But it’s messier than that, and that’s good for drama.

Do we know each other?

Mark S. just got a promotion at Lumon after his co-worker Petey left the company. Mark S. misses Petey, but tries to keep his spirits up to keep his team focused and productive.

Mark Scout doesn’t know what he does at Lumon Industries all day, but his life outside focuses on his nosy neighbor, his sister and her husband, grieving the death of his wife, and being a terrible person to date.

So when Petey shows up at a restaurant where Mark Scout is eating, there’s conflict.

Petey is hiding from Lumon and needs help, but the only person he can think to turn to is Mark. Unfortunately, Mark’s Innie is a friend, and Mark’s Outie doesn’t know him at all.

There’s three kinds of tension getting leveraged in this moment:

1. The general discomfort of meeting a stranger who acts like they know you.
2. From what the audience has seen of Mark’s Innie, it’s clear that Mark S. would help Petey immediately.
3. It is clear that Mark’s Outie has no actual ability to recall anything about Petey.

Taking out the setup for this moment, where the audience learns that Mark and Petey’s Innies were friends at work would make the moment confusing instead of tense. The audience knows more than the character, which in this case allows specific guesses to form about what could happen next.

Or flipped the other way, if the audience didn’t get to see Petey on the outside, there would still be something foreboding about Mark's reaction to his absence, but it wouldn’t be a thread teasing both Marks to unravel things just a little bit more.

Seeing both sides of this relationship makes for exciting possibilities.

Helly. A severed story.

There’s another relationship that’s common for the employees on the Severed Floor: The relationship between Innie and Outie. Communication between the two is generally prohibited and strictly enforced. It’s part of the contract.

New employee Helly has a difficult time adjusting to working as an Innie, and she makes multiple attempts to sneak a message back to her Outie so the Outie will quit their job. Because the rule is that the Innie and Outie both need to agree to quit in order to get out of their contract.

The buildup of the blocked communication, and the desperation of Helly’s attempts to get a message out brings the tension to a head. Management wheels a TV cart into the office to play a recorded message for Helly from her Outie.

It’s a neat way of getting both versions of her in the same physical space, and also presents the power dynamic that Helly’s Outie and Innie have with each other.

Helly’s Innie made a mistake assuming that sharing a body with her Outie means they share some kind of common ground. Helly’s Outie sees Helly as an inferior who may be alive, but not a person.

This plotline dramatizes the way that people even have a relationship with themselves. Characters doubt, deny, and double down on who they believe they are, even when confronted with a view of their unguarded self.

It’s also a great example of playing with expectations. The assumed relationship between Innie and Outie is based on good intentions, like how the show gives Mark’s reason for undergoing the procedure to allow himself eight hours a day where he’s not grieving the loss of his wife.

The video from Helly’s Outie creates a sense that there could be many possible relationships for every severed character’s Innie and Outie. It’s unsettling for the severed employees and the audience.

Changing a relationship to create challenges

Harmony Kobel is the boss of Mark’s Innie at Lumon. Mrs. Selvig is the neighbor of Mark’s Outie. Harmony Kobel and Mrs. Selvig are the same person, but she has not had the severance procedure. She’s one person actively choosing to have a different identity for each side of Mark she interacts with.

Even though the audience gets this information by seeing that this is the same woman well before Mark is able to put the pieces together, everything isn't spelled out immediately. Why is she doing this? Who knows that she’s doing this? Are either of these personas actually her?

It creates an immediate tension of wondering if Mark will figure it out, and how. But finding out is just the start of making this relationship more challenging.

In the finale of Season 1, the Innies find a way to switch their personalities temporarily while outside of work. Mark’s Innie finds himself with Mrs. Selvig at a party thrown by his sister and brother-in-law and immediately clocks that his neighbor is actually his boss.

This new knowledge isn’t helpful in the moment because now Mark:

• Doesn’t know what his Outie’s relationship to this woman is.
• Doesn’t know enough about his Outie to be able to avoid suspicion
• Doesn’t know what this new information means

An answer creates more questions, and realizing that this relationship has another side to it adds fuel to the fire.

Which makes it that much worse for both Marks when his Innie accidentally calls her Ms. Kobel.

What’s interesting about a relationship?

Severance takes a sci-fi, mind-bending angle on the subject, but any story can have situations where characters may alter their relationships with each other.

• A superhero trying to keep their identity a secret from loved ones
• A couple at different points in time, like the difference between how they relate to each other at the start of the relationship and when they break up
• A child who suddenly needs to care for their parent

Ask yourself some questions about the characters you're writing. What is the relationship status of the characters in your story? Has there been a recent change before the audience meets the characters, or do they get to see the changes play out? Are there any characters who don’t meet each other in your story that might have an interesting dynamic? Take the time to investigate the possibilities.