Limited true-crime series seem to be all the rage with new, high-profile stories hitting TV and streamers on a regular basis. These intriguing stranger-than-fiction stories of suburban murder offer audiences a glimpse into how families, investigators, prosecutors, and defense attorneys are all impacted by the violent turn of events.

One of the latest stories is The Staircase, a new HBOMax series in part based on a French documentary of the same title. The drama, starring Colin Firth, Toni Collette, Michael Stuhlbarg, Parker Posey, and Patrick Schwarzenegger, follows Michael Peterson, a North Carolinian novelist accused of killing his wife after she is found dead at the bottom of a staircase in their home.

The Staircase is unreliable in some of its storytelling and makes the audience work to try to figure out what’s going on while consistently questioning the guilt and innocence of Michael Peterson (Firth). It asks how a brutal death reveals the lies and secrets within a family and how it plays into the overall scheme of a trial.

Here are five screenwriting takeaways from the HBO Max limited series The Staircase.

You can’t believe anything you see at the beginning of a series or movie about a true-crime incident. The point is almost always throwing you into a perception that the filmmaker will alter over the course of the narrative.

In The Staircase, we hear two 911 calls at the beginning and our protagonist standing over his deceased wife. Clayton (Dane DeHaan), one of the children being driven home, sees the flashing first responders' lights and rushes up to meet his despondent father. Their lives are in upheaval.

Contrast that to one of the following scenes when Michael, Kathleen (Collette) and their family are gathered around the table for Thanksgiving dinner – a scene that takes place before the murders. Everyone is joyful, complimenting each other and toasting Mom and Dad.

Writers can see how the creators of the series showed different realities and perspectives to set up the viewer's expectations. The environment was happy, welcoming and warm, followed soon after by a violent death. It even instills doubt that this was even a murder. Considering the direction of the series, these early scenes set up a compelling before and after contrast.

Every good crime scene show must have a montage explaining what the investigators are finding and what it means. The Staircase is no exception.

The lead detective speaks with someone over the phone and explains what the crime scene looks like as the viewer watches forensics experts searching and finding clues around the home. There are aspects of the investigation raised that will come up later, such as the amount of blood on the staircase, pulling strands of hair from her hands, what type of murder weapon they’re searching for, and the fact that there was no forced entry.

Writers can see how this exposition gives the audience insight into what’s going on from the outsider’s perspective and why it looks like a murder, not an accident. In a world of two realities where the viewer doesn’t know what’s going on, we start to see established perspectives from the police and the family.

Can true crime be formulaic? Each crime is unique in its own way and the lives of the characters are based on real people who are more complicated with deeper histories than most writers can make up. However, many true-crime series do follow a similar path that writers can use when creating their own fictional pieces or creating something based on true events.

The first episode is often the crime, a baseline of the characters’ lives, who the focus of the investigation is on and the accused consulting lawyers or talking with detectives. The second episode leads up to the trial showing evidence collection, the determined prosecutor and defense building their strategies, and secrets coming out that could sway the jury and tear families apart. Then there is the episode with the actual trial.

Some people love formulas, others hate them. There are benefits to it because it sets up a proven roadmap for writers to create their stories. Television shows are constantly working within formulas. Shows like Law & Order and CSI are perfect examples (hint: the first person they capture is most likely never the criminal). Even the Hero’s Journey is a formula many of the great filmmakers have used to tell their stories.

The writer’s job is to create a unique and creative story within these parameters, build in twists and increase conflicts both externally and internally.

Whether it’s just before a commercial break on a television network or the ending scene of the first episode in the series, it’s critical for writers to keep their audiences wanting more. While cliffhangers used to get people to come back after a commercial break, now it makes the viewer binging a series want to sacrifice sleep to watch the next episode.

The expectation for the end of an episode is to have something so engaging the viewer must watch the next one. The Staircase shows writers some ways in which to accomplish this. By the end of the first episode, the audience has been through an hour of diving into the private lives of the characters leading to small fractures in their relationships and revealed secrets. Characters are learning that secrets were hidden and those who were on Michael’s side now say, “I knew it. I knew something was up."

These turn of events spark curiosity and make the viewer want to know more.

When basing a series or film on true events, the writer must consider how to tell the story, what to say and what to show. In Lincoln, Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner focused on a specific period of the president’s life as he strives to pass the 13^th Amendment. In the Netflix series, The Crown, each season focuses on a decade in the life of Queen Elizabeth.

In true stories, the writer pulls back the curtain on real lives and exposes the hidden truths. In true crime, how they reveal it depends on how they want to tell the story. Some true crime stories want to keep people guessing. Other times, people already know the outcome and are eager to see the behind-the-scenes conflicts, such as American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson.

Or it could be both. Personally, I don’t know how The Staircase ends until HBO Max releases every episode. Writers can see how the creators crafted a compelling narrative of behind-the-scenes for someone who knows the outcome while continuing to create suspense and intrigue for those who don’t.

Created by Antonio Campos, The Staircase is a limited series on HBO Max.