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Originally Posted by thisisgeorge
I finished "Save the Cat", thanks for the recommendation, very informative book. Do roughly all of the principals Snyder covers in STC convert to writing for TV as well?
The general ones do. As for the actual structure, TV is similar but condensed and much more simple. I wouldn't use the feature structure as a template for TV writing. TV has it's own thing happening.
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I'm writing my first pilot right now, and having some troubles formatting it, and converting what I've learned about writing for film to writing for TV. Do you have any recommendations for a TV specific (comedy or otherwise) screenwriting book?
Sorry I've never read any TV writing books. For comedy, I'd try to watch shows that follow traditional sitcom structure and try to write your own outline of the stories as an exercise. 30 Rock is a great show that follows a traditional structure. Curb is a great show that doesn't. Try doing it with a few different shows, even like Two and a Half Men and you will get a sense of how they build their stories. I don't know anything about dramas, but I'd imagine their structure is like a movie but condensed.
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Some of the problems I'm facing:
-What % of pilot should be the set-up, whether to get all the background and exposition out of the way, or include that in later episodes, etc
-I love the idea of "The Board", if you do that, do you have a Board for the Season, for each episode, both?
-Are there specific fundamentals that every Pilot should contain, and how do I find out what those are?
Not necessarily looking for specific answers to all those questions, just trying to find more resources so I can be a more fundamentally sound writer. Obv I can provide more details about the TV show I have in mind if need be.
- Good question. Pilots are tough because they often require a lot of set up, but you also want to get to the story as soon as possible to show people what a typical episode looks like. In general you want to get the set up out as efficiently as you can. I don't think you want any more than the first 1/3 of your pilot as set up. That's a generalization of course. Every pilot is different.
- We always board our stories before writing them. For comedy, you don't normally board a season. You might just have some large arcs in mind and some ideas for future eps, but it's all very general. For a specific episode, we divide a cork board into vertical columns of index cards, each column is one act. So at the top you put three cards horizontally (or 4 depending on how many acts you're using) and write ACT ONE, ACT TWO, ACT THREE, etc. Under each one is a column of cards, each representing a scene within that act. At the top of each cards you write the scene heading, i.e. INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY. Then beneath that you write a line or two describing what happens in the scene. We also color code each card, with a color for each story in the episode. So the A-story is on blue cards, the B-story on yellow ones, etc. That way you can look at the board and see how many beats of each story are in each act and how they are spaced out, etc.
Pro tip: write the scene heading one space down on the card so you leave room for the tack.
- The pilot needs to establish the characters as people you want to see every week and it also needs to illustrate what it is about these characters and this premise that makes this a show week in and week out, regardless of the strength of the pilot on its own. A reader should be able to say "that was really good and I also see how episode 8 could be really good." Also, a lot of good pilots have strong, twisty, open-ended endings. Even comedies. Wrap up your story but then in a final beat do a little something that makes people want to come back for episode 2.
If you want to talk about specifics of your pilot feel free to ask. Happy to help if I can.