Writing a TV Pilot

This is the last in a series of three blog posts that are based on a class I was asked to attend for a friend of mine at New York Film Academy on playwriting versus screenwriting versus TV writing. This isn't an excerpt from a lecture that I'll be giving, but more of a riff on the subject. I wanted to jot down some notes to get me thinking about what I could possibly say about how I approach writing TV pilots. Go back and read my blogs about playwriting and screenwriting. It has been fun to go back and think about why I write in a certain medium and what motivates me to write in that format.

So here it goes…

Writing a TV pilot is one of the most difficult things I've ever done. At this point in my life, I have written about ten different spec pilots. I also love writing pilots because of the kind of work that goes into them. I recently was running a TV Pilot Writing Challenge for my playwrights group where we had to write pilots in a month. But even before that, I had advised the participants to do their prep work in September, so that by October they would be ready to write the pilot itself. TV Writing isn't like any other writing because you really can't just write your way into it effectively.

With TV pilots the first thing that one should consider is the world of the show. Like I've said about playwriting and screenwriting, the subject matter isn't necessarily what differentiates between TV, Film and Theatre. There are love stories that work on TV, ones that work on film and others that work on stage. The difference is in how a story is told. I love the idea of telling stories that follow the lives of characters over time. What kind of stories can be told in a year, two years, five years? That's what a writer has to consider in writing a TV pilot and I think that concept can be a hard one to grasp.

So I can't even start thinking about a TV pilot until I've figured out what the engine of the show is. And what I mean by that is that I need to know why someone would watch a show about these characters in that particular world for years down the line. Recently, I was getting ready to write a pilot for the writing challenge and I had one particular idea. I had a provocative world where it would be set. I had characters that I came up with. I even had a common motif that bound them together. But what I didn't have was the show. I didn't know what the week-to-week was. I didn't know why we would be watching these characters and what their stories would be. I didn't know what made it a TV show.

Instead, I wrote something where I knew what the structure for each season was and how it would feel like a proper TV show. Otherwise, it's just a short film, a close-ended story. TV stories need to have arcs and need to show the characters growing over time.

In writing TV, it's very clear what's a TV idea and what's not a TV idea. I have to see the week-to-week. Every story has a world we're inhabiting and the rules of that world. Every story has interesting compelling characters and a story. But for me, plays have to take into consideration the fact that they're live. Screenplays can utilize locations and can be more visual in their storytelling. They aren't reliant on language and dialogue to communicate story. And TV, while it can be cinematic and visual, tells us the story of characters over time and needs some sort of hook that will keep us watching week to week or binge watching.

I did a little exercise for myself when my friend asked me to speak to his class. I went and looked at the first ten pages of a play, a screenplay and a TV pilot to see how I laid out story. And I noticed that in all three, there was something of an inciting incident in each one. The story gets started pretty quickly even in the play. But I noticed especially in the screenplay, I had hit all the marks. I introduced the two main characters in the very beginning and we understand the problem our protagonist will face at the very beginning. By page 10, it's clear where things are going. In the TV pilot, it's the teaser.

The teaser is what introduces you to the world, to the characters and to the premise of the show. If you can't get the premise of the show (not the pilot) in that teaser or better yet, in the first three pages of your script, then it's kind of done. Executives read tons of pilots and I can speak from experience, if I don't know what your show is going to be about and who's driving the bus by page 3, I'm out. I am not required to read beyond that. I will put it down. Most people will give you by page 10 or the end of that teaser or first act if that first act is short. You don't have time to meander.

But it was interesting to look at the first ten because for any type of dramatic writing, you only get ten pages. Play submissions sometimes are ten pages of a script. And if that first ten doesn't hook you and introduce what we're going to be looking at, then forget about it. A play can do it in different ways, it can entice you in various ways. But with a screenplay, there's a very specific format. And in a TV pilot, not only do I need to know what this story is about, I need to know what the show is going to be. It's almost like there are more format requirements in writing a TV script than in anything else.

But like I said earlier, it's not the subject matter per se that changes or effects whether I write TV, film or theatre. It's how the story is going to be told and how the story can benefit from or be amplified by being told in a specific medium.

Wow, I guess I have learned a thing or two by doing all the writing I've been doing.