I am looking for advice on how to write scripts for a TV show. More spacifically a TV show of my own design. I am not trying to get it produced or anything I just want to get some practice in writing scripts for TV. I am looking to write a whole season of scripts including the pilot. So any advice whould be apperciated. Any links to helpful site that are easy reads is also great. Samething with books as well. Please help and thank you in advance.
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TV Script Help
- Thread starter me-only-me
- Start date
Best advice I can give is to read. And read a lot.
The knowledge you have about a certain subject will give your material a sense of legitimacy and will also ground it in reality which the audience can easily relate to. A very famous saying goes "Write what you know." If you don't think you know anything then go out into the world and seek that knowledge. You may be surprised at what you find.
I would also suggest reading Syd Fields book on Screenwriting. He outlines the core principles of a good story which is simple; beginning, middle, and end. Of course what goes in those basic parts depends on your creativity.
Writing for TV is much different than writing a film. Remember that your job as a writer is to bring the audience back for next weeks show, which is why big, grandiose concepts do so well. It's because the writer holds back, leaving the audience with a desperate hunger for more.
Last piece of advice; don't give up. Writing is tough, grueling, hard work. I liken it to mining; working alone down in the chasm of darkness, swinging a mighty axe into granite stone, sweating and bleeding, until finally the pick strikes gold. Have confidence in yourself and you may just find a diamond in the rough.
Best wishes,
-Aaron
The knowledge you have about a certain subject will give your material a sense of legitimacy and will also ground it in reality which the audience can easily relate to. A very famous saying goes "Write what you know." If you don't think you know anything then go out into the world and seek that knowledge. You may be surprised at what you find.
I would also suggest reading Syd Fields book on Screenwriting. He outlines the core principles of a good story which is simple; beginning, middle, and end. Of course what goes in those basic parts depends on your creativity.
Writing for TV is much different than writing a film. Remember that your job as a writer is to bring the audience back for next weeks show, which is why big, grandiose concepts do so well. It's because the writer holds back, leaving the audience with a desperate hunger for more.
Last piece of advice; don't give up. Writing is tough, grueling, hard work. I liken it to mining; working alone down in the chasm of darkness, swinging a mighty axe into granite stone, sweating and bleeding, until finally the pick strikes gold. Have confidence in yourself and you may just find a diamond in the rough.
Best wishes,
-Aaron
Couple books I found, both are decent reads with good info, Epstein also has a website:
Crafty TV Writing; Alex Epstein http://www.craftyscreenwriting.com
Writing the TV Drama Series; Pamela Douglas
Good luck!
Crafty TV Writing; Alex Epstein http://www.craftyscreenwriting.com
Writing the TV Drama Series; Pamela Douglas
Good luck!
First, action drives drama in motion pictures. There are minor moments of emotion from things that are said or happen, such as the banter between two characters. These help build or carry the energy from one act to another. Sometimes these exchanges are called “conflict”, though they can also be positive—walking into a surprise birthday party. There should be a conflict every 6-10 minutes (pages). This may sound like a lot, but in actual writing, it occurs fairly naturally.
Second, the human brain tends to track from five to nine objects simultaneously. So try to keep the number of unique characters between four and seven. If you have the protagonist and the antagonist, that leaves you two to five supporting characters. You can have lots of background characters, but they are never fully developed. You want to keep the focus on the stars and co-stars. In a television series, you may have more supporting characters develop in the season, but each episode focuses on just a small subset of three to five characters.
Third, since one page is roughly one minute, movie scripts should be about 120 pages long. And often producers like more slender scripts of 90-100 pages. When writing for television, there will be commercial breaks and station identifications, so sizes change accordingly. Again, editors will adjust timing but rough rules of thumb are for a 30-minute show, the scripts are 22-26 pages, for an hour show they are 45-55 pages, and for a movie-of-the-week (“MOW”) or two hour pilot they are 90-100 pages. Again, relax, you’re part of a creative team who can alter timing to meet specific needs as long as they have sufficient material. When you go beyond those limits, then they need to cut out parts of your work. Recognize that writing for a cable series (fewer commercial interruptions and less censorship) will tend to have more pages than public broadcast scripts. If you take a stopwatch to an hour show, you'll find it's more like 40 minutes.
Most TV plots break the Three Act Model into "Five Acts." In television, the end of your act should have a cliffhanger or ‘hook’ so the audience comes back after the commercial break. This may sound confusing and contradictory but after you’ve written your screenplay, you’ll want to go back and divide it up into “commercial acts”. A one hour TV show may have a format like:
TEASER: 2-3 pages title sequence & commercial break
ACT I: 10-12 pages commercial break
ACT II: 10-12 pages commercial break
ACT III: 10-12 pages commercial break
ACT IV: 10-12 pages commercial break
TAG: 2-3 pages credits
A two-hour TV Movie (aka Movie of the Week, or MOW) might be 100 or so pages long, broken into seven acts of 10-15 pages each. Another rough rule of thumb is that after you’ve written your television screenplay, you go back and every 10-12 pages find a good ‘hook’ to end your act.
Note that most webseries are only 10-12 minutes/pages long, so there are essentially 'segments' (or 'acts') of an hour television program. If you are writing a spec for a current series, you'll want to write and get a copy of their format guide. Most television programs follow a very rigid structure.
Another oddity that seems to be fading but which you will encounter is that comedy scripts are often double spaced unlike movie scripts. If you look at the Seinfeld scripts, you'll see this. Non-comedy scripts tend to not have that. Some half-hour programs are also double spaced.
Writing for TV requires more discipline to keep to structure, style, character voicing, and format. However, like film, story and character development are equally important. TV writing is to film writing (in my opinion) as poetry (metered with rhyme scheme) is to free-form prose.
Checking out television tropes can be instructive.http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
Start by filling this out:
TV Pilot Proposal
1-SERIES LOGLINE
2- WRITE BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS FOR EACH OF YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS
3. USE A CHARACTER MAP TO WRITE BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS DETAILING HOW EACH CHARACTER FEELS ABOUT THE OTHER CHARACTERS
4. WRITE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PLOTS IN THE PILOT EPISODE
4a. A PLOT
4b. B PLOT
4c. C PLOT, ETC. (IF APPLICABLE)
5. WRITE A SUMMARY (500 WORDS OR LESS) OF EACH ACT IN THE PILOT
6. WRITE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ARC WITHIN THE PILOT EPISODE
6a. THE ARC WITHIN THE FIRST SEASON
6b. THE ARC WITHIN THE WHOLE SERIES
7. DESCRIBE HOW THIS SHOW WILL GENERATE A HUNDRED EPISODES OR MORE
=================
When you can answer these questions and more, than you'll be ready to start writing a teleplay with a solid foundation.
Just because I'm trying to look some of these up, and just because writing an epic TV series like Game of Thrones for HBO or other premium channels or the newer producers like Netflix(?) does have its appeal...
This is interesting.
A quote of a quote from that page:
Sopranos. Looks like Amazon streaming lists many of them as being 50 minutes long.
A glance at some of the lengths listed for Deadwood Season One suggests they ran in the 50s as well.
Looks like Six Feet Under had similar run times.
I can't put the stop watch to them myself. Do those times include end credits, or something?
Anyway. Nice. =)
This is interesting.
A quote of a quote from that page:
Sopranos. Looks like Amazon streaming lists many of them as being 50 minutes long.
A glance at some of the lengths listed for Deadwood Season One suggests they ran in the 50s as well.
Looks like Six Feet Under had similar run times.
I can't put the stop watch to them myself. Do those times include end credits, or something?
Anyway. Nice. =)
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I can just put out my opinion as being in section of Audience as what I expect
in a show to look interesting.
You never stated what genre your series going to be in.Action-Thriller , comedy , family drama ?
demands experience to keep audience captured.
All Aesthetic class cannot be liked by audience. Typical boring it becomes for them.
no matter , how much intellectual it might be.
Channels demand content to keep audience captured rather than your great flow of story
in novel style.
If any novel style of story telling , please avoid it .
Keep it for art film making and don't expect huge number of audience turn out to like it.
Pilot -What makes me interesting?
My story note -
some 20's white guy in college discovers his gene content is partly Native Americans.
Confused ,amazed ( ?) , shares the report with his family members .
Then his grand father reveals , Saying it was his great grand mother's contribution
Grand father says - 'It's just matter of incident that my grand father's look happened to be Ginger side.
Should I call it luck or just any incident ? I don't know ?'
Then , he hands over the dairy written by his grandfather (auto biography-
who went in search of his parents
who got separated from him but was raised up by his father's friend .)
Rest comes in series .
But real note happens and finishes ,even trailers keep showing gene report sharing action and
revelation of family background clip again and again for almost next 10 - 15 episodes (3 weeks).
Everything happened interestingly . Not boring .
The name happens to based on the Dairy writer,
Marshall's Dairy .
Marshall Life story involves , description of love story between his parents and him getting separated from them in child hood , search/voyage for them , He meets interesting old lady while he is aborting his failed mission of search. He also states unusually pleasant time spend with her .
He has poetry book with him which was literature work of his father given by fathers friend , includes his fathers meeting/relationship with his mother that got noted as / into poems.
He returns , falls in love with lady of great family background like Boston Brahmins. And becomes part of them. His last wish to get his body buried where his parent / grand mother tribe had grave yard.
20's guy and his grand father 's investigation in dairy , says that old lady might have been their real great grand mother .
They go to the same place , find graveyard .
Interestingly, white guy's lady and white guy's graveyard lies few foot away where marshal's body was buried.
As stated in dairy and investigation states, it might be that she is their great grand mother.
DNA gene test proves it !!
Grand father says - ' How pathetic ! he never knew she was his mother '
It's audience level of maturity and intelligence that decide what to stay or not in channel.
Certainly not Art . If art is part of show which has made it , then I call it merely a matter of coincidence !!!
Never make it a novel , It won't be liked by huge number
More than anything , You won't make living !!!!
The style I have told can bring both money and name.
to get greater audience TRP , Native American link can be changed to other racial background , who got great number in watching American show.
Make marshall travel between continents of Europe /Australia/ (for his father side)
In ship , rain wreckage, disaster , they all look good .
May be Irish background be good. Because most of American are of Irish background.
His father enter America.
Marshal has got typical surname , it is nick name given by tribe people of native american when he was kid . It later becomes family name of Marshal family .
Serial name -
MARSHALL -----(SURNAME/NICKNAME) -----'s Dairy
Or may be just , Marshall's Dairy would make it fine .
I stated it just as an audience,
And that's how I write a story and script.
in a show to look interesting.
You never stated what genre your series going to be in.Action-Thriller , comedy , family drama ?
demands experience to keep audience captured.
All Aesthetic class cannot be liked by audience. Typical boring it becomes for them.
no matter , how much intellectual it might be.
Channels demand content to keep audience captured rather than your great flow of story
in novel style.
If any novel style of story telling , please avoid it .
Keep it for art film making and don't expect huge number of audience turn out to like it.
Pilot -What makes me interesting?
My story note -
some 20's white guy in college discovers his gene content is partly Native Americans.
Confused ,amazed ( ?) , shares the report with his family members .
Then his grand father reveals , Saying it was his great grand mother's contribution
Grand father says - 'It's just matter of incident that my grand father's look happened to be Ginger side.
Should I call it luck or just any incident ? I don't know ?'
Then , he hands over the dairy written by his grandfather (auto biography-
who went in search of his parents
who got separated from him but was raised up by his father's friend .)
Rest comes in series .
But real note happens and finishes ,even trailers keep showing gene report sharing action and
revelation of family background clip again and again for almost next 10 - 15 episodes (3 weeks).
Everything happened interestingly . Not boring .
The name happens to based on the Dairy writer,
Marshall's Dairy .
Marshall Life story involves , description of love story between his parents and him getting separated from them in child hood , search/voyage for them , He meets interesting old lady while he is aborting his failed mission of search. He also states unusually pleasant time spend with her .
He has poetry book with him which was literature work of his father given by fathers friend , includes his fathers meeting/relationship with his mother that got noted as / into poems.
He returns , falls in love with lady of great family background like Boston Brahmins. And becomes part of them. His last wish to get his body buried where his parent / grand mother tribe had grave yard.
20's guy and his grand father 's investigation in dairy , says that old lady might have been their real great grand mother .
They go to the same place , find graveyard .
Interestingly, white guy's lady and white guy's graveyard lies few foot away where marshal's body was buried.
As stated in dairy and investigation states, it might be that she is their great grand mother.
DNA gene test proves it !!
Grand father says - ' How pathetic ! he never knew she was his mother '
It's audience level of maturity and intelligence that decide what to stay or not in channel.
Certainly not Art . If art is part of show which has made it , then I call it merely a matter of coincidence !!!
Never make it a novel , It won't be liked by huge number
More than anything , You won't make living !!!!
The style I have told can bring both money and name.
to get greater audience TRP , Native American link can be changed to other racial background , who got great number in watching American show.
Make marshall travel between continents of Europe /Australia/ (for his father side)
In ship , rain wreckage, disaster , they all look good .
May be Irish background be good. Because most of American are of Irish background.
His father enter America.
Marshal has got typical surname , it is nick name given by tribe people of native american when he was kid . It later becomes family name of Marshal family .
Serial name -
MARSHALL -----(SURNAME/NICKNAME) -----'s Dairy
Or may be just , Marshall's Dairy would make it fine .
I stated it just as an audience,
And that's how I write a story and script.
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I'm in the middle of watching both Sopranos and Deadwood, and can confirm that the total running length of the episodes is rarely shorter than 49 minutes, including credits at both ends. It's worth bearing in mind, though, that HBO series have (almost as a trademark) idents and title sequences that last around three minutes of the total running time. But even without these, the variance is significant; I have the subtitle files here, and in season 5 of the Sopranos, the last line of dialogue (typically the end not including credits) in five random episodes is 50, 53, 57, 51, 52 minutes.
EDIT: Season 2 of Deadwood seems to have the last line of dialogue at around 46-55 minutes, although season 1 was regularly around 54-59.
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