1. Writing a spec script? Here are the major steps: (1) get extremely familiar with the show. Watch a lot of episodes. Go online to its official and unofficial fan sites. Do a breakdown of how long scenes are. Get your hands on a copy of a script written for the show, if you can. Either FIND or WRITE YOUR OWN "Bible" for the show -- basically a document that outlines everything that is true about the show's universe. There's a good one online for "Freaks and Geeks" which serves as a strong, possibly over-the-top model. Make sure to think about commercial breaks, about the network on which the show appears (2) Write an OUTLINE. Revise, revise, revise. More on outline writing below. These are called "Beat sheets" in the TV/Film world, and they basically go scene-by-scene through your show, with the location and a description of what happens in the scene. I swear, if playwrights were this organized, we'd save ourselves some trouble (and maybe some "eureka" moments, granted...). Get people who know and love the show to look at your outline. Make sure that the show's protagonist is your episode's protagonist. Try to write an episode that is relatively "stand-alone." (3) Write, and keep revising. Make sure the characters sound like the characters you've heard on the show. Make it awesome.
2. The protagonist in your spec script should be the show's protagonist.
3. In TV, your act breaks are your commercial breaks. The standard half-hour has a "Teaser", first act, second act. Hour-longs can vary more, especially depending on whether it's network or cable, so pay attention. They can have as many as five or six acts now, if you count the teaser.
4. Your acts have to end on a climax, preferably of your A story.
5. Obvious to anyone who's already a screenwriter -- TV shows have A, B, and C stories. The A story is the main story of the episode, and gets the most scenes. The B story is the secondary story, maybe it furthers a longer story arc, maybe not...and so on down the line. Depending on the show (West Wing, Dirty Sexy Money...) there may even be D, E, F stories. The bigger or more ensemble-oriented the cast, the more likely you are to run into more story lines.
6. The cool thing about television, and the thing we're probably all more aware of now that we can watch whole seasons on DVD, is that shows don't just have stories that start and end in one episode anymore. Story arcs can last three episodes, half a season, a couple of seasons. Not maybe so crucial in a spec script as when you're doing a pilot, but if you can nod to longer arcs, bully for you.
7. I said this already. But there should be a major story turn/climax right before every commercial break...so people come back AFTER the commercial break.
8. When you're outlining your script, don't try to outline it beginning, middle, end. Start with placing the things you know you want to hit and fill in from there.
9. This was one a lot of the screenwriters found really helpful. Stuart says that for every scene, you've got "options A, B, and C." A is the first one you come up with. It's usually not great. B's the better option, but still not great. C is the option that not only moves the story forward the way you need it to (because your other options did that, too), but it ELEVATES the story, and twists things in a surprising way. Sometimes it's the way you find "to talk about the thing without talking about the thing..." if that makes sense. I'm sure fellow writers can chip in on that.
10. When you're faced with choosing between the good piece of writing or the delicious scene you just wrote, and the story you're telling, it isn't actually a choice -- you choose STORY every time.
More to come, I'm sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment