Writing a tv pilot format serial#

The nuts and bolts work behind the pictures and action on screen. But, behind this easy watch this gripping or engaging, hilarious or gruelling drama series, there are a number of very carefully plotted and planted story peaks across every hour you watch. When structured properly, television drama really engages an audience and it is a seamless and apparently effortless process. Imagine the story line is incrementally following a trajectory of a line going upwards towards the apex of a mountain or the top of a tent pole and then take that story line down the other side, whereby it may be building again, or indeed another story line may take over that energy and carry the drive on wards to the next Act. The peak or the tentpole is how I describe the build up of energy and tension to a mini climax of a particular story line. This is because within each story block, or Act, I encourage my writers to have at least one clear story ‘peak’ or put another way ‘tent pole’ per Act. As a Producer myself, I can confess to having the attention span of a Goldfish so the five act structure really helps me when reading and developing scripts with my writers.

Writing a tv pilot format serial#

Then by extrapolating this process further, we go on to build the wall across the series arc whether this be a short run serial of three episodes or a much longer series of twelve+ the process is always the same we consider the structure of your series and focus on the pilot being the first major block in that wall for the series as a whole.Ĭonsidering the five act structure, imagine this as a wall of story that you are building up as you progress through your Pilot. Working with my writers via my Development Packages, I always start with the building blocks of television drama – that five act structure – and how it forms the story wall of your Pilot. Get this right and you have jumped the biggest and highest hurdle in the development process. The Pilot is the window for any potential Producer, to the rest of the series. Writing a commercially attractive, engaging Television Pilot – the first ten pages, in particular, demands a certain mind set and skill base from television writers. In the structure of a television hour, there are traditionally five acts and the first ten pages of the Television Pilot forms that first act. The first ten pages of a Television Pilot form the crucial first ten minutes of your television hour. Writing the Television Pilot – the first ten pages – is a key place to start as you structure your story across the television hour. In this blog, I want to set out the five key factors that must be in those crucial first ten pages in order for a potential Producer to not only be hooked in the beginning, but stay with your script beyond that ten page point.

Writing the Television Pilot – the first ten pages – can be daunting for Television writers.