Figuring out your storyline arcs is a key part of determining the flow and pacing of your script, including another important characteristic of your pilot: the act-outs. Especially if they’re not well articulated and clearly arced. An important note on storylines: more does not necessarily mean better. Some episodes of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, for example, have as many as 5. For cable or streaming pilots, there may be more than 3 storylines. See if you can figure out what the A, B, and C stories are. ![]() When figuring out your storylines, try making a list of a few shows that your pilot is reminiscent of. Sometimes, a single-cam cable show like a FLEABAG or a CATASTROPHE might only have one or two - but the vast majority of TV pilots have multiple storylines, each with their own arc, that run parallel to one another and converge at a point, usually the climax (more on that in a minute). If you’re writing a half-hour multicam, chances are you’ll also be working with at least 3 storylines. Sometimes, especially in a case-of-the-week procedural, the C story might be very small and hard to identify, but there are at least a few personal beats that make up a small runner. ![]() In most hour-long shows, there are at least 3 storylines. Speaking of world, is the world of your show clear? Is there room for high stakes, and is there a clear antagonist for your main character in the pilot? These are all important aspects to address because they help with what we like to refer to as “seeds planted,” giving your show legs that prove it can last for multiple episodes.Īnother important question to ask yourself as you’re figuring out the structure of your pilot is: what are the storylines? If you’re writing an hour-long, you’ll definitely be working with multiple storylines, and identifying them is a must. Chances are we’re getting our first view of the show through a specific character’s eyes. If you watch a few pilots in your chosen genre, try noticing who gets the main POV, or whose POV serves as our window into the story or the world. Do you have a clear main character? Even if your show is an ensemble drama or a two-hander, most of the time those shows still have a clear main character. And if FLEABAG has proven anything to us, it’s that you have to demonstrate some sort of mastery of structure - even if it’s solo performance - in order to deliver a memorable, kickass pilot.īefore we get into the nitty-gritty of story structure, first, it’s important to nail down the simple staples of a strong pilot. But we still feel strongly that it’s important, when writing a pilot, to articulate the shape of it first and then stay faithful to it. We get that the conversation has grown to encompass more than that. When we say structure, we don’t always mean A Story/B Story/C Story/Act Outs. And when Phoebe Waller-Bridge was developing Fleabag initially as a Fringe show, you’d bet your ass she adhered to a sense of story structure there. And there were probably still many many more rewrites of Fleabag between play and pilot. We have no doubt that Phoebe Waller-Bridge went through many, many revisions and many, many incarnations of her one-woman show before performing it in the Fringe. As anyone who’s done theatre, especially solo performance, can tell you, developing a play is a structural journey of its own. ![]() “But Fleabag!” “But The Affair!” “But (Insert name of “unconventional” pilot here)!” Fleabag started off as a one-woman show in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. But if you name your top 5 all-time favorite TV pilots, we’ll bet money that they came from at least one draft of a solid outline of some sort. “I’m just letting it flow!” We’re not discouraging this as an exercise by any means. One thing we hear from writers that inevitably makes all of us wince is when a writer says they’re writing a pilot without outlining it first. It may be tempting to try to do the same thing yourself. It may seem like a lot of groundbreaking TV shows nowadays defy conventional TV structure. In the absence of 8 weeks’ worth of curriculum, though, we’ll briefly discuss different ways to structure a pilot and why having a sense of structure is important. This is mostly what we focus on in our Televisionary Writers Workshop and Structure Lab, and exclusively what we focus on in our Advanced Drama and Comedy Pilot Labs, so if you’re curious about taking classes with us, those would definitely be ones to check out. One of the most overwhelmingly unanimous responses was that you’d like to see a blog post on pilot structure. Earlier this year, we asked our Twitter followers what they’d like to see us focus on in our blog.
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