For the past few years I’ve taught a number of classes on writing for TV and Film and have found it to be my great joy.  With adult students in particular, there is always an interesting life experience they bring to their ideas and it can be very exciting to watch material evolve. But I have also found that very often people think they know how to write for the screen simply because they watch a lot and it looks easy. There are many times I’m asked to read a pilot and just a few pages into it, it’s very clear the writer doesn’t know structure and frankly, may not even know what they don’t know.

By way of example — when you get in a car and someone else is driving, it can look pretty easy. But would you get behind the wheel if you didn’t take a driver’s ed class and pass a driving test? I’m not saying you need a license to write, but in a visual medium, there are certain rules to the format and expectations for the viewer that you need to understand to write a compelling story that will translate to the screen.

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” – Pablo Picasso

How to Write a TV Show

It’s very simple – if you want to write for television, you have to become a student of the medium. That does not mean you have to take a class, but there’s so much you can and should do to raise your awareness and understand what makes a great series before you start writing “Fade In.”

For starters, you need to watch a lot, read a ton and accept that you can’t just write, you have to rewrite. You may have the greatest ideas in the world, but if they aren’t presented in a clear manner, it won’t matter. Your reader will give up before they realize the potential of the idea. Good pilot scripts for television shows are not easy to come by very often because the writer has not done their homework. So where do you begin?

How to Research TV Shows

As you’ve heard a thousand times, a great show or movie is all about the script. But at the end of the day, a script is all about word translation. We see things on the screen and what does it all look like on the page? At one page per minute, word choice and economy is critical. By reading a lot, you can start to grasp where you can short hand things. For instance, if you were writing a novel, you could say, ‘Joe walks into the room.’ Now, that’s five words. But in a script you could just say, ‘Joe enters.’ That’s two. Sounds so basic, but this is such a common error of sorts. Total page count of a script is noted in the scripted world and excess words can inflate a script unnecessarily. When looking at scripts, take note of how minimalist the descriptions and speeches are and how settings and phone calls are written, etc.

But let’s back up a bit further. The first thing you must do is to strategically choose what shows are valuable for you to research for your idea.  So, identify two shows that are in the tone and feel of your concept. For structure purposes, they should also be in the same format, ie., if your idea is a half-hour, only look at half-hour examples and same for one-hours.

Next, stick to the pilot episodes, as you want to analyze where the show begins and how much is established in it. While the script is very important to read, it most likely will not reflect the final, aired episode, as you may not know what draft you are reading and even if it’s a shooting script, editing will have a big impact on what you watch. At this point, stick with whatever the aired pilot reflects and take notes. You want to have a remote in your hand too, to stop and jot down the time code as to when certain events happen. Here are some things to take note of:

• What are the locations (where each scene takes places) and how is the world of the show established?
• How long are the scenes and who is in them?
• If there is a title card, how many minutes into the story does that come up?
• When are the core characters introduced and where do we learn details about them in the pilot?
• How much do we learn about the main character’s work, where they live and what they do for ‘fun?’
• Does the show use devices (flashbacks, voice over, etc.)?
• If it’s a comedy, where do the jokes tend to fall and what is the pacing?
• How long is the episode and what is the passage of time in the story of that episode?
• Anything else that stands out to you – write it down.

Now, you are looking for story patterns that might be useful in helping you establish the world and characters in your pilot. You are also looking at genre and tone and noting how much those elements are set up in the first episode. You should be thinking about the structure of the pilot you watched and if the questions answered in it can spark questions and answers in what you are writing.

There are tons of places on the internet to find free scripts to read. Just make sure that when you google for them you include the letters “pdf,” as scanned-in scripts are usually pdfs and those that aren’t may simply be transcripts, which are useless. Here’s an example of what to google: “Breaking Bad Pilot Script PDF.”

I also really enjoy watching interviews with show creators to hear about their process and how their brilliant shows became what they are.  Here is an interview I have gone back to many times from the Writers Guild Foundation and their series of interviews entitled, “Anatomy of a Script.”

Writing a TV show is so much harder than it looks

Learning how to write a TV show is no easy task. It is a complex and wonderful form of art, but like anything new, there’s a learning curve. There are many frustrations along the way, so go easy on yourself. But if you truly love writing and this format intrigues you, just keep reading, watching and writing and you will get better and better. If you can locate a class, be it in person or online, such as the Sundance Collab, or a mentor to guide you through, you will find a community of other writers to offer you feedback and see your work progress. Ultimately, despite the difficulties behind all you need to learn, writing for the screen can be incredibly rewarding and if you’ve got the passion to push through the hard stuff, you can develop a solid plot and story for your series that will get your writing noticed by readers and hopefully, one day, also by viewers.