![]() Because of that unique platform dynamic, the structure of your story changes.įor TV pilots, you're tasked with having to tell not only the beginning chapter of an overarching story but also introduce the world of the story, as well as the characters within. But with television, you're telling an overarching story that spans multiple episodes and multiple seasons. With movies, you have a general 90-120 minute (or beyond) window to tell a single story from beginning to end. However, the television platform has many unique differences compared to cinematic storytelling. Read More: 10 Screenplay Structures Screenwriters Can Useįor television, four-act and five-act structures (see below) - as well as many other variations - are just additions to the core three-act structure of any story. How you build on that basic structure creates many additional variations. The three-act structure in cinema is the most basic and pure structure that most films - no matter what gurus and pundits say - follow. This has been the story structure followed by mankind since the days of telling stories around the village fire or etching cave paintings on stone walls depicting worthy stories of hunting for prey (beginning), confronting the prey (middle), and defeating the prey (end). The general story structure is fairly simple - Beginning, Middle, and End. The Two Elements TV Pilots Need to Haveģ Additional Ways to Learn TV Pilot Structure and Format.The average time it takes to get a movie made is 5-7 years. Lastly, having a feature get made typically takes much longer than TV. If you are a diverse writer, your odds of staffing on a TV show, and/or selling a TV show are higher. At the time of this article, Summer 2021, Hollywood is incredibly diverse-thinking, and seeking new voices of young BIPOC writers – particularly in TV. While most projects, feature or tv, are first optioned by a Producer, whose job it is to attach those elements mentioned above, I would still put my money on a newer writer selling their first feature, before they sell their first pilot. In the feature world, directors are always looking for new scripts to make. They are WRITERS first and foremost after all. And for the most part, Showrunners would rather work on/create their own material. This is primarily because selling a TV show requires a Showrunner. In both cases, a newer writer will need attachments (actor, producer, director), but again, I would argue it’s easier to get one of those elements attached to feature than a pilot. With features, newer writers can easily write a script that is under $5MM, and poses way less risk to a potential investor. With ten-episode seasons, that’s roughly $50MM a buyer (network/studio) has to commit to on someone who has never written a TV show! Yikes. An average episode of television costs 4-5 million per episode. ![]() Making a TV series is a much bigger commitment, both financially and timewise. Moreover, I strongly believe it is harder for a new writer to sell a pilot than a feature. Pilots are just so much harder to execute well. Relatively easy to follow structure/beats. Have you ever tried to write a series bible? It’s a lot like reading the bible! While there are certainly exceptions, I would encourage new writers to write a bunch of features before they write their first pilot.įeatures have a beginning, middle and end. Not to mention, a pilot is NOTHING without a pitch deck or series bible. I have found writing a pilot to be much more difficult than writing a feature – it requires more set-up and payoff, better and bigger world building, and you have LESS real estate to accomplish more. I have also found that newer writers tend to think writing a pilot is easier because it’s shorter. To start, whether your story (or idea) should be made into a feature or a pilot essentially revolves around one key question: is your story contained or does it (can it) evolve? Another way to think of this is: does it have a main character with one tangible goal, or does it have many characters (an ensemble) with conflicting beliefs, desires, goals etc? ![]() In this article, I want to break down those two questions and offer advice on how to handle. More than that though, from a selling standpoint, they haven’t considered pros and cons of trying to sell a feature versus a pilot. I get this question all the time from new writers, and often find that new writers pick the wrong format for the kind of story they are telling. ![]()
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