While each episode may showcase a certain story that is resolved by the end, the characters, their main stories, and their arcs continue on throughout each season. You have the options of hour-long dramas or serials, hour-long procedurals, half-hour sitcoms, and in some cases, either limited series ( American Horror Story) or miniseries. With television, you're creating a world with a cast of characters that will hopefully continue on for upwards of 10-24 episodes (give or take) for multiple seasons, thus the main story will not be resolved by the end of each teleplay or television script. There's immediate closure unless you're writing for a major studio franchise that can leave some story elements open to sequels. Memento) - where we see a character thrust into a conflict, struggle through it, and then eventually succumb to it or work their way out of it. Such a story usually follows a basic three-act structure - or a variation of it (i.e. With film, you're generally telling a story that is contained within the time frame of 90 minutes to over two hours. No, we're not talking about whether if writing films is better or worse than writing for TV. In this guide, we'll show you what those differences are, as well as how to become a pro at formatting, structuring, and preparing yourself for a career in the TV industry. TV is typically 2-3 years.So, you've written your fair share of feature film scripts and now you're ready to transition into TV writing? Excellent choice!įilm and TV are very similar forms of storytelling, but there are certainly some differences you'll need to be aware of if you're interested in TV writing or even turning your feature spec into a TV pilot. 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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