by Linda Venis
Closely related to franchise are your series’ typical episodic stakes. How important is it to our regulars or guest cast that the story ends the way they hoped it would? In the three examples above, the stakes are usually life-or-death: We blow it and a murderer lives to kill again, or the patient dies, or a guilty man is exonerated of a crime he committed. In other shows—say, a high school or family or adult ensemble—the stakes may not involve physical survival, but to the characters, it usually seems as if they do: Will I get asked to the prom, will my kid get into the right school, will my mom ever stop judging me? Deduce the kinds of stakes that are raised in your series and make sure your outline’s stakes are similar.
Conflict
Even more important to a series than stakes is conflict. You’ve heard the phrase “drama is conflict” for a reason: It’s true. Without conflict in an episode of TV (any episode of TV, or any story, for that matter), there’s nothing for the audience to care about. Why would there be, if the characters are going about their lives without a worry in the world, meeting no resistance to anything they’re trying to accomplish? As much as we wish our lives were like that, you put that on TV and you’re canceled before you’re out of bed the next morning. Your spec needs conflict, and it needs to be of the kind your series has every week.
There are two other elements intertwined with conflict that you need to devote equal attention to: your characters’ goals and the episode’s clock. Goals are linked to conflict: The impediments that your characters face in trying to achieve their goals provide conflict. Take a look at your series and this convention will become readily apparent: Cops are lied to and shot at while trying to solve their cases; doctors come up with diagnoses that prove to be wrong while trying to save their patients; lawyers are ruled against by judges while arguing their cases.
In many shows, the clock is even more apparent. Something needs to be accomplished by the end of the episode or our characters fail to achieve their goals: The statute of limitations will run out, the disease will prove fatal, the perpetrator will leave the country.
Both goals and clock are easier to detect in closed-ended shows like NCIS, CSI, or The Good Wife (which, despite its serialized elements, usually has a legal case that’s resolved within an episode). But even in Pretty Little Liars—an extremely serialized show, and one set in high school, not a precinct or an ER—characters have goals in every episode and a clock running against them, making those goals even harder to accomplish: A wedding has to be stopped, a friend has to be convinced, a lie has to be told…or else. Make sure your characters have equally important concerns and drives.
B and C Stories
Does your series employ B and C stories? As compared to the A story—the main plot movement of an episode—B and C stories usually employ fewer beats and are often centered on characters less important to the A story. Almost all shows employ B stories to some extent, usually to give the show someplace to go while boring elements of the A story are taking place offscreen, or to provide comic relief, or to help reinforce the episode’s theme (if it has one). C stories are, by definition, even less important and developed than B stories. Again, they’ll be easy to spot in your series; just make sure that your story follows the show’s pattern.
Theme
Since I’ve just mentioned theme—a general truth or main message—now’s the time to make a last-minute check of whether your series usually has one. In some shows, the theme is quite overt: Grey’s Anatomy and Dexter begin and end every week with narration that explicitly invokes that episode’s theme. In other shows it’s more nuanced, there just below the surface, appearing every once in a while like a stepping stone to help you cross a river.
That was our approach in Eureka: An episode in which an experiment had gone so terribly wrong that the only way to save the entire town was to risk losing it was paired with a B story in which the sheriff debated whether or not to ask a newly arrived coworker out on a date, and a C story in which his daughter worried about leaving for college. The theme? “Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith.” Take a look at your series and see if it relies on themes or not, and make sure your outline follows suit.
Framing
Speaking of narration, does your series employ any sort of framing device on a weekly basis? Does every episode begin or end in the same way or location, or focus on the same character? Framing like this is more typical in the half-hour world, but it shows up in hour-long dramas as well: Each episode of Alcatraz ends with a captured prisoner being locked up in that special underground prison. Every Dexter ends with the title character. Law and Order utilizes interstitial titles and the bong-bong sound. You probably already know if your series uses any elements like this, but if you’re not sure, now’s the time to double-check.
Finally, examine your series’ time frame: Most shows tell their stories in a matter of a few days, if not less. The hallmark of 24 was that each episode took place over exactly the same amount of time—that is, twenty-four hours. No other series is quite that precise, but each show has its comfort zone. Find it and stick with it.
Okay. It’s almost time to start writing! I wouldn’t be doing my job, though, if I didn’t (briefly) bring one last area to your attention. You want your reader to stay interested and focused on your script, right? Good. Then listen up.
Remember That Not All Acts Are Created Equal
Each act has a specific purpose in the hour-long drama, and before you begin writing it’s worth a quick review of what each act should accomplish. The examples below apply to almost all one-hour shows, be they serialized or closed-ended. Of course, every show has its own twist on how its stories lay out, but when you start to study different series, you’ll be amazed at how the writers pretty much construct episodes in the same fashion. The structure that I teach in “Beginning Writing for the One-Hour Drama: Building the Story and Outline” at UCLA Extension is the one those lucky (and tenacious) enough among you will be using for the rest of your career. So let’s make sure you’re using it in your outline!
Teaser: A situation is introduced that will compel your characters to act and the audience to watch. A good teaser lets the audience know not only the subject of this week’s story but also the episode’s stakes. It should raise the viewers’ expectations and curiosity: A mystery needs to be unraveled, a life needs to be saved, a problem needs to be solved. Dangers will be faced, time will be of the essence, stakes will be high. By the end of a good teaser, the viewers should be fully committed to sticking in their seats for the next hour—if they don’t care what happens by page 5, the impact of the end of your show will be severely compromised. Does your teaser fulfill these requirements? It does? Onward.
Act 1: All elements are put into place. It’s in act 1—usually the longest act—that the full ramifications and scope of the problem introduced in the teaser are realized. The main characters now grasp the severity and difficulty of the task that lies ahead and may have formulated their first plan to resolve it. The audience in turn feels fully aware of what impediments they expect the characters will face. Any B and C stories have been kicked off. Sound like your outline? If not, think about adjusting.
Act 2: Things get progressively worse. Our heroes thought they had a handle on things, and boy were they wrong. The patient’s not improving, the informant has nothing, the witness has been murdered. Perceived forward progress has been revealed to be the opposite; the clock is ticking and the stakes are rising. This is roughly the middle of your script: Do your characters look like they’re going to lose this one? Good!
Act 3: One last element joins the mix and makes things worse. Even the B and C stories aren’t going the way the characters had hoped. This act combined with act 4 corresponds to the third act in a traditional four-act structure and presents new and unforeseen roadblocks. A simple metaphor: Act 3 is where the first shoe drops. In act 4, the other shoe hits someone in the head. Simply put, things are getting worse for everyone. Sound like your story?
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br /> Act 4: You thought things were bad in act 3?! Basically, by the end of the fourth act, one of two things has happened: Either the solution has become apparent but the characters don’t have the time or resources to achieve it, or it appears that there’s no solution at all. Either way, everyone’s screwed. Except the writer, because he knows what’s coming next.
Act 5: Hey, there’s a way out of this mess! In the nick of time, the brightest minds come up with a way to save a life, a case, a family, a prom. Everyone lives to go through it all over again next week.
These guidelines illuminate the way almost every hour-long show works, whether the stories play out in the world of forensics cops or hot doctors or shrewd lawyers or crazy scientists or lying high school students. It’s a formula your outline should follow. My guess is that by now it does.
My other guess? You’re ready to start writing. So let’s get to it!
Writing Your First Draft
So today’s the day, huh? We’ve done everything I can think of to get you ready to write, and now there’s nothing left to do but power up your laptop, open your scriptwriting program of choice, type TEASER, and have at it.
It’s a scary prospect, isn’t it? As much as there’s a story in your outline waiting to be told, that blank page can freeze you. Think about it: There is an infinite number of ways you can begin that first scene. Who should talk first? What should they be doing as they talk? How many other people should be in the scene? Why are they there and where did they come from? Are they happy about being there, or do they wish they were someplace else? You could spend the rest of the day just answering these questions and not get anywhere at all!
Sounds like you could use a little advice to help you calm down. That’s what this section of the chapter is for. First, I’ll share some tips to help you get through your writing day without your head exploding—everyday guidelines that apply to any script you write. Then I’ll lead you through a series of questions to ask yourself before you write each scene. How do I know the questions work? Because I still ask them of myself before I write each scene. Let’s get to it.
As You Write Your Script
The first piece of advice I’ll give you—and I dispense it to every writer in my class—is trust your instincts. Your concept of this particular story and how it should play out is what got you this far, which is a real accomplishment in and of itself. You’re going to hit plenty of walls in the next couple of weeks; don’t give in to that little voice that says, “This was a stupid idea in the first place!” You wouldn’t be here if that was true; you’d have moved on long ago. You believe in this story, so believe in yourself.
Trusting your instincts, however, does not imply that you should be rigid in your approach to your script and its structure. You need to be aware of the fact that things will change. You’ll come to all sorts of realizations as you write: Certain scenes that made perfect sense in your outline—sometimes your favorite scenes—will no longer seem sensible, or even necessary, in the draft. Characters’ actions that used to seem motivated will now strike you as wonky. Act outs that positively sang in the outline will now seem limp and anticlimactic. So what do you do? Adapt.
Take a moment, analyze why something isn’t working, and fix it. If that sounds simple, it’s not, but it’s what you have to do. Nothing is written in stone is a phrase you’ll hear applied to every script and outline you ever write. It’s true. Embrace the concept (or as we used to say at Stephen J. Cannell Productions in the nineties, “Eat the reality sandwich”). In change lies opportunity.
With respect to the physical act of how you put your words on the page—your writing style—one of the most important suggestions that I can give you is don’t overwrite. It took me a while to learn this lesson. I’m always very proud of how my words look on a page and take a lot of care in choosing those words…but let’s face it: If your end goal is to produce words that will be appreciated for their meticulous sentence structure and painterly mise-en-scène, write a book. When you write a TV script, by the time it’s passed through five sets of studio and network rewrites, the discerning eye of the director, the mouths of the actors, and three editing passes in post, you’ll be lucky if any of your favorite script moments are even recognizable. Okay, it’s not that bad, but the point here is that the script is a tool, not a work of art. It’s a means to an end, and a well-written script, spec or otherwise, is constructed with that in mind.
Be Concise
So what does that mean, exactly, to “be concise”? For one thing, don’t novelize. Don’t take half a page of scene description to describe a character’s entry, what he’s wearing, where he’s come from, whether he enjoyed his breakfast, and what he watched on TV last night. The audience is never going to know any of that anyway, unless it’s important for that character to talk about, in which case it’ll end up as dialogue, right? My rule of thumb is that no scene description should be more than three lines long. I’m not saying you have to write that way as well, but limiting scene description is a good way to make sure what’s important makes it onto the page, and what’s not stays off it.
Another good approach to keeping your work concise is to remind yourself of your role: You’re the writer. You’re not the director or the director of photography (DP). Don’t take valuable space on the page to set up how you want a scene to look. No one needs to read, “The camera pans to find Bob in the doorway, then follows him to the desk, where he sits, under a lamp, revealing the open window behind him.” That’s just annoying; if you’re lucky enough that your script makes it to the set, the director and the DP will figure out how they want to shoot the scene all by themselves. That’s why they were hired. So no shots, no camera moves. You’re in charge of the story, and that’s what you need to be concentrating on.
Keep Up the Pace
Writing in a concise manner will help you with another area of concern: pacing. How often do you watch a show and complain that the story is moving too quickly? Hardly ever, compared to the times a show, or a script, seems to drag. The last thing you want is for readers to put your script down and pretend they will get back to it tomorrow, because they won’t. That script leaves their hands, and you’ve lost them for good.
The best way to prevent this unfortunate fate is to keep things moving. Decide what the meat of your scene is and make sure you get to it sooner rather than later. In my scripts, I aim for the average scene to be between one and two pages long. Maybe once a script I’ll approach three pages—usually a scene in which a character is both pouring her heart out and giving us information crucial to the resolution of the story—but that’s it. Some of my scenes will be less than a page.
Do the math: Divide the page count of an episode of your show by the number of scenes—the average will be around a page and a half per scene. You need to get in and get out: Do characters really need to enter a scene, or can they already be there? How much of a conversation could have taken place offscreen, before the scene began? And does everybody need to leave when they’re done, or can you cut out of the scene after a particularly provocative line? Put what you absolutely need on the page, and nothing more. It takes practice to learn how to pull this off. Start today.
Learn When to Reevaluate and When to Push Ahead
Okay. You’re rolling. Pages are piling up. Scenes are tight. What happens when that juggernaut comes to a standstill? When you realize you’ve spent all morning trying to make a scene work and it’s just not coming? This happens to me once or twice a script, and here’s what I’ve learned: If something’s really not working, there’s a reason. What you need to do when you hit one of these roadblocks is stop trying to write the scene and start looking for the underlying reason it’s proving so difficult.
Perhaps the scene, despite how well it worked in the outline, is no longer motivated due to modifications you’ve made to the story. Maybe the attitude you’ve chosen for a character isn’t really true anymore. Maybe there’s no real conflict—the scene is just
relaying story information in a boring fashion—or the conflict you have is unmotivated. Maybe you just don’t need the scene anymore.
Whatever the cause, if you’re this stuck, the answer is to reevaluate the scene conceptually. Stepping back from the trees to take a look at the forest usually provides a solution and gets you back on track.
And on track is where you want to be. Writing a script is all about forward progress, pushing ahead. Make no mistake: This spec of yours is a test, an endurance contest to see if you have the mettle to finish. Toward that end, here’s my next bit of wisdom: Avoid reading what you’ve just written. I know you’re proud of that scene or act out; who wouldn’t want to read it over just to remind himself of how smart he is?
There are a couple of reasons why this is a bad idea. For one thing, rereading is less productive than writing; you’re wasting valuable time. More importantly, the less you go over your script now, the fresher it will seem when you’re finished. You’re going to need a critical eye when you begin the rewriting/tightening process, and if by then you’re reading material you’ve already gone over countless times, your job will be infinitely harder. I can’t stress this enough: Leave it alone. If that scene or act out is good, it’ll seem even better in the context of an entire script. And your ability to judge it will be much more acute.
Two more quick bits of advice before we move on to some scene-particular tips. First: Keep a pad and pen next to your bed. Once you’re really in the zone, your brain will keep working on your script whether you are or not. Ideas are going to come to you when you least expect them, so be prepared. Second: Finish the script. Of course you intend to—every writer intends to finish every project—but history and Hollywood are littered with half-completed scripts. You have no idea how many people have told me over the years that they could be writers, too, if they “only had the time.” You know what that’s code for? They’re not writers. But you are. At least you will be, when you finish that script. So keep writing!