Television Development

by Bob Levy

  Because the status quo of each lead character was described in the Character section of the pitch, the Pretty Little Liars Pilot Story section began with the first major story turns of Aria’s story and the overarching story. Aria, the artsy one (see, I just reminded you which one Aria is, and I bet you were grateful for the reminder!), meets Ezra at a local college bar, allows him to assume she’s a college student rather than the high school student she actually is, they share an immediate attraction and kiss passionately in the bar bathroom, and the next day – the first day of the school year – Aria discovers that Ezra is her new English teacher. That discovery is the first major turn of Aria’s story. The next major event of the pilot story is the first major turn of the first overarching story: Aria receives her first text from the unseen character “A” threatening to tell everyone that Aria kissed her teacher. King’s Pretty Little Liars Pilot Story section goes on to pitch the first major story turns for the remaining three lead characters. (I told you the pitch was complex!) That’s another reason King used such simple language in her pitch. The stories themselves were complex enough – she didn’t want to confuse her listeners with unnecessarily florid language as they listened to her five-part, intricate Pilot Story section.

  While the Character Section of TV pitches examines each character, one at a time, typically in order of importance, a Pilot Story section that pitches more than one story (like the Pretty Little Liars Pilot Story pitch) can handle multiple storylines in either of two ways: It can “cross-cut” between multiple stories (beginning the A-story, then shifting to the beginning of the B-story, then beginning the C-story, then shifting back to the next major event of the A-story, etc.) or it can tell all of the A-story from beginning to end, then all of the B-story from beginning to end, then all of the C-story. Deciding how to structure the Pilot Story pitch is up to the pitcher and her partners, and typically the two main issues they consider when determining the structure are 1) clarity and 2) dramatic impact. What’s the most effective way to tell these multiple stories and make sure the listeners can follow the pitch?

  As I mentioned earlier, story defines character. The pitch will introduce the characters in the Character section, but listeners will really grow to understand them in much greater detail when they hear what the characters do in action in the pilot story.

  The most important thing the development executives listening to the pitch need to learn about the lead characters in the Pilot Story section is their goal. What are the lead characters’ goals in the pilot story? What do the lead characters want? What do they spend the pilot episode – and potentially the entire series – pursuing?

  During or after the description of the first major turn of the pilot story, effective pitches tell the listeners what the lead character wants. In Breaking Bad Walter’s goal is introduced in the scene after he learns he’s dying of cancer. At his 50th birthday party Walter sees a news report on TV about a local drug-bust, and the report shows stacks of cash that the cops confiscated at the bust, hundreds of thousands of dollars. A light bulb goes off in Walter’s head. Walter doesn’t say it out loud but thinks to himself, “If uneducated guys manufacturing methamphetamine can make hundreds of thousands of dollars, a guy with my knowledge of chemistry could make a fortune!”

  That moment defines the entire series. It defines Walter’s goal for both the pilot story and beyond: manufacture drugs to make money to provide for his family after he dies of cancer.

  Once we’re told what a character wants, what his goal is, we really understand the character. That’s usually when we truly get the character. Nothing crystalizes a character more clearly than learning what he wants. If the lead character’s goal in the pilot story is believable and relatable (if we can imagine ourselves wanting the same thing if we were in his shoes), we connect to him and begin to care about him and root for him. This is what we mean by “story defines character.”

  In Pretty Little Liars, Aria wants Ezra. Ezra is her pilot story goal. Winning Ezra’s love, despite the moral and practical complications that he’s her teacher, is her goal in the pilot story and her goal for much of the run of the entire series. Each of the lead characters’ goals in Pretty Little Liars is defined clearly in the Pilot Story section of King’s pitch. Writers work hard to figure out what parts of their pilot stories define their characters and include those parts of the story in their Pilot Story sections. A writer asks herself, “What does my lead character want in the pilot episode, what is he trying to get?” Writers need to know the answer to that question and make sure to set their characters’ goals in motion in clear terms in the Pilot Story section. Story defines character.

  Writers usually mention act breaks in their Pilot Story section. The story content of act breaks includes twists, surprises and cliffhangers. The story content of act breaks is designed to make sure the audience doesn’t change the channel when the commercial comes on. Act breaks are designed to make the viewer think, “Oh my god, what’s going to happen next?!” or “How will that character ever get out of that situation when we come back from the commercial?!”

  Writers and producers study the formats of the networks they’re pitching and figure out how many acts their shows include. They try to create big act-break twists and surprises for some or all of the act breaks of their pilot story and pitch those act breaks. If a writer can create them, they pitch those big twists and surprises. Studying potential buyers’ formats and tailoring the delivery of their pitch to those specific formats impresses executives and demonstrates to them that the writer watches that network’s shows and knows what its programming brand is about. Even with shows at networks that don’t have commercials, writers still typically structure their stories in acts and pitch act breaks.

  Pitching the ending of the pilot story can be tricky. Writers want to pitch an ending that feels satisfying, that feels like the resolution of the story, but pilot episodes can’t resolve everything or there’s no series that can follow it. That story feels like a movie, not a TV pilot. The endings of pilot stories need to feel like satisfying resolutions but resolutions that also promise more drama, comedy and/or complications to come. “That’s the end of this chapter, but only the beginning of a much larger story!” That’s what the ending of the pilot episode should suggest and what the ending of the Pilot Story section of the pitch should convey.

  In the Breaking Bad pilot story, Walter White makes his first batch of drugs, tries to sell it to drug dealers, almost gets murdered by the drug dealers who try to steal the drugs and kill him (rather than pay him for the drugs as they had agreed earlier), but then Walter outwits his attackers and manages to kill them and take their money. Walter wins! The pilot story ends with a big victory for Walter. He’s succeeded in beginning to achieve his goal of making money by manufacturing drugs. Even though the ending of the Breaking Bad pilot episode delivers a surprising and satisfyingly victorious ending, we know it’s only the beginning of Walter’s journey. He needs to manufacture a lot more meth and make a lot more money to be able to provide for his family after he’s dead. We know that the thrill of becoming a criminal has only whetted his appetite for more mayhem. This chapter has concluded, but it’s only the beginning for Walter White! That’s how writers typically try to craft the ending of their pilot stories and the ending of the Pilot Story section of their pitches.

  Here are a few more ideas to keep in mind when developing successful pilot story pitches.

  Other than reminding listeners of which character is which (e.g., “Aria’s the artsy one”), pitchers usually avoid repeating themselves. They build on information they’ve delivered earlier. Reminders can help listeners avoid confusion, but pitchers try to create a strong sense of forward momentum as they pitch the story of the pilot, and repetition slows that momentum and bores the listeners.

  Another thing the best pitchers do is to connect emotionally to the Pilot Story they’re telling. As I’ve already discussed, one of the primary goals of all TV storytelling is
to convey and arouse emotion. To take the viewer on an emotional journey. To make viewers care about the characters and to make them feel something when good things or bad things happen to those characters. The same applies to the Pilot Story pitch. Ideally the writer wants the listeners to feel something as he tells his pilot story. An important technique to make the listeners feel something is for the pitcher to feel something. The emotion the pitcher displays as he pitches the pilot story cues the listeners to experience the same emotion.

  How does a writer “display” emotion as she pitches her story? She feels it. We can’t fake a display of emotion. Actors aren’t faking emotion when they display the emotions of their characters. They’re actually feeling the emotions. Actors use the emotional context of the scenes and stories they’re playing to find a way to feel the emotion of a scene. Even though writers aren’t actors, when they’re telling their stories they need to do the same thing that actors do. When writers pitch emotionally resonant stories they need to use the emotional power of the story they’re telling to emotionally connect to it. They need to believe the story they’re telling. They need to feel it. They need to feel it so the listeners they’re pitching to see them feel it and get swept into feeling it too.

  Don’t get me wrong: This is hard to do. The writer is basically reciting a speech he’s memorized. He’s struggling to remember his speech. We all get nervous when we have to speak in public to people we don’t know very well. A lot is riding on this pitch meeting going well – we feel the pressure of trying to make the meeting a success. All these factors make it very difficult to emotionally connect to the story we’re telling. Sometimes we even forget we’re supposed to do that. Pitching is one of the writer’s jobs, and he or she needs to work on it. They need to practice it. Remember that telling stories is why we got into this business. It’s why we’re here, why we want to make the TV series we’re pitching.

  Writers need to believe in the story they’re telling and figure out what it is about the story they’re pitching that makes them care, what touches their hearts or what makes them smile or laugh. When a writer tells the story of her pilot, she needs to remember to connect to that thing. To enjoy the fun and drama of her story as she tells it. To enjoy the opportunity to share her story with the people to whom she’s telling it. If she can tell her story with the emotion and enthusiasm she feels for her story, she’ll be on her way to a successful sale.

  Here’s an important gut-check: If a writer isn’t connecting emotionally when pitching his pilot story, he and his partners should stop and ask themselves why. I’m not referring to when the writer’s pitching to buyers. That’s very hard to do (though not impossible) for the reasons described above. But if the writer can’t pitch it into the mirror, or to his friends, spouse or business partners, and emotionally connect to his pilot story, he and his partners need to ask themselves if the pilot story is really working. Is it emotional enough? Is it good enough? If he can’t tell his pilot story and get emotionally connected to it, it’s probably because the story itself isn’t emotional enough. That’s a big problem. That’s probably not a problem with the pitch, but rather a problem with the pilot story itself. Sellers (producers, studio development executives and agents) need to make sure what they’re pitching is ready to pitch, and, if it isn’t, they need to stop, go back and work on it. They need to make sure all of the pitch is great – with interesting characters the audience will care about and a pilot story that will make the listeners feel like they’re riding a roller coaster – or they shouldn’t pitch it. Fix it first.

  Section 6: Arc of First Season/Arc of Series

  The next section of the pitch is the Arc of the First Season and/or the Arc of the Series. An “arc,” as we know, is a story told over multiple episodes or multiple seasons. The Blair-and-Chuck romance was a story arc in Gossip Girl. That arc had many ups and downs and lasted several seasons. There were shorter romantic story arcs in Gossip Girl too, like the romantic arc between Dan Humphrey and his teacher Rachel Carr that lasted three episodes in Season 2. Both of these are romantic story arcs. Walter White’s conflict with Gus Fring was a story arc that lasted two and a half seasons on Breaking Bad.

  Television series are designed to last several seasons. Seasons (which are defined by the number of episodes the network chooses to program during a given year) are frequently shaped by season-long story arcs. The primary story arc of Season 1 of Game of Thrones focused on Eddard Stark, the character played by Sean Bean. Eddard Stark’s Season 1 arc followed him as he investigated who killed the previous “hand” of the king of Westeros (as in “right-hand man”) and followed Stark trying to protect his family in a dangerous world.

  (Needless to point out, a series like Game of Thrones offers many story arcs that intertwine within episodes and play out concurrently. The Eddard Stark/who-killed-the-hand arc was one of many story arcs of Season 1.)

  Writers may have plans for story arcs for several seasons of their series, but the network development executives listening to the pitch want to hear primarily about the arc of the first season of the series (if one exists) and whether or not there is an overall arc to the series as a whole. The overall series arc of Breaking Bad was pitched by creator Vince Gilligan as “Walter White goes from Mr. Chips to Scarface.”3 In other words, Gilligan suggested his series would track the transformation of its lead character from a friendly, kind-hearted teacher to a completely amoral criminal mastermind. That’s how Gilligan pitched the overall arc of the entire Breaking Bad series, and that’s exactly what he spent the next seven seasons of the show dramatizing. He had a clear game plan from the outset of his series, and he ultimately delivered exactly what his pitch promised.

  Many shows don’t have season arcs or series arcs at all. Many procedural shows like cop shows or medical shows focus on the “case of the week” rather than stories that continue beyond one episode. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation lasted 14 seasons and offered very few story arcs. Each episode of the show (there were 337 of them) introduced a new case, a new murder mystery that it solved by the end of each episode. The creator of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation didn’t pitch Season 1 arcs or series arcs because they weren’t part of the design of his series.

  Today, however, most American shows do arc out stories over the course of multiple episodes. If the design of a series includes a major story arc that will last most or all of the first season, or if the project has in mind – as Vince Gilligan did for Walter White – a series-long arc, the writer delivers that in this section of the pitch.

  When Marlene King pitched Pretty Little Liars she described several Season 1 arcs, including an arc for Aria’s parents (including yet another reminder of which character Aria was):

  Aria (mature girl who makes out with teacher) discovers her father, Byron, is cheating on her mother again with Meredith, a college art teacher. Byron leaves the family and moves in with Meredith. Ella, Aria’s mother, finds out that her daughter knew about the affair and kept it from her. Ella doesn’t know if she can ever forgive Aria.

  A common strategy these days for arcing seasons of TV is to create an antagonist (also known as a “nemesis” or “bad guy”) that the lead character defeats at the end of the season. Buffy the Vampire Slayer referred to this kind of character as a “big bad,” and the expression has stuck within the industry. The season-long antagonist “big bad” often defines a season-long story arc. Series that use this structure will typically then introduce a new “big bad” the following season and again the season after that and so on. Breaking Bad offered a revolving door of bad guys who came and went, always defeated by Walter White. Tuco, Gus Fring and the White Supremacist Group were a few of the antagonists that lasted one or two seasons (constituting one or two season-long arcs) on the show. If a writer imagines an antagonist that the lead character defeats at the end of the first season, the writer will typically pitch that arc in this section of the pitch.

  Section 7: Tone

  In the next se
ction of the pitch the writer describes the tone of the series. Once the pitch has explained the concept of the series, introduced the major characters and laid out the pilot story, the network development executive wants to know what the show will feel like and how that “feel” will be different from other shows like it. This is tone.

  I offer the following definition of tone: the style of writing and overall execution that suggests the writer’s attitude toward his subject; typically defined by serious versus light-hearted, dramatic versus comedic, “soft” versus “edgy,” sophisticated versus simple.

  A technique that many writers use is to compare the tone being pitched with the tone of another show that’s already on the air. The tone of Breaking Bad could be pitched as the tone of The Sopranos but with a bit more black humor. Like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad was naturalistic, edgy, sophisticated and sometimes brutal but offered slightly more black comedy than The Sopranos. The Sopranos had a comedic strain of its own, but the comedy of The Sopranos came more from mocking the ignorance and crudeness of its provincial criminal characters.

  When Marlene King pitched Pretty Little Liars she couldn’t think of another series that employed a tone similar to what she planned for her show. In many ways Pretty Little Liars was inspired by the show Desperate Housewives, but King imagined that the tone of her new show would be quite distinct from that earlier series. She came up with a single word that isn’t used very often to describe the tone of TV series, but it proved effective in giving network development executives a very clear idea of the unique tone she planned. King told executives that the tone of Pretty Little Liars was “delicious.” Network executives smiled when they heard that word, and after seven seasons it’s safe to say that “delicious” was exactly what King delivered.