…And they all agree that writing treatments, outlines, beatsheets, whatever you want to call them, sucks.
See and hear Emma Thompson, Steven Knight and James Schamus in highly opinionated action, right here:
Category: Resources
40 years worth of TV writing experience and info, yours for the taking.
Herbie J Pilato: How To Write A Nonfiction Book That Sells!
by Herbie J Pilato
I wish I had a dollar for every time someone said they should write a book.
Wait.
Scratch that.
Next TVWriter™ Advanced Online Workshop Starts February 19, 2015
…And we may – really, that’s may – have one opening left.
If you aren’t familiar with what the Advanced Workshop is all about, check it out HERE
Or, if you are familiar and want to go for it this time around, well, erm, go to that same page and fork over some moolah and register to be sure we save your place. Yeppers, that’s still HERE
Peggy Bechko: Abilities and Skills that Drive Characters
by Peggy Bechko
As writers we create stories and with those stores are people, places and things. Simple, right?
We get wrapped up in the story, where it’s going, it’s moral (if there is one), how you’re going to wrap it up, where it’s going to be set, but do we really give enough attention to the characters abilities?
In order to make our created people (our characters) as interesting as it’s within our abilities to do so there are lots of times when giving him or her some special ability, skill or talent that makes him or her a real stand-out. That could well be anything from being a vampire (I think the skills and abilities are apparent though it would be cool, if you, as the writer came up with a whole new take and list of skills and abilities) to a person with amazing IT abilities (remember 1995’s The Net with Sandra Bullock), to someone like the hero in TV’s new Forever (do I need to say he can’t die?) to a book like Ender’s Game in which a child has incredible war tactic abilities.
What Makes a Great TV Pilot Script?
Ken Levine has quite a few ideas on this score, and TVWriter™ agrees with all most of them. (Can you guess which one we aren’t quite onboard with?) What better time to run this than now, as the 2015 People’s Pilot gets underway?
What I Look For in a Spec Pilot
by Ken Levine
A few years ago, David Isaacs and I wrote a pilot for a major network. The development executive was new to the job. We turned in our first draft and heard he was very happy with it. Instead of going to the network for notes we would just do a conference call. The notes would be minimal. All the stuff that’s music to writers’ ears.
At the appointed time he got on the phone and was hugely complimentary. “It’s amazing how you guys introduced the premise and characters and set up the story and it all flowed, it never felt forced. We learned a lot about the characters along the way, and you got it all in in 46 pages.”