Spec Scriptacular Contest – Page 24

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Speaking of Herbie J Pilato (see the post directly below) TVWriter™ is pleased to bring y’all the latest news about this Herbie J Pilato dude:

TELEVISION, INK. AND MIRKWOOD PARTNERS REWIND CLASSIC TV WITH “NOW & THEN”

Televison, Ink., a pop-culture brand founded and owned by producer-author Herbie J Pilato (“Glamour, Gidgets and the Girl Next Door,” “Twitch Upon A Star,” “The Bionic Book”) has signed with Joel Eisenberg and Steve Hillard’s Mirkwood Partners (“The Chronicles of Ara” for Ovation TV) to produce a 30-minute talk fest devoted to classic television, titled “Herbie J Pilato’s Now & Then.”

Pilato, Founder of the 501 (c) 3 Classic TV Preservation Society, will host the proposed weekly, and interview a single pop-culture subject from the world of classic TV in each episode. The format will closely mirror Pilato’s successful weekly “Throwback Thursday” live events, an in-person interview program hosted at Burbank’s Barnes and Noble since early 2015. read article

LB on Characterization Part 2

The TV Writer on TV Writing
by Larry Brody

Once you the writer have given us, the audience, characters with whom we can sympathize, your next job is to give these new people some “tsuris,” which is Yiddish for “Trouble with a Capital T.”

As Aristotle pointed out a couple of years ago, effective writing comes from building up to a climax, which means that once you’ve established the basic situation for your character – the need the character has that must be fulfilled, or the problem she, he, or they must solve – you’ve only brought yourself to the starting point. Often, that point is one relatively small but nevertheless unmanageable stress. Let me repeat that – “relatively small” yet most definitely “unmanageable.”

This is not going to be a permanent situation for your hero or heroes, not by a long shot. Because even then, right at the get-go, while the hero starts working like a house afire to dig out of the crisis at hand, your job is to ratchet up the pressure and make things even tougher. read article