TV isn’t dead, after all. Instead, it’s just moved to a new location. Our laps:
Do you remember 2007? Way back then in the long-long ago times, movies came on physical discs and you binge-watched a TV series by happening to turn on the TV while a Law and Order marathon was running. Now, however, it seems like basically everything streams to us over the internet… and basically the whole internet, or at least a huge fraction of it, is for streaming.
Well, he breaks it by fixing it, of course. Isn’t that what story-breaking is all about? Making the story work?
The opening credits on most TV shows often come with a side order of lies. The main offender is the “written-by” credit. It’s a suspiciously narrow designation that suggests one or possibly two story-artisans painstakingly handcrafted every plot-point, every turn, and every string of sparkling banter that make up the episode all on their own. Barring some exceptions, what actually happens is an entire writers room full of interlocking personality types forms like a comedy Voltron to pitch and polish ideas until one or two writers have enough material to go off and write up a draft. It’s a process that’s known as breaking a story, and it is incredibly difficult to do.
One person who knows more about it than most, though, is Alan Yang.
Scenes are more than signposts on your way to the end of the screenplay road. They’re more than just moments in which story or character points are thrown out at the viewer or reader. A good scene in a screen or teleplay — and by good I mean EFFECTIVE in terms of getting the response you want — is a mini-film in itself, with a beginning, middle, and end.
Scenes need to be structured so that their intensity grows and then climaxes, like microcosms of your script. (And, I think it’s clear, sex too – but we’re not going there right now.)
This doesn’t mean that a scene should go on and on. far from it.
…Instead of staying where he was, which, it turns out, was as a reality TV episode re-capper. Listen closely, future showrunners:
Writer and producer Stephen Falk has probably never wanted for inspirational material. His career has run the gamut of Hollywood experiences, from writing episode recaps of reality TV shows, to working on a successful show like “Weeds,” to having the rug pulled under him midway through filming his debut series, “Next Caller.”
Far be it for TVWriter™ to indulge in blind gossip, that wretched yet fascinating reportorial exercise in consequence-free (for the writer) character assassination. But this particular blind item is so fascinating, and the events it describes are so common, that we just can’t resist bringing it to your attention:
We have a warning for everyone in the television industry: Watch your backs, because someone may be looking to sabotage your TV show!
A couple of years ago, there were three people who worked at the same network: Showrunner 1 (SR1), Showrunner 2 (SR2) and a high-ranking Network Executive (NE).