How to Create a TV Show, Part 7: A Long Way To Go And A Short Time To Get There

Writing a pilot is pretty much the hardest job a screenwriter can take on.  You have to do all the same work as writing a feature and more, but in much a shorter timeframe. You have to cram a dramatic feature into an hour (42 minutes for network) or a comedic feature into a half hour (21 minutes for network)!

Yeah, but wouldn’t it would be easier in some ways, since you have so much more time over the course of a season to get to know these characters?  Nope, if you want to sell the pilot, you can’t hold anything back for later.  We have to get to know (and love) these characters just as well as feature characters, lightning fast, and then plunge them right into the plot a minute later.  

In fact, we have to love them even more than we love feature characters.  Features are only asking for a two-hour commitment, so we’re more forgiving towards cookie-cutter heroes.  We’re far more wary of TV heroes, though, since they’re asking us to make a five-year commitment. 

Yes but at least you don’t have to transform the characters! In fact, these characters are forbidden from ever transforming, so you don’t have to build an arc, right?  Well, it is true that a TV hero is not going to be fundamentally transformed in the way that a movie hero is.  A movie (or play, or novel) is about the most important thing that will ever happen to your hero.  Obviously, you can’t do that on TV...  There’s no way every week can be the most important week in their lives! 

But the art of TV is the art of the small transformation.  Our heroes very rarely change their philosophy, but they almost always have to change their perspective to get what they want.  Over the course of a one-hour show…

1. Our hero has a long-standing problem that becomes acute, (Teaser):  Dr. House has had been kicked out of the hospital again.  He’s going crazy…
2. He gets a new opportunity to fix it (Act 1): His interns secretly bring him a case that they can’t solve…
3. That opportunity leads to an unforeseen conflict (Act 2): Cutty finds out and tries to block him from the case…
4. So first he tries to resolve that conflict the easy way, which leads to a midpoint disaster (Act 3): House makes a cocky diagnosis which accidentally puts the patient in a coma…
5. Then he tries the hard way, which leads to a realization (Act 4):  House stays up all night, but can’t fix it, then he notices they forgot the lemon juice in his iced tea…Wait, that’s it!
6. …Which allows them to solve the problem (Act 5): He runs across the hospital just in time to save the patient with the correct diagnosis: It’s scurvy!   Cutty reluctantly lets him back into the hospital…

Like I said, all the same stuff that happens in a movie, except in double-time.  Plus, a TV show is more likely than a movie to have unrelated subplots interwoven with the above.  Movies are far more linear, focused like a laser on the hero’s journey, whereas TV almost always presents a boarder, messier picture.

The above is true for almost every episode, but in a pilot you have to do all that while introducing the setting and the characters in a way that’s so compelling that the audience will want to commit for the long haul.  It’s insane!  But the good news is, if you can do this, you can do anything...

Okay, we’re not done, but I’m tired of TV for a while.  This series will continue a little bit later...