“What does it mean when an idea has legs?” and other questions to ask, to help turn an idea into a series.
StudioBinder looks at How to Write a TV Show Treatment by first asking: “Is my concept a story?”
Story vs Plot
This may be one of the simplest and clearest illustrations to help distinguish between the two – and, hopefully, act as a catalyst to get you writing.
“The Best Pilots Tend to Start at the End”
Writer Matt Rickett asserts that what makes the pilot episode of Cheers so perfect is that “everything that happens, happens for a reason, and the way you’re introduced to people is apparent of how it’s going to be for the rest of the series.”
Along a similar line, Issa Rae, creator and star or Insecure (2016-2021), offers her advice on how to write a TV pilot which gets picked up for further episodes (via MasterClass):
Further viewing
In ScriptnotesPodcast, screenwriter John August (Big Fish, Go) and show runner Craig Mazin (The Last Of Us, Chernobyl) interview screenwriters and writer-directors. In her episode, Courtney Kemp, creator of Nemesis and the Power franchise, suggests that writers starting out should follow the Issa Rae model – write, film, and publish a mini-series on social media, to share alongside your writing samples, to create your own momentum and interest for potential partners. Read the video description for even more:
The StudioBinder video is itself the pilot of their series on TV scriptwriting. Watch the full playlist here:
Somehow not part of that series is their How to Write a Script for TV episode of another series of theirs, ‘Anatomy of a Screenplay’:
More on the production process of a series, from script to screen: