Writing the TV Drama Series 3rd Edition: How to Succeed as a Professional Writer in TV (12 page)

Instead of dwelling on the odds, let’s stay focused on your own opportunity. First, understand the human side of what you’re walking into at a network. The Vice President for new dramatic programs, and the Director of new dramatic programs (along with a lesser title, Manager of new dramatic programs) are taking meetings all day, every day, for three or four months. A parade of showrunners come in and out of that office every 20 minutes or so. In fact, your own producer may be fielding other shows besides yours, which means they’re in competition with you.

On the day of the meeting, everyone is dressed up. You’ll gather in the lobby with your executive producer and possibly someone representing the studio, an agent from a major packaging agency (likely, the producer’s agent), and other components of your package. That might mean a network-approved high-power writer who would guarantee the pilot script, or a television star.

I once went to a network pitch on a show where the lead actor was essential. When the day came, the actor was called to a dubbing session. And we couldn’t change the appointment. So we went in with a blow-up of his headshot and set it on a chair.

You’ll have a cheering section in your meeting, and the first little while will seem like friendly greetings. Then the moment comes when the producer says, “You’re on,” the room falls silent, and all eyes are on you. Now, pitching to a network executive is a craft unto itself. Some execs nod, smile, and act interested. With others, it’s like talking to Mount Rush-more. Regardless, keep your energy high. With the nice guy, you skip out of the meeting sure you just sold a series. With the mountain, you believe you failed. Neither might be true.

If you haven’t heard in a week or two, the studio (or your producer, depending on the network relationship) phones the network. They’re usually pretty quick about saying no, and in that case, the studio will set up a meeting at the next network on the list. This can go on several times, but after four networks, and a surreptitious call to basic cable, if you’re not getting a nibble, they’ll probably drop your project. Remember, the property is still yours at this point, and no one owes anybody anything.

But let’s say you were funny and intriguing and fresh and unique — and the network thinks your show is just like another one that’s a hit — so you pass Go again. Of course, you’re not greenlighted to make a series — you know better than that by now. The assignment is only to write the pilot. That’s the next group of squares:

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EPTEMBER
TO
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OVEMBER

THE PILOT SCRIPT

Whoever writes the pilot will have at least a “developed by” credit, and may even receive “created by” credit on the series. That will generate a royalty on every episode, and his name will appear on screen forever, even if the pilot-writer is long gone. Don’t assume that’s you unless your writing proves that only you can capture the style and world you’ve proposed.

Or have you already written the pilot? If you took a chance on it, the producer will wonder if it’s going to hurt or help your prospects. That’s a sticky situation because asking you to set aside your pilot in favor of someone else’s draft is emotionally wrenching. But if you lose the whole deal because your pilot is less than mind-blowing, that’s just as wrenching.

Some professional writers have built careers doing pilots for other people’s shows. They’re savvy about the ingredients any pilot needs, they bring a pedigree of successful series, and they know how to win over network readers. It’s an oddity because these special pilot writers, who may earn up to half a million dollars for a one-hour script, usually are not the ones who will write the episodes each week, so network decision-makers are evaluating a hyped-up version of the show. It’s kind of a bait-and-switch, where they’re buying one writer’s voice, but another will write the series.

Let’s say they love your project because they love something about you — your hip writing style, insight into a subculture, your humor, your passion. Or maybe you’re just less expensive — $30,000 for the pilot script instead of half a million. Now the network calls the studio who calls the producer who calls your agent who calls you and you get a contract to write.

So, how do you do this thing? Pilots come in two flavors:
premise
and
ongoing.
A premise pilot begins with a “before” and propels the quest or situation the central character will tackle throughout the series. For example,
The Good Wife
opened with a life-changing event when Alicia Florrick’s husband, the D.A., is accused of a crime, and within the pilot loses his position and ultimately goes to jail. On her own with children to raise, Alicia returns to her career as a lawyer. At the law firm, she meets the characters who will become her new relationships while she continues to cope with the new roles within her family. And thus begins both the procedural and serial elements that roll out from the premise pilot.

Northern Exposure
opened in New York City, where the lead character, Joel Fleischman, learns that his medical school scholarship requires him to work as a doctor in Cicely, Alaska. Joel fights to get out of this commitment but soon finds himself staring out a train window until he arrives at a frozen place where he’s greeted by a moose. As we’re drawn into his new world, we meet the characters who will become Joel’s new relationships, and their arcs are set in motion.

In an ongoing pilot, the world of the show is in place and many of the characters are entrenched in their dramatic missions. The challenge is to reveal these characters and relationships without the aid of an outsider’s introduction, which we had with both Alicia and Joel. An example of an ongoing pilot was
ER
: a day in the life of an emergency room at a Chicago hospital in full swing. New characters arrived — Nurse Carol Hathaway on a stretcher, and Dr. John Carter as a young intern — but the elements of the show were already in play. The same can be said of
Big Love, The Wire, Mad Men
, and many other serials.

Boardwalk Empire
, which opened with a celebration among bootleggers in Atlantic City the day prohibition became law in 1920, and
Breaking Bad
, in which the lead character is diagnosed with terminal cancer, both took an external incident to push forward characters whose relationships were ongoing, using both ways of piloting a show.

Whichever type of pilot you choose, you’ll need the same ingredients. In addition to terrific writing, which includes building tension toward cliffhangers at act breaks and creating rich and provocative characters, just as you would in any episode (see
Chapter Three
for more about this), pilots have a special burden of exposition. Without the audience feeling they’re being informed, you need to establish the rules of your world, the engine for future stories (springboards), and enough “backstory” (history) on the characters so their current situation is understandable. You want viewers riveted by the characters. Simply, your pilot has to make people tune in to episode two.

Some techniques are similar to beginning a feature, where audiences don’t yet know the characters either. But features are easier because once people have bought tickets and are sitting in the dark, they’ll give a movie time to unveil itself. Television has to grab people in the first minutes or they’re clicking the remote. So, sure, use everything you know from theatrical screenplays in terms of presenting a new character, but start the story faster. Also, use everything you’ve learned about avoiding clunky exposition (bury it in an argument, play it in a scene instead of explaining, use visual evidence, parse it out in bits, reveal it as part of the plot instead of for its own sake, and so forth). If you’re “living” your writing, instead of manipulating it, some of these problems may solve themselves. And if those central characters and your idea are as vibrant as the format you pitched, the pilot might come naturally.

Easy or difficult, approximately 50 pages are going to be due at the network around Thanksgiving. From a network’s point of view it will be the first draft. Of course, it won’t. You will have gone through every step with your producer, and the studio may have read drafts as well. No one wants to take a chance that this won’t work, so if your drafts aren’t delivering the spirit that landed this assignment, they’ll bring in another writer, who will share the writing credit. So all through October and November you’re rewriting like crazy — you and everyone else who’s doing a pilot. And, true to the lemmings, everyone else’s pilot is due at all the networks the same time as yours. All over town everyone is anticipating:

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ECEMBER
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ANUARY

THE GREENLIGHT

Several possibilities: The network may send notes for a second draft of the pilot. If so, you’ll gnash your teeth: What do they mean they don’t like the central character — that’s exactly who I pitched and that’s who they bought! They wait until now to tell me they have another pilot too close to this, so we have to change everything! What am I supposed to do with a note like “not funny enough” when this drama was never supposed to be funny at all! No, I can’t turn this drama about men in prison into a vehicle for Lady Gaga! Huh???

After the gnashing, you’ll sit with the producer and maybe your studio development person and figure out what you can fix, and what, if anything, may be left alone or argued. If they believe your situation is precarious, the studio may ask for a major rewrite. In any case, your finished script is due by Christmas — the same as everyone else.

And like everyone else, you’re hoping your pilot script will be plucked out as one of the twenty or thirty percent that get “greenlighted.” That means the network gives the production company the go-ahead to produce the pilot. These greenlights may be announced anytime from December through January. They lead to:

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EBRUARY
TO
A
PRIL

PILOT SEASON

Instead of snow, a climate of anxiety hangs in the sunny skies of Los Angeles in winter. It’s accompanied by a giant sound of vacuuming, inhaling all unclaimed film crews down to the last grip and gaffer, all the sound stages, every available television director, and all the actors who cycle through pilots year after year in “holding deals” (contracts which hold an actor exclusive to a potential series). George Clooney was cast in fifteen failed pilots before
ER
. Welcome to pilot season.

Though it begins with your script, the produced pilot is enhanced by “production values” (locations, techniques, or personnel) that make it more expensive than a normal episode. For example, Disney spent a remarkable $12 million on the two-hour pilot for its 2004 series
Lost
.

When fully edited, a typical pilot will be 44 minutes long, the length of a network hour without ads. But once in a while a network asks for a 20-or 25-minute “presentation” instead, like a demo for a record company. That’s bad news for you as the writer, because your finely honed 50-page script must be slashed to 30 pages, losing secondary story lines, nuance, and sometimes risking the sense of the show. Networks order these presentations anyway because they cost around two million, which is roughly half the cost of a pilot. If this befalls you, just sit down and cut the pages. You really don’t have a choice.

Except for production revisions (for casting, location, timing, and so forth), the writer’s work is essentially finished by February. Still, I advise you to stick as close as you can to the production. If the producers will let you, be on the set, see the “dailies,” go to meetings. Of course, you know better than to breathe down the director’s neck or stand in the way of rolling cameras. Just don’t fade out after you’ve written “fade out.”

By April, all the pilots in all genres at all the networks are edited and tested at the same time. This testing, incidentally, is a tribal ritual in itself. Unwitting tourists in Las Vegas (chosen because Vegas attracts visitors from all over the country) are given $10 gift certificates in exchange for registering their reactions on an electronic dial while viewing a pilot. If something scores poorly, it may be re-edited; way too late to rewrite, though. With the pilots done, it’s time for:

M
AY

PICK-UPS

All the lemmings arrive at the edge of the precipice at once — and off they go to New York by May. Isn’t it strange that shows are (usually) produced in Los Angeles, and network and studio executives are based here, and the entire creation of the pilot happens on the West Coast, yet the verdict is rendered 3,000 miles away? That’s because the decision is corporate, involving huge investments that impact parent companies and involve advertisers who (they hope) offset those costs. It’s Big Brother time.

Once the pilots have gone, no one can do anything but wait. That doesn’t stop studio executives from checking into top New York hotels and haunting lobbies where screenings are in progress upstairs. They can’t really influence the outcome, can’t attend screenings or discussions, so what do they hope to gain? Gossip — leaks, hints, a raised eyebrow that their show may go. Or die.