Writing the TV Drama Series 3rd Edition: How to Succeed as a Professional Writer in TV (35 page)

I’ll give you an example. My assistant said he loved
Gossip Girl
. He went to a high school in New York and
Gossip Girl
is nothing like the high school he went to. He wants to do the real
Gossip Girl
. So he sat down and wrote up an idea. Over the break he sent out a notice on the Internet through Facebook and Twitter and places like that, saying ‘Hey kids, do you want to appear in a Reality
Gossip Girl?
’ They all came down with their parents, and signed releases, and he videotaped them. He got some interesting characters and went on his laptop and cut some things together and put it on DVD and said I think there’s a show with these kids.

There’s not real writing involved in that even though he did have to write something to go on the Internet. But once he had it on a disc I said ‘Now what’s the show? I see these are interesting characters, but how do they relate to each other? What are their stories going to be?’ The first thing the network’s going to say to us is ‘What drags me through all six episodes?’ It’s not only the story arc for the six episodes but where are these kids beginning and ending? The logical one for school kids is they start at the beginning of the school year and end at the senior prom. That’s an easy story arc for us to create.

But now tell me how each character is going to be intertwined. Tell me what each episode is about because each episode has to have its own story arc. We need the episode where one of the girls breaks up with her boyfriend and she has a fight with him and wants to reconcile at the end. We have the episode when one of the girls wants to have a party and her mom doesn’t want her to have a party so she sneaks around her back and has the party anyway. We have another one where one of the kids is gay but isn’t out of the closet and has to tell his best friend.

Through all of those we’re projecting on the characters what we think are the stories based on the interviews. But then in order to be able to sell that show — which is ultimately every writer and producer’s job — we need someone else to give you the money to make your vision happen. Whether you’re a writer or producer you’re always convincing somebody to give you the money to make it happen. So I would have to go in to the network and lay this story out.

The only way you can do that is to write it on a piece of paper and say okay, here’s the story. There are these six kids. Here are their characters. Here’s how they interrelate. Here’s the prototype for each one, and everyone in television has to be a big arc character, bigger than life, whether it’s a comedy or a drama, because if they’re not bigger than life, who cares. We write their stories, and then we tell the story in a meeting. After pitching it we show them a bit of DVD of the characters. They might ask ‘If you wanted to take the six episodes and make it eight, how would you expand them?’ If there was a second season, what would that look like? So you have to not only visualize all this but write it down.

The next thing the network says is ‘Fine, here’s a small amount of money, say $25,000. Now I want you to go out and shoot a demo reel with them interacting. Show me what the show is going to look like. It can be eight to ten minutes worth of video.’ We call it a Pilot Presentation, but it’s really a casting reel.

On top of that they have all these delivery requirements. Here is a list for a show about a team of people who go in and fix houses that are disasters.

• A concept synopsis.

Well, somebody’s got to write that.

• A series treatment.

That’s a full-on treatment of every episode.

• A detailed rundown of the first episode.

It’s broken down act by act with six act breaks, so you have to understand act structure. It has to have a beginning, middle, and end with a cliffhanger. And keep in mind you’re writing for a Reality show so you don’t know exactly what these characters are going to do. You’re projecting what they’re going to do. You’re writing your vision for what you think could be the show.

• Outlines for three additional episodes.

• A written description of the opening tease.

• What the show title and graphics will look like.

• Potential content ideas for the Internet.

• Full casting for the co-hosts as well as homeowners.

PD:
How can they pay $25,000 for that amount of work?

SS:
I have to use members of my company who are doing other shows to do this for free, basically. Or I use a kid just out of college or a producer just starting. If they shoot everything themselves, and they have the ability to write, the producer could do all this by themselves without hiring anyone. But you see this is a ton of writing.

PD:
Who is doing all this writing?

SS:
In this case it was an exec producer who works for me in New York. Most of the money went to her and the casting director. She writes it all and sends it to me and I rewrite it as needed.

PD:
Her title is “Producer,” not “Writer.” In Reality is there a title called “Writer”?

SS:
Not usually. We perpetuate this myth that Reality is not written. PD: That’s something I want to talk to you about.

SS:
Part of it is because people who watch Reality want to believe it’s real. And in a way it is because what we do is based on real emotion. We take people and put them into artificial situations and watch their real reactions, laughing or crying or angry or drunk or whatever. So they aren’t technically “written,” though the scenarios are written.

Everything that happens in the show is pre-produced. Take for example
The Mole
, which is a show we produce. We know the locations we’re using, we know what the Mole will be doing, and we know what games he’ll be playing. It’s all written in a bible that’s about four inches thick with all the details in it which the network approves before we go to shoot. But as soon as you put real people in there we’re observing documentary-style.

Everyone involved knows there’s a lot of writing to do. Most of it is written by an executive producer or supervising producer. Sometimes segment producers do some of their own writing. And there’s a whole other key position that we call story editor. The story editor observes what is going on in the field and logs as much of it as they can. Sometimes you have a story editor with each camera crew. Sometimes you have one to cover the whole show. Then they go back into the editing room and screen everything they’ve shot. Sometimes we have a transcript of everything’s that been said. So we shoot 100 hours for each one hour show. We go through the transcription and start to piece the story together from that.

The story editor puts together all that material, and for my shows they write out an entire script. The editor uses that to assemble the show.

PD:
Does it look like a screenplay?

SS:
That depends on the story editor. Some do and some look like time code numbers on a page. It’s not exactly like screenplay with the dialogue in the center because it has a different form. But you can tell that if you’re doing a one hour show the script should be around 45 pages or so.

PD:
So they’re writing everything except the dialogue.

SS:
They are editing more than writing at this stage.

PD:
Isn’t that true of all films — that editing is the final phase of writing?

SS:
Correct. There’s also a lot of writing in the preproduction phase. For example, look at
American Idol
. Somebody has to write what Ryan Seacrest and the other hosts say. So there is a writer who is writing all those words, whether or not we call them a writer. In a show like
Survivor
, you have to multitask as a writer: you have to be able to write the details of how a game is played, then you have to write the recap at the end, “Go back to your tribes.”

PD:
Do you ever take a character aside and say in this scene you’ll be happy or sad?

SS:
Not in a show where there’s a game element. That would be unscrupulous business practice because it might affect the outcome of the game. However, once contestants get used to being on camera, often they behave oddly. They realize the more odd their behavior is the more screen time they get.

PD:
But in docu-soaps and docu-drama, you’d be more involved there?

SS:
They know what we’re out to get. We don’t tell them we want you to be angry. But clearly if we’re putting them in a situation where they’re angry with somebody and we set up a party and that person shows up, they know what the expectation is.

We’re producing it as we go along, developing the story three or four days ahead. We know we want to get these characters together because they have a discussion to have. ‘He cheated on me with another girl,’ so now I have to have the girl he cheated with in the scene to finish that discussion.

I need that for my editing. So I will arrange to have them meet for coffee and they go into coffee knowing we want them to have that discussion. We’ve told them “You arrive on 42nd Street,” and “You arrive on 43rd Street,” and we have cameras with each of them and say “Go” and we instruct them not to speak to each other until they reach the coffee shop.

PD:
It’s a kind of improv the way some indie features are made.

SS:
The trick with Unscripted shows — and I prefer the term “Unscripted” to “Reality” — is casting.

PD:
But they’re not trained actors.

SS:
But they become actors after about two or three days. There’s a second season phenomenon. After they’ve seen themselves on TV they know what will get them more screen time.

PD:
You know about the Writers Guild objections, that people who are doing writing jobs on so-called “Unscripted” shows are treated poorly. They don’t get health or pension from the union because producers deny they have writers working for them, so they aren’t covered by any of the normal protections of the Writers Guild.

SS:
In our company we pay overtime and people have humane hours. In the beginning of the non-scripted business there was an abuse of the number of hours people worked. We were finding our way and realizing we have to shoot so many hours a day so everyone was working around the clock. It will never be nine to five, but in our company everyone gets paid proper overtime.

PD:
But the production companies are mostly not Writers Guild signatories.

SS:
I have done Writers Guild signatory shows before when I have Writers Guild writers working on the show. The difficulty with all shows is how to squeeze it all in the budget. And it’s a question of whether the people doing the jobs want that as well, because it’s not cheap to be part of the Guild. They have to join the Guild to get the benefits (such as health insurance) so it’s a “Catch-22” for the younger ones.

PD:
Speaking of the younger ones, of all the paths that sound like a way in for a beginner, Unscripted television sounds like an entry point. If students are interested, what should they do?

SS:
Unlike with a screenplay or an original drama series, they should not feel a real proprietary interest in their ideas at the beginning. Don’t feel that you have to protect your idea because somebody’s going to steal it from you because whatever you’re thinking is out there already.

So, yes, it is an entry into this business. And if you’re really good at getting your ideas onto a piece of paper, the chances are you’d be good working on a non-scripted show because you’re looking at where the story is coming together. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is write your ideas down. If anyone sat and watched MTV for a few days you could easily come up with ideas for four non-scripted shows. The trick is to get it on a piece of paper, and be a student of television enough to know what’s been on and what is on. Chances are whatever you pitch, they’ll say it’s been done before, but understand the business and go pitch it. Literally you could get into any non-scripted company and say I have an idea. I bought a show from a student a few years ago who came in and pitched to me.

PD:
What does “I bought the show” mean in this case?

SS:
When I say I bought the show, I mean I actually sold the show (to a network). I made a deal with this kid for a six-month free option. And when I sold it to Spike TV, I paid him a royalty.

PD:
You employ story editors and segment producers who have come from film schools where they learned the basic craft of storytelling. What do they show you? How do they get hired?

SS:
The best thing is to write up an idea and shoot it. I won’t read a feature script — I don’t have time. But if I can click on something that’s up on YouTube or somebody sends me a short DVD that takes 2 or 3 minutes, I’ll look at that.

This is a producer’s medium. That’s why if you’re a writer in non-scripted you’re relegated to a lesser role because you’re a cog in the wheel of putting together a story, whereas scripted series are a writer-driven medium.

Still, I spend 70% of my time every day writing. It’s a cliché to say I wish I had learned to write better in school, but given what I do every day, it’s a great tool to have.