How to Write a TV Show (in eight simple steps!)
11-29-15
Taylor Gaines
Imagine sitting in a room.
All the people in this room want to be the funniest person there. Each comment and joke
is built on and topped (or at least attempted to be topped) by someone else. You’re expected to
know offhand how many times Walter Jr. was seen eating breakfast on “Breaking Bad” or at
least to be able to give a rough plot summary of “One Tree Hill.”
“I like being in a room where you’re expected to get each reference to a random TV show
instead of being a loser for knowing it,” said Sam Hensel.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, you’re in a writers’ room for a television show. More
specifically, “Ace Watergate and The Secrets Society,” the upcoming web series from
ChomPics, a student production team at the University of Florida.
Sponsored by the UF chapter of the National Broadcasting Society, ChomPics is in its
third year writing, editing and producing an original five-episode web series in the style of
broadcast television. Each episode is roughly half an hour.
And this is the room where it all starts. Where ideas are born, storylines plotted out,
character arcs developed.
“Secrets Society” is a comedy about a group of college students who join a club that sets
out to prove various conspiracy theories and solve several mysteries on campus. There is a
mastermind villain orchestrating all the crimes that the Society solves, aiding the hapless crew
through their adventures.
And for the first time, the ChomPics writing staff is attempting to keep everything
connected. To pull all the strings together in episode five.
But that’s not important right now.
As Sam Speedy – one of the executive producers on the show – told me while
paraphrasing Dan Harmon:
“If you like something that you’re doing and you’re like 20 years old, then you just have
bad taste. You need to look at your work realistically and know that what you’re doing isn’t up
to your own standards. And if you keep your standards that high, eventually you’ll work up to
them…The goal you should set got yourself is to prove how much you suck. And once you prove
how much suck over and over again, you’re going to know how much you suck, and from there,
you can start to bounce back.”
With that said, let’s take this space to focus on the fascinating thing about creating
television, creating any art really. Alongside Speedy and Hensel (one of the head writers for the
first episode of “Secrets Society”), we’re going to detail the process of writing a television show.
Of pulling something out of nothing, using a collective group of human brains and creating a
script that is ready to be filmed and put into that form you see when you sit down on the couch
and turn on your television.
Step One: Pick a writing team.
The process begins with a selection. Drafting the team (squad?), so to speak. ChomPics
opens online applications at the beginning of fall semester, where potential writers are asked to
submit an application with a writing sample.
Speedy said most people submit a sketch or very short film that is ten pages or less. This
year, though, three or four people submitted an original pilot script.* But length wasn’t
necessarily what the producers were looking for.
*Typically, the standard is one page per minute. So, imagine the pilot scripts are about
22-25 pages.
“We were really just looking for people who know how to write dialogue, who can write
conversationally and substantially,” Speedy said. “As in we saw the content in the dialogue and
there’s a balance between it being conversational and progressing storyline.”
Forty people applied for ten positions. ChomPics added the assistant writer position this
year to accommodate the influx. In the end, they brought on 10 head writers, who each co-write
one episode, and five assistant writers.
Once the fifteen are set, it’s on to the next step.
Step Two: Make your pitch.
This is the first of two long meetings that Speedy said typically last three to four hours.
Everyone was comes in with their own idea for a television show. They pitch it.
Hopefully it has a solid premise and general character outlines that give people a good idea of
what it would look like. All the writers ask questions and give feedback to get as good a grasp on
it as possible.
Then, they part for an anonymous vote. The top three pitches will be subject to one more
marathon.
This first meeting will come in handy later, Hensel said, as it gives everyone a good sense
of the distinct voices and styles of everyone on the team. It will also help the EPs out – as will
potentially every meeting – in Step Four.
But first…
Step Three: Flesh out ideas.
At this stage, the critical questions are asked.
The first idea the writers discussed was a Stanford Prison Experiment-type show where
students sign up for a class with no teacher and have to create all the class rules and regulations
themselves.
The questions began: Is it going to be boring that they are in the same room every
episode? Are we talented enough to do in-depth character studies of people and watch how
everyone interacts and make that entertaining? Can we make a five-episode series about this
interesting? How should we shoot this?
They also critically assess how doable each idea is. As a UF club, ChomPics has limited
resources. The characters have to be between 18 and 23 years old. It has to be inside as much as
possible because of the strict, limited shooting schedule. Speedy and the executive producers are
constantly aware of logistical things like this.
After an hour and a half spent debating the Stanford Prison Experiment idea, they
decided to move on.
“People were fighting a lot and then the guy who initially pitched the show was like, ‘I
don’t know if it’s worth it to continue with this idea,’” Speedy said.
Idea number two? A conspiracy theory club.
Even that didn’t land right away. The first idea that was discussed was a storyline about
corruption in student government. They eventually decided it would cause too much trouble, be
too tired of a topic and lead them into political comedy territory that they didn’t really want or
feel capable of encroaching.
We have to write what we know, Speedy said.
“For most people on the writing team, this is their first time writing anything of this
length,” she said. “We can’t dedicate our whole day to learning how to make meth, like in
‘Breaking Bad.’”
Step Four: Pair the writing teams.
Now the executive producers had to pair up the 10 writers. Effectively, they play a little
matchmaker, looking at writing samples, personalities, senses of humor and trying to decide how
well a pair would balance.
For the first episode – which introduces the characters, storyline and template for the
entire series while also having to be funny and engaging – they paired Gunnar Larson, who came
up with the idea for the show, with Hensel.
“We saw Sam Hensel contributing a lot at those initial pitch meetings,” Speedy said. “He
had a lot of ideas for it, so it made sense for them to be together,” Speedy said.
A tough assignment, indeed. Now it was time for the pen to truly hit the paper.
Step Five: Write the outline.
This isn’t a script. Usually, dialogue is not written at this stage. The outline details how
stories and characters will progress in the episode. In the case of “Secrets Society,” this is where
the writers need to determine what the crime of the week will be for the characters to solve. Plus
the episode had to achieve all those things I just mentioned.
“We wanted to be able to answer ‘what needs to happen by the end of this episode?’”
Hensel said. “And what would our characters do?”
Where do ideas come from? Well, as Hensel puts it: Writers are always writing.
“One of my biggest fears is having no good ideas and just going off fumes when
writing,” he said. “I keep like 30 pages of notes in my phone that are completely random ideas,
jokes or character traits that I can fall back on if I need to.”
At this stage, the executive producers are mostly critiquing location choices.
“The scene heading will be like ‘interior, coffee shop, day,’” Speedy said. “And our first
note will be like, ‘Anyone have a coffee shop we can use? Because if not, this scene has to be
relocated.”
Once these logistical details are worked out and everyone is comfortable with the general
storyline and direction, it’s back to the grind.
Step Six: Write the first draft.
The first scene Sam and Gunnar wrote might be the third scene audiences will see, but it
is probably the most important one. It’s where the exposition happens.
What this means is the characters’ names, traits, quirks and motivations as well as the
club, its purpose and the show’s driving conflict all have to be introduced. It can get very bogged
down and plot-driven. Writers want this step to sound casual, and it also has to be funny and
entertaining. If it is not any of those things (or more specifically, the opposite of any of those
things), it will take the viewer out of the show.
They also don’t want things to be too casual and feel meaningless.
“The biggest re-writes we had for the first draft was there was just two scenes of
characters talking to each other, and it was supposed to be character development,” said Speedy.
“But both of these scenes centered around a reference to a John Mayer song or something. And it
was like three pages of dialogue about John Mayer. And we were just like ‘we don’t want to do
that.’”
ChomPics also encourages its writers not to rely on pop-culture references, said Speedy,
because that can be an easy fallback for college students. The jokes should also be about the
characters and avoid pulling easy punches.
Once the first draft is written, you can truly start to see the episode take shape.
Step Seven: Write the second draft.
As Ernest Hemingway allegedly once said, “The first draft of anything is shit.”
But by the time the second draft is completed of a “Secrets Society” script, things are
mostly sorted out. Plot points, scene content, storylines and episode arcs are pretty much set in
stone.
At this stage, refining dialogue and condensing scenes are the main worry. The quality of
the episode is pretty much determined by this point as well.
“ChomPics is everyone’s first experience doing storytelling more than two minutes
long,” said Speedy. “So…it comes across.”
What Speedy hopes for is for people to look at the show and not be able to say, “Oh, I
think I’ve heard that before.” She wants ChomPics to try things no one has seen before.
“That’s my worst fear with the show,” she said.
(Is it obvious writers have many worst fears?)
Step Eight: Do the table read.
This is the fun part, the bit where everyone is trying to top each other and be the funniest
person in the room. The hard work is done. The writers can let loose and finally enjoy the work
they did, reading the lines and laughing. It also helps to hear the way words sound coming out of
peoples’ mouths.
At this point, though, the writer’s work is done. But the train keeps moving. Roles must
be cast, shot lists created and scene locations scouted. The scenes must be filmed, the video must
be edited. It must all come together in one cohesive, funny, entertaining bit of televised
entertainment.
And there are four more episodes to write.
Back to your places, everyone.