Niceole R. Levy, Screenwriter/Author: I had all
these secondary characters in my world and I took them all out.
Film Courage: Does every writer need to know how to write a pilot?
Niceole: Yes, it is absolutely a necessary skill because it's your calling card to
get executives to be interested in you, to get show runners to hire you most of the time except
for those picky ones like me who like to see a spec if you're breaking into the business and it's
ultimately what you will be doing later in your career because once you reach that mid-level to
upper level point your reps are going to want you to start developing and developing is all about
writing pitch documents and then hopefully selling a show and writing a pilot so it is absolutely
something everyone should know how to do and there are plenty of books out there about how to do it
I want to say I think Kam Miller has a really good book about writing a pilot Jen Grisanti has all
kinds of great material about writing a pilot so there's resources out there to help you figure out
how to demystify it a little bit but it's if you if you love to tell stories it's just a specific
way of telling the story how did you learn to write a pilot I learned how to write a pilot first
of all by just being a huge student of television I there was a time when my friends Charles Murray
and Terence Paul Winter would tease me mercilessly about how I watched every show on television
and it used to be true it is no longer true there's too many shows I can't do it
but I would sort of I have a list of pilots that like when I was writing a new pilot and I
was like oh the tone doesn't feel quite right if it was gritty I had a list of pilots that
I would go watch to sort of get my brain in that in that place not to take anything from the pilot
but just to have the tone in my head of like right right right this is what i'm going for
and then go back to work on mine so studying existing pilots is incredibly valuable
and it'll get give you some guideposts for how they did it what the pacing of those pilots were
different types of pilots can have a different rhythm to them if you're doing a big like fantasy
show and you have to launch it in the pilot what some shows put in that pilot's going to be very
different than if you're launching an ensemble drama full of a bunch of characters who work
in a hospital right the the specifics of what you need in those pilots are very different so I would
study pilots like the one you want to write and get a feel for where they put the act breaks if
it's a show that has act breaks you should always be breaking your stories with act breaks ps even
if you're not going to have them in your script even if it's a streaming show break it with act
breaks because it will keep you with a nice ebb and flow of action and emotion in your episode
unlike some shows that you watch on streaming where nothing happens for like 37 minutes and
then the last 10 minutes everything happens so give yourself that break write it like you have
to do a commercial break and it'll really help you find some good ups and downs in your storytelling
oh those lists of pilots in the different sort of genre or or style that that you wanted to sort of
delve into did they age out after a while did things become too slow after maybe 10 years how
as life is sped up I would say no I think great pilots are always great pilots some of the ones
that I still go back to like I tell young writers who are asking me like what pilot should I watch
they should always always always watch the pilot of Hill Street Blues which is
the greatest show in the history of television I will fight anyone who tries to say otherwise
because every show that came after it that people want to say is the greatest show in
the history of television only exists because Stephen Bochco was able to pull that pilot off
because it's it changed the game in terms of how television was made wise guy is one of the most
amazing tv pilots I always recommend it to people the Miami Vice pilot crazy like you probably
could not get away with the Miami Vice pilot now because the two main characters don't meet each
other for an hour but it's still worth looking at because the character work is so really really
like interesting and so much about those people by the end of that pilot it's kind of like wow okay
homicide life on the street one of the greatest pilots ever the character introduction
of Frank Pembelton is one of the greatest character introductions I’ve ever seen like
everything you will ever need to know about Frank Pembelton from his search for his car
everything you will ever need to know so watching those really great shows even if
they're 10 20 30 years old the work in them doesn't age out maybe the pacing age is out
maybe because Hill Street Blues was what 52 minutes and and episodes and now it's 43 minutes
so they're longer they can linger more in some of the silences of the characters and things
the driving scene like people really literally driving down roads and you're like no
nobody has time for that anymore but the character work the dialogue work the ideas in
the shows the way they execute things that never ages out great pilots never age out in that way
what about watching bad pilots as another way to teach yourself bad pilots is also good I mean
bad pilots is subjective I think even more so than great pilots because I think right
you could google like alan steppenwall telling you what he thought the 10 greatest pilots were
he probably differs from me but like that's going to be a solid list of pilots right bad pilots it
kind of is about what was bad about it right so I think that's an interesting study like if you
asked your ten of your friends what was the worst tv pilot you ever watched and then go watch them
you could still learn like I think one of the biggest mistakes that pilots make is especially
nowadays the studios and the networks are like more twists more twists more twists and you're
just exhausted by the end of the pilot you're like I k like I was done three three twists ago
I that was enough I didn't need the other things look like give me those later so it's too much
happening in the pilot right and that's a battle right now because that's what they're asking us to
do but it's too much sometimes just too much you need to say it's too much it's overwhelming story
nobody's going to want to come back sometimes it's about the focus being off like that whoever your
lead character is maybe it's casting maybe it's writing who knows is is losing focus to another
character and so it feels a little all over the place and it's like well why didn't they fix that
why didn't they realize it right there's a lot of things that can go wrong in a pilot sometimes
just the directing's bad and you're like wow this was a really good script it's like too bad
they didn't have a better director because it just it feels flat and like not good and they
spent a ton of money on it but it doesn't feel like it you don't see it on screen so
it's it's an interesting exercise to sort of just make yourself think about like what would I have
done different if it was my show what questions does a writer need to be asking themselves while
they're writing a pilot i'd say first and foremost always be clear on why you're writing it what
about it is interesting to you what message are you trying to convey why why is it need to exist
because I guarantee you if it's not a thing you've already sold when you go out to have conversations
about it people are going to be like so why why did you write this pilot you're going to get it
so know why you're doing it because it'll also keep you really focused in the writing process
I i was working on a pilot once and I had written the outline and I had outlined two pilots at the
same time and chose to write another one first so I came back to this one and was like great
now i'm going to write this and as I was writing it I just had this overwhelming sense of like
now something's wrong something's wrong and what I realized is having done so many cop shows usually
the secondary characters you want to write for them in the writer's room and the studio and
the network are like nobody cares nobody cares too many like we're focused on this
and so I had all these secondary characters in my world and I took them all out because I was
like maybe later these characters could exist but in this pilot nobody cares and so I had to
then go back and weave in really important story points that those characters had once carried
because that information was still important to my story but the characters weren't so
it was like right you're pulling focus away from this really important story that you're trying to
tell about a woman whose personal and professional life has been upended by having these other people
in the mix so because I knew she was the most important thing to me in the story I was able
to be like something's wrong something's wrong what is it and then I finally figured it out
so you were having too much of these ancillary characters steal sort of screen time yes oh
interesting yeah still screen time and and more so than screen time it's trying to steal importance
right because in a pilot you want every character to pop a little bit or it's why are they in there
right so suddenly you're trying to create moments for all these sort of second-tier characters
but I want all the moments to be with like the four people i'm most invested in who are all
tied to my main character so I was like we don't really need all these I will wipe the decks clear
and then get all those moments of and that script has gotten me so many meetings and and so much
development opportunity because I did that because I narrowed the focus so why you're writing it's
really important I think who your audience is if you're writing a pilot that feels very broadcast
to you let it be broadcast don't try to make it well maybe it's also a cable pilot though
no sometimes it's fine for a pilot to just feel like a broadcast pilot and sometimes you're going
to write something that's like grittier and a little more cutting edge and it's very clearly
a streaming pilot and that's fine write it that way it's a little it's hard when you write things
that are right down the middle because then everyone's a little confused by where it goes
like what what's your target for this who are you thinking of so if you think ahead
of time like I have a pilot that I wrote that is very specifically I wrote it as an FX pilot
because I wanted to show that I could do that like premium cable sort of feel right even though
FX is regular cable it's pretty premium fair on that channel so I was like i'm going to do that
if one pilot's very specifically an hbo pilot because I was like okay I can do this it's not
necessarily how I want most of my shows to be but I can do this and this show fits the
mold so i'm going to write it and then I have shows that are straight broadcast or more like
Disney Plus kind of genre sort of stuff it's just sort of know in your head like because again it's
a question you're going to get asked right if you write that pilot and an exec's interested in it or
a producer is interested in it they're going to say so where'd you see this so no know where you
see it as you're writing it and when if we use that example of the a woman whose professional
and personal life or sort of upended when they asked you why did you write this what was your
what was my answer it was I it was at a time when several stories in the media and on television
quite frankly had coalesced for me in this idea of women who had done hard things in their lives
being expected to be ashamed of it women who maybe had done sex work or done whatever
needing to feel shame and I rejected that I was like no like these women survived they
did what they had to do to stay alive and they are survivors and they have built wonderful
lives for themselves and why should they have to feel guilty about this thing that they did
and so everything about her story is a rebuttal of that idea it is about a woman who made some really
really difficult choices when she was young and owns them and it's not like she's proud
of them and wants to flaunt them all the time but she refuses to feel shame about them.