Probably the top three things an emerging television
writer should do if they want to write a pilot
and they want it to be good--
get your hands on some pilot scripts.
Find the shows that you loved their pilot,
and you thought, man, if only I could have written something
like this.
Get your hands on those pilot scripts.
They're easy to find now.
Read them, and then watch the pilots again, and then
read the scripts again, and then really just
start to dissect the pilots.
What was the structure?
How did they work?
How many acts did they use?
What were the pages counts of each act?
Why?
If it's a comedy, how many jokes do they have?
Every last aspect of those things is important.
How do they introduce the characters?
So dissect the scripts, dissect the pilots, one.
Two-- then go watch some pilots that really didn't work,
that you thought--
I mean for you they didn't work.
You thought they were terrible.
If you go watch some pilots that you really, really hated,
you will see very different things.
And you will learn a bunch of stuff about what does not work.
I think it's absolutely essential, actually,
to pick a show, a show that you love, a show that you think
is good, and dissect the crap out of it, frankly.
Take a show you love.
For me, I did "The West Wing."
I am obsessed with Aaron Sorkin.
I think Aaron Sorkin is a genius, truly.
And I took "The West Wing," and from the pilot
through, I think, season three.
And I dissected the heck out of that
show for myself to really understand,
A, what good storytelling was, B what good structure was,
and just understanding how he used language
and how he used structure and how he built characters.
It was really an education for me to the point
where I could pretty much do an entire episode.
I could say all the words of an entire episode
because I liked it so much.
And while I'm bummed now because I can't watch that show
and just watch it anymore, I can say
that it was an excellent way for me
to learn so much about television
at a time in which I was trying to figure it out for myself.
Probably one of the things I learned by watching "The West
Wing" was the need to be original in my use of dialogue,
the need to not copy anybody, the need to not be
simple in my use of dialogue.
And I also got the freedom to let my characters
be intelligent, which I really thought was great.
It was one of those things where you watch something
and you think, oh, in everything else I've ever seen,
there seems to be a slight dumbing down.
And Aaron felt like he was making everyone a little bit
smarter than the audience.
And that was a very freeing thing to see.
Because letting your characters be
the smartest people in the room is a relief in a lot of ways.
There are things that you can learn just
by watching that are not about copying how something is done,
but just by understanding how something is done,
or discovering that sometimes it's really effective to have
an episode where things are really quiet.
It's just about watching and seeing
what makes something good, and then understanding that those--
maybe they're breaking a rule, or maybe those
are some rules to think about, and then
understanding what makes something not good.
It's helpful.
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