Film Courage: Is there a standard structure for television?
Niceole R. Levy, Screenwriter/Author: Yes it can vary, especially depending on what outlet you're
writing for. When you're staffed you're writing to whatever the network or the streaming service
does. There's a variety of different structures that brings about, for instance most of the
ABC dramas that I know of, I will not say all about any of them, are written in 6X structure.
What 6X structure means is that basically everything's a little symmetrical. You've got this
many pages here, this many pages in each Act get building to those Act out through those commercial
breaks and because it's so Act out driven it really changes the pacing of the show. If
you watch most ABC shows will feel like they move very quickly and it's because of that symmetrical
nature of the Act. Shows on CBS are often teaser is the structure it's also often called five Act
structure it just depends on who's referring to it but what it does is allow you to write a
longer teaser that can sometimes be more luxurious and get more of your story set up and then use the
following four acts to complete your storytelling shows that I will say I think have done that or
like The Good Wife right would sometimes have those really long opening setups before the
title card so that's your long luxurious teaser and then the rest of the show is the 5x structure
so those that's the main stuff six Act teaser four or five Act five Act tends to have a shorter
teaser that than the basically starts Act one so it's like short teaser title card rest of
Act one as opposed to being a separate entity like teaser four is so those are the varying
different things and you can again if you can get a hold of scripts for different shows you
can research how they did it in streaming shows when you read our scripts there there won't be
any Act designations because there are typically no commercial breaks although now that Netflix
is going to have an ad tier I don't know if that's going to change or they're going to ask us to tell
them where the commercial breaks are like we do in broadcast TBD but again to something I spoke
about earlier and that I think is really important breaking the story as if those Act breaks exist
will help with your storytelling and help with the emotional ebb and flow of the episode so that it
doesn't feel like you're waiting till the end of the show to do all the really important things
because I think what happens is people are like well we can have all these nice long
conversations or we can have this great big huge set piece but then you're not really getting a lot
of variation in the episode it's just like talk talk talk talk everything happens where it's like
talking talking huge set piece talking talking talking boom ending and that's like a it's not
really a great pleasurable experience when you watch TV you want to like be drawn in and then
like okay I can rest a little bit so that that Act break structure even if you take Act breaks
out of your script is a really good way to do it how is the structure of a Netflix 60-minute
show different from a 60-minute cable TV show the biggest difference is are you if you're referring
to Cable as in like free form effects those things are that those platforms still include commercial
breaks so you are still writing to an Act out and what that really means for the writer is that you
are creating a moment that you hope assures that your audience will come back after the
commercial break now obviously some those shows will move to a streaming platform there will not
be commercials in them so you that gets eliminated at that point but when they're airing on their
actual originating broadcasters that's the whole goal that's what an Act out is all about is holy
crap what just happened and you're like come on commercials come on commercials go go Google or
you recorded it so you can fast forward through all the commercials and then your show is back
so for a streaming show for say Netflix or for Amazon or for free well freebie has ads but for
Amazon Prime itself those are not they're not worried about your Act breaks so you can you
lose page count in your script to Act breaks when you're doing them for say a broadcast show like
when you have four lines at the top of a page and then it's like end of Act you're done with that
page like all that blank space is lost to you if you're doing a streaming show and you're breaking
it with AC breaks but you're not putting them in the script it's just one long continuous thing
so you've probably bought yourself back four pages of script just by not having Act breaks
so it'll allow you to expand a little bit sometimes when you need to
the trick with the 60 Minute show I have written yet to write on a Netflix show and I have written
on three of them now where 60 Minute episodes were actually what we were delivering we've both
still delivered like 52 wish 50 52 to 55 minutes so in general I know they have shows that will
have longer episodes but in general that's still the target so you're still looking at turning
in a 52 to 55 page script in the hopes if not you don't ever want to run short but you also
don't want to be 10 minutes over because now you're going to have to kill a lot of scenes
that you love in order to get it down so trying to find that sweet spot of being like four or
five minutes over so you can cut a few things but still have some choices and some some good
moments around is the goal can you explain a b and c stories sure so in most shows you will have your
a story is the main story of the episode it is the driving story usually of your main characters
not always true but often true and so say for instance and I'll use SWAT as an example because
we very clearly wrote A B and C stories so your a story is the crime of the week right what who are
the bad guys who are challenging what have they done what are we trying to stop them from doing
and you will develop that whole story and who in our cast is that story really affecting right
now 8 out of 10 episodes that's going to be Hondo but sometimes it's a personal case from the past
for one of our other characters or it's someone's friend was injured in the crime and so they're the
ones who are emotionally affected by what we're doing so that's your a story your B story and your
C story are the supporting stories in the episode and they are usually more character focused
so it's a chance for your second tier characters to get moments right so say again in an episode of
SWAT a b story might be Street and Chris have like admitted that they like each other but they're
still like oh can we date no we can't date what are we gonna do about this mess so that romantic
Intrigue is your B story sometimes it also will cross into your a story right because it's like
they're on a call together and they've just had this fight about the fact that they can't
date each other but then like something dangerous happens and then it's so clear that how much they
love each other right so it's like you're building that stuff into the a story but you're breaking
their arc on its own and then a c story is usually a runner right it's like a three four beat story
that sometimes adds some humor to the episode sometimes it's to tie off a loose end that
we've left floating from a prior episode of like did that couple break up we don't know
and so we'll do like three beats where we finally reveal like did the couple
break up oh no no they're still together look at that surprise like whatever it is
sometimes it's a way to give an actor who has maybe not been as focused on in the show
a chance to shine so you're giving them three or four scenes that are really about them and their
character and letting them like hey I'm here pay attention to me so that's really what those things
break down to it's your main story your secondary story and then see story is usually a runner
you will sometimes like in a finale episode your B and C stories will feel about equal because
finales are all about wrapping up the emotional arcs of the entire season so sometimes it's like
you've got three relationship stories going and you have to get somewhere with all of them so
you'll you suss that out in the moment but that's in general how that works what do
writers get wrong about TV structure I think the imbalance can happen a lot the everything
happens in the beginning or the end and not enough attention to holding the story in the middle right
can start with a big bang but you have to keep building investment through the episode or else
people won't be around to see your big finish so it's just that reminder of like the story
has to keep building on itself and sometimes you see people like just think this story can coast
and it it can't like you need to keep building the investment of your audience of like oh my
God she overheard that is she gonna tell them she ever heard it you're waiting to find out like is
she gonna tell them and then maybe you don't even get an answer that episode but like I'm leaning
forward now because I'm like she overheard the thing though she overheard the thing so it's just
that it's I think that's the biggest mistake is not realizing that you can have a big beginning
and a big finish but if the stuff in between isn't peaking the interest of your audience they're
going to tune out and that's the worst thing that can happen to you because they may not make it to
your big finish and so you can't count on that to be why someone's going to keep watching the show.