TV Writing I is a 10-week workshop, which includes lectures, exercises, and the critiquing of student projects. It’s for beginners or anyone who wants to brush up on the fundamentals. Farther down, you can view a syllabus for this course.
The best TV shows are addictive, beckoning us to bring the characters into our homes or devices, episode after episode. The people might be cops, teachers, monsters, geeks, doctors, lawyers, fixers, or just ordinary people with everyday problems. The format might be network, streaming, or a web series. As long as it hooks us.
Each TV show is a unique story-machine, with its own rules and formulas. Here you’ll learn how to write for TV and how to market your work.
Whether you seek to write comedy, drama, or something in between, we’ll show you how to write TV episodes that might, someday, get everybody buzzing.
Notes
- TV writers either work on the staff of an existing series or they create an original show. To break into the business, you need samples of your work—either episodes of existing shows or original scripts, the latter more desirable these days.
- TV Writing I focuses on writing “spec” scripts for existing shows, which is the best way to learn how TV episodes work. TV Writing II Pilot focuses on creating an original series and “pilot” episode.
- These courses cover “scripted” shows, as opposed to reality TV.
This course gives you a firm grounding in the basics of TV writing craft and gets you writing a TV script for an existing show.
Course components:
- Lectures
- Writing exercises
- Workshopping of student projects (each student presenting work two times)
Online classes
- Week 1
- Introduction to TV Writing: Writing samples—specs for existing shows, original work. Elements of a TV series—type, premise, episodes (self-contained/serialized, storylines, signatures), characters, setting, tone, secret theme. How to choose a show to spec. Studying shows.
- Week 2
- Episode Ideas: Getting storyline ideas. Finding ideas inside and outside the show. Vertical exploration of regular characters. Interaction of multiple storylines. Using the expected and unexpected.
- Week 3
- Mapping It Out: Finding the storyline beats. Plot basics. Prose outlines. Segments. Step outlines. Tips for outlining.
- Week 4
- Character: Understanding the regular characters. Desire—super objective, episode objective. Strengths/flaws. Personality. Relationships.
- Week 5
- Format/Description: Examining the technical format for TV scripts. How to handle description.
- Week 6
- Scene: Scene defined. Scene guidelines—importance, desire, structure, character. Scenes analyzed—short, medium, long.
- Week 7
- Dialogue: Naturalistic dialogue. The art of compression. Stylized dialogue. Lingo. Character through dialogue. Subtext. Stage directions.
- Week 8
- Drama/Comedy: Drama—character complexity, emotion, suspense, action. Comedy—character folly, extreme situations, verbal wit, physical humor. Comedy/Drama—finding the right balance.
- Week 9
- The Process: The real-world process of writing TV shows. Your process-beating it out, breaking story, scenes, transitions, length, finishing touches. Making sure a script is ready.
- Week 10
- The Business: Building a collection of samples. Getting in the door-connections, non-writing jobs in the business, agents/managers, production companies. Who to contact. Query letter. Response. Meetings. Ways to maximize your chances.
Note: Content may vary among individual classes.
About
- The Online classes bring students from all over the globe to Gotham—New York City’s most famous writing school.
- The Online classes happen asynchronously—not in “real time.” You can participate in class any time, day or night, but the classes advance week-by-week, and certain things should be accomplished within that week-long session.
- You can take an Online writing class from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection. The majority of our Online students are located in the U.S. but we also draw students from practically every country in the world.
- Tech support will be available.
- Aside from the convenience of time and location, you have a record of everything that transpires in class, which you can print out and keep for future reference. (The material is text and image, not video.)
