In my work pitching series ideas and writing pilots (and on good days, selling them to networks such as NBC and Fox), I’ve learned a few things about what they’re looking for, and what makes an idea sellable – as well as what a successful pilot script tends to include.

In many ways it’s not so different from selling a feature, in terms of the concept and basic pitch of it needing to possess some key elements. This is what inspired my book and course called THE IDEA: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story for Screen, Stage, or Fiction.

Most of these lessons I’ve learned the hard way, from having people not want to move forward with one of my projects at some point in the process – be it the network, studio, producers, or even my own agents at CAA.

Here is the number one lesson I’ve learned from that process:

Don’t think of a series primarily as one long story, but really focus on how it can be “many little ones.”

We writers often are most interested in how a character and situation arcs over the course of many episodes and seasons. Maybe it’s because most of us started in features, where that arc is so central to the point of the movie. When asked what happens in a typical episode, we might just think each one is a chapter in a larger story.

While there can be some truth to that, each hour (or half hour) really has to work as a complete unit and story experience on its own, as well — and a big part of your series pitch (which your pilot would then demonstrate) is how a typical episode of this series would do that.

Ideally within your concept you have an endlessly repeatable story engine — an ongoing source of problematic situations for the characters that is going to create new “story” in every episode. And usually more than one story, with more than one main character, which is the series model as opposed to the single-main-character feature model.

What potential buyers need is a clear demonstration of what generates such stories for your characters in an average episode – and how those would play out in a compelling and entertaining way, which takes a full episode to resolve. They want to see that there is a seemingly limitless well of these.

A feature screenplay tends to be about a single character who has some sort of problematic life, then is hit with a catalytic event which leads them to develop a goal for that story. They then pursue the goal, and things get more complicated, difficult and urgent as they do so – until finally there is some resolution in the end.

The average television episode is largely the same, regardless of how serialized or binge-able the show is. They all tend to begin with a problem or crisis that the series regular you’re focusing on feels they must solve, to get things back to their normal status quo — however compromised and unsatisfying that status quo might be. It’s very important to them, and they’re basically in hell trying to solve it – but it’s really entertaining for us to watch. (And usually there are several such stories intertwined in any half hour or hour.)

Buyers want to know what’s generating those problems every episode. So it’s something we must be crystal clear on, in our pitch and our pilot script. Once that’s clear, then the larger question of season and series arcs becomes more worth talking about — because the half-hour or hour-long viability of a typical episode is clear.

If it’s not a heroic/procedural show (doctors, lawyers, cops, adventurers), usually stories stem from the challenges of personal desires and relationship conflicts for a web of characters, each of whom want something that is important to them, that they can never quite get.

Our goal in a pilot becomes demonstrating who these people and problems/goals are, and illustrating how a typical episode would take a full hour (or half hour) for them to resolve some specific episode-length problem related to them. 

If you can achieve all that, you’ll be on the right track!

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