Creating the One-Hour Television Pilot

SCRIPT X 422.3WS

Get a crash course in creating powerful one-hour pilots in this intensive class that covers all the basics of writing original stories for television.

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What you can learn.

Develop a rough idea into a viable television series that can generate 100 episodes
Build compelling characters that audiences will keep coming back to see
Practice pitching pilot ideas and learn about the ever-changing TV marketplace
Read and respond to work of other writers in class

About this course:

Anyone who wants to work as a professional television writer has to be able to submit top-notch original material to agents and showrunners. In this fast-paced course, you take your idea for a one-hour TV series and run it through a basic structure of beginning, middle, and end. From there, we talk about the world of your show and the characters who inhabit that world. Finally, we work those things into an outline for a pilot episode, write intensively, and get feedback from the instructor and fellow participants. Throughout this process, you learn how to envision the world of your show; create characters and conflict, build a storytelling engine; and nail down your show's structure, tone, story, and act breaks. By the end of course, you have strong act breaks, a full beat outline, and both a one-page and ten-page pitch document.