365:32 – Television by Sarah Reid is licenced under CC BY 2.0. No changes were made.

Writing for television has become increasingly popular in recent years for writers looking to start careers. This makes a lot of sense given that there’s been an explosion of quantity and quality in TV, as well as outlets for original series. Meanwhile many see the feature film business as contracting and becoming less of a viable option.

So many of my consulting and coaching clients are writing pilot scripts for their own original series ideas. But as I talk to them, I often find myself suggesting that they not be too quick to turn away from features in favor of series.

And here’s why:

The path to writing for television professionally, in my experience, virtually always involves first writing on staff of other people’s shows — NOT selling your own. And most writers I work with don’t realize that.

Why is this important?

 It’s important because many if not most people writing pilots aren’t in a position to pursue “staffing.” The typical path to staffing is to move to L.A. in your twenties, and get a day job working in the industry if possible, with the “writer’s assistant” job on a series being the best possible scenario.

Right or wrong, new writers who land managers and agents and get their first shot at such jobs are usually in their 20’s or 30’s. And they typically already live in L.A. and understand that the lifestyle of writing for television basically requires that. Because a “staff” is a group of writers in a room. It’s more of a traditional office workplace situation, and L.A. is where that happens. (And much more rarely NYC.)

Even if a show shoots on location out of L.A. and the writers work at that location as well (not always the case), you can pretty much bet they were hired out of L.A. and started work on the show there. Shows don’t shoot in Vancouver or Georgia or New Mexico and look for writers local to that place. The industry knows that viable TV writers will have almost always already moved to L.A. and gotten representation there.

When I explain this to writers who don’t have representation yet, they are often surprised. They aren’t in a position to move to L.A. and pursue that lifestyle, are often older (which makes it harder), and don’t even want to try to “staff.” They just wanted to sell their show to someone. And they assumed you could do that with TV as easily (or even more easily) as you could with a feature film screenplay.

Wrong. 

I’m sorry to say it. But unfortunately it’s not the same at all.

Maybe writers aren’t told this by enough insiders, and maybe some even encourage trying to break in by selling a show. I’m certainly open to any managers, agents, producers or executives in TV responding to this post and telling me what I’m saying isn’t always true. But I’ve yet to have one do that.

Instead, they tend to acknowledge that when the TV industry buys an idea for a show (and a pilot), they’re not just buying that script (or a script plus a “bible” explaining more about the show as a whole with ideas about future episodes and seasons).

What are they really buying?

A writer’s vision and track record. Which the pilot (and bible) only represents. TV is a writer-driven medium and show creators are asked to shepherd an ongoing series, typically, not just write a pilot and hand it off (like writers can do with features).

And where does a writer get that track record that makes TV industry professionals believe in their ability to do this, and trust that they “Get TV”?

By their experience writing on staff. (Which sometimes can be foregone if they have significant/impressive produced film writing experience.)

What’s confused things in recent years is the fact that the TV industry has opened wide to aspiring writers coming up with their own original series ideas and writing pilot scripts. But that’s not because they’re looking to buy ideas and shows from writers who haven’t broken in yet. Those pilots are used as “writing samples” for their writer to be considered for staffing. And that’s pretty much it.

Years ago people trying to break into writing for television never wrote original pilots and the industry didn’t want them to. They wrote “spec episodes” of existing shows to prove they could mimic an established writer’s voice (still an important skill on staff). Nowadays, that’s fallen mostly out of favor. Everyone’s open to original pilot scripts. But not as possible shows to buy and produce. As writing samples for staffing.

So is there no way for an unproven writer’s TV project to actually get sold and produced? Well, there is one way. A rare method I’d say is akin to winning the lottery. If you happen to be able to make a connection to a proven showrunner who reads your pilot and wants to make it their next project, and takes it over. Like Ian Brennan did with Glee, which found its way, improbably, to Ryan Murphy. And the rest is history.

Why is this so unlikely? Because there are very few Ryan Murphys, and they have their own projects and people they’ve worked with before whose projects they want them to produce. And it’s hard to get to those people and even harder to impress them.

So is writing for television just a terrible idea if “staffing” isn’t the plan?

Not necessarily. Not if you just want to do it for creative reasons, for growth, experience and education as a writer, and aren’t thinking about what that TV script could do for you and how it could reach the industry. But still, more often than not, I suggest that writers who aren’t looking to staff (or aren’t likely to be able to) focus on features instead. You can write and sell those from anywhere. You can also produce them independently.

If you haven’t noticed, TV is basically never produced independently. American TV networks and streaming services don’t buy independently produced series like they do with features. They might see an independently produced web series or short film that helps to sell an idea for a series they would then produce. But they don’t put that on the air. They start over. And one is always having to go past these gatekeepers to advance a TV project and get it produced.

I think I can guess your next question: with all the new outlets for original series, aren’t there more options for writers to break in? I have been asked this question countless times. Unfortunately, the answer is no.

What those outlets do is give established writers a wider variety of places to sell projects to, and more variety in the kinds of shows that can make it through the system, since it’s no longer just three broadcast networks each trying to appeal to virtually every single American viewer, like it was up to the 1990’s. But all those outlets are using the same system of established writers, agents, managers and producers that the more traditionally well-known TV networks pull from. They’re not looking outside that to find writers who somehow haven’t cracked that system and broken in yet. Rather, they rely on this system — as the entire industry does — as a method to weed through all the aspirants and find the ones that really could do it professionally. There have been some brief experiments in the “anybody can submit a pilot” direction, such as with Amazon, but by and large, it’s the same big agencies and writers with track records getting shows sold and produced at every outlet you can think of.

I apologize if all this comes as depressing and disappointing news. And again I’d be happy to be proven wrong with more examples of Ian Brennan-types. I’m sure he’s not the only one. But I do think it’s rare.

Let me leave you with a few key things to keep in mind if you are coming up with original series ideas and writing pilots. The following points are based on reading hundreds of pilots and seeing writers almost always not realizing these things and making preventable mistakes:

1. A television series is not just one long story. A better way to think of it is as a container for endless smaller stories. Each episode needs to have a very clear beginning, middle and end around one or more stories that take a half hour or hour to resolve — despite certain larger ongoing problems never being resolved in any given episode (or the series would end). An episode is not just a chapter. It should stand on its own. (A limited series is more like a long feature than an unlimited series but still needs to do this.)
2. Television series are almost never about one person with one problem/goal, like a feature. They are more about a group of people, gathered together around a certain activity or place, and mutliple characters get stories told from their perspective. So what you’re creating is more of an ensemble of “main characters,” not one main character.
3. A pilot is not meant to just get everything started for the first time. It’s meant to be a representative example of the kinds of stories we’d see on any typical episode. So first the writer needs to understand the typical episode and how it works, and then make sure the pilot works basically the same way. So one tends to need to get right to it as quickly as possible in the pilot, while also using it (often) to get characters together and start a situation for the first time.