Desk of Amy Suto

TV writer who eats danger for breakfast

How to Write a Series Bible for Your TV Show

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It’s the top of the New Year and I hope you’re as ready for this year as I am! Every year after Christmas I let my OCD tendencies take over and deep clean my apartment and get my projects in order by making a project calendar. I also get started on new scripts, so I thought I’d write this post about how to write a killer series bible for your TV show.

Let’s write stacks on stacks of final drafts this year guys, OK?

add some red string and I’m at serial-killer level of preparedness for this year

What is a Series Bible?

If you’re writing a TV show at the top of the year, I wanted to talk a little about writing a series bible. For those of you new to the world of TV writing, a series bible is the document that is like hey guys if we made a TV show about Wonder Woman saving us from the horrors of 2017 HERE’S WHAT IT WOULD LOOK LIKE

 

spoiler alert: it would look like AWESOME

So what would you include in a series bible? [Read more…]

Stress Relief for Writers: Staying Creative with Busy Schedules

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if slightly off-center muffins stress you out, this article is for you

In the past, I’ve written about how to balance writing while being a showrunners’ assistant or writers’ assistant, but today I’d like to tackle general strategies for stress relief so that you can maintain your creativity in any period of your life — during the holidays, in times of financial stress, or while anxiously waiting the return of FX’s LEGION (how am I supposed to pretend not having new episodes is not affecting my mental sanity??)

So. Here’s how to preserve those creative thoughts when they’re being attacked by stress hormones.

1. Don’t See Stress as the Enemy

This incredible TED Talk changed the entire way I view stress: as a preparation for a challenge instead of a detrimental function of our body to be curtailed as much as possible.

Another study I was reading recently talked about how repeating the words “I am excited” in your head before a challenge (like a pitch or big meeting) can help turn nervousness into excitement. [Read more…]

Writers’ Assistant, Showrunner’s Assistant, and Writers’ PA (What These Jobs Are and How to Get Them)

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how to get a writers assistant showrunners assistant writers pa job in hollywood television

I’m incredibly lucky to be working in an amazing writers’ room as a showrunner’s assistant, which even just a year ago seemed like a near-impossible job to get. As a graduate of USC’s screenwriting program, I knew I wanted to get into a writers’ room as an assistant but didn’t know how, nor did I understand the differences and subtleties between each of the roles.

So, just thought I’d do a quick post about these television assistant jobs and how to get them — things I wish I’d known a year ago. [Read more…]

Writing the Half-Hour TV Drama

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I hate the phrase “dramedy.”

Every half-hour TV show that isn’t quite a comedy has been given that title. NURSE JACKIE? WEEDS? TRANSPARENT? GIRLS? Dramedies, despite the fact that the spine of these shows are unequivocally dramatic. If you added a meaty B and C storyline to NURSE JACKIE, the show would become HOUSE, something that has never been called a dramedy despite its moments of humor and lightness. Classics like GUNSMOKE and THE TWILIGHT ZONE were half-hours, so by the definition of run-time shouldn’t it be classified as a comedy, or worse, a dramedy? (The correct answer, as I hope you know, is definitely not.)

We’re in an era where dramatic storytelling no longer needs to be relegated to an hour, and the streamlined, nimble storytelling of the half-hour format can be just as dramatic as its 60-minute companion.

So what makes a show a drama? 

  • Tone.
  • Subject matter.
  • Approach to subject matter.
  • Scene composition.

Let’s compare VEEP and HOUSE OF CARDS. Both are about Washington D.C. and politics, sure, but more specifically VEEP is about the powerlessness of the Vice Presidency and the incompetence of Selena and her staff, whereas HOUSE OF CARDS is about the power struggles in D.C. and the viciously cunning Frank Underwood and his power maneuvers.

The tone of these two shows are continents apart: HOUSE OF CARDS is brooding and stylishly dark, and VEEP is a cynical farce. Their approach to subjects like power (and lack thereof) are what sets them apart on genre lines.

In a typical VEEP scene, you can expect sharp witticism and barb-filled dialog, with an undercurrent of comedic suspense as we watch something fall apart thanks to the incompetencies of the characters.

In a typical HOUSE OF CARDS scene, we expect chilling hints at Frank Underwood’s latest scheme for power, and an undercurrent of suspense as we wait for dark dealings to bubble to the surface.

Structure of a Half-Hour Drama

The nimble, fluid structure of a half-hour drama gives writers a lot of room for flexibility. However, even as these half-hours seem to be able to buck the norms of structure, they still do follow patterns of structure similar to their hour companions.

  • Half-hours have one or two major plot movements. Whereas hours have several big movements that culminate in end-of-act cliffhangers four or five times an episodes, half-hours usually only have two major plot movements at most, one of which turns the story to the other.
  • Three acts and a teaser is the structure, but there’s room to mix it up. Hours usually fall along the lines of four or five acts plus a teaser. Half hours can fall along three acts and a teaser, but you’ll rarely see act breaks in the script. Struture is more fluid in half-hours.
  • Scenes often run shorter because they no longer have to service multiple plotlines, with scene lengths running on average 1.77 pages. There are also a scarcity of exterior shots, and exteriors are mostly only used for establishing. In terms of scene length, if a scene is longer than two pages, it’s usually a central plot point (usually a pivotal dinner or party scene.)
  • Rather than juggling A, B, C storylines with a D runner that hours have the time to tackle, most half hours focus on an A-Story (like NURSE JACKIE, ENLIGHTENED, I LOVE DICK), or have equally-weighted A and B and C storylines that track an ensemble cast that have a culminating plot movement that ties them together (TRANSPARENT, TOGETHERNESS). Overall, there’s more flexibility with the form, as long as the focus of each individual episode is made clear (in thematic or character terms.)
  • Dinner is the most dramatic meal. In almost every half hour I read, the major plot points revolved around a dinner (or two dinners, like GIRLS and CATASTROPHE). If you want to break the form, have a set piece revolve around brunch which never has any drama. 

The Stats

I broke down a handful of half-hour dramas to make the below infographic to give you an idea of what the average half-hour drama looks like:

Now go, reinvent short form television and make some great dramatic television!

Writing Through Fear

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It’s been a year since I graduated from the USC screenwriting program, and in that year I’ve learned a number of lessons: there are a number of dinner recipes out there that don’t include pasta, perfection is not attainable, decaf coffee is a cruel joke.

The most important lesson of all, however, is how to write through fear.

Fear stops us from putting pen to paper: fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of criticism. As a recent graduate working at an agency, I faced fear at work, too: fear of sending a client to the wrong meeting location, fear that something was slipping through the cracks, fear that I would never measure up and no one would help me find that next job.

Counting the possible ways you could never measure up is exhausting, and I struggled with this for the first few months after graduation. How could I still see myself as a creative human being, as a writer, if I was only scribbling sonnets or hundred word short stories that read more like cries for help than real prose?

I struggled through writing things that I deemed didn’t matter instead of jumping into something that did: I was frozen, and couldn’t start my next pilot script.

Then, I decided to no longer be afraid. I gave myself permission to fail — at work, at life, at cooking something other than boxed macaroni and cheese, at my writing.

I started waking up at 5am to work on that next thing, carving out those precious morning moments and giving them to myself as a gift. Here is your time to fail.

I didn’t fail, though. I wrote a new pilot, and then rewrote it. I showed up to my writing groups with pages in hand, I went to the people I trusted with a story to tell.

I’m a year out and I’m a step closer to my eventual reality of being a professional TV writer: every day I’m learning how to not let the space between where I am and where I want to be terrify me.

Every day I’m acknowledging the fear of failure, but not letting it consume me.