I attended the Leeds Trinity University Writers Festival last Wednesday and took part in two excellent workshops, the first of which, Writing TV Drama, I review here:
Writing TV Drama with Hayley November
Hayley started by quoting Edward De Bono - Lateral thinking: the interaction between imagination and technique; Vertical thinking: step by step logic that results in right and wrong answers, in that too much vertical can be clichéd and too much lateral, giddy.
The pitch for Alien was 'Jaws in space' and Hayley asked us to think of our own 5 minute pitch for a British TV series using the technique 'a type of person attempts to story goal by unique method' or 'after backstory, a main character/s must story goal.'
She then explained TV hierarchy - Broadcaster (BBC, ITV, C4, C5, Sky etc.) who buy programmes, Production company (Kudos Shine, Red, Lime, in-house BBC etc.) who make the programme and the Writers/Creators who write and create the programmes. When making drama for terrestrial or digital, look for audience expectation in terms of tone and content. Writers, development execs, development assistants, script editors, researchers, readers etc. work together to create the shows, then they go to the Production Company and they buy it (option), then they go to the Broadcaster If the Broadcaster tells the Production Company they will buy it (commission).
To pitch to production companies, she suggested emailing your idea and they will either say it is not for them, or we really like it, come in and talk, we'd like to develop it. The process is Pitch, Treatment and First Draft. You must tell the Broadcaster everything about your idea whilst in development, for example, Life on Mars was seven years in development. The genres are crime, romance, comedy, murder/mystery, medical, sci-fi, historical, soap, fantasy, horror, thriller, relationship, family, workplace, contemporary lives and kids and she suggests you write about what you know and love. What you know may be different to what you love, for example you could love fantasy but know about contemporary lives. Hayley then asked us to write our 5 minute pitch in our favourite genre.
A treatment is 5 to 10 pages of the entire idea, the whole story including the ending, i.e. the world and everything in it, written in prose. To give us an idea of budget, per single episode Eastenders is £180K, Downton Abbey £1.5M, Dr Who £1M, DCI Banks £700k and Doctors £100K and there will be anything from 3-8 episodes in a series.
Hayley then asked us to decide if our idea was a returning series, what genre it is, who our main character/s is/are, the location, period, tone and style, whether it is linear/non-linear, which cast and our preferred channel, which was harder than it sounds.
Hayley then told us thst we know what our idea is, but what it is about? What's the story, what is the plot:
1) Plot and Story (what happens and why) OR
2) Characters WANT and NEED (external and internal journey).
It needs conflict, drama and jeopardy. What is at stake? What is the biggest thing to happen to your character (it doesn't have to be a big thing, just a big thing to them):
Man V Man
Man V Science
Man V Nature
Every scene has one of these elements. This development technique uses the story arc/mountain and she uses the 5 act structure:
Act 1: Everything as normal then something happens - inciting incident (entire drama)
Act 2: Things go okay (react to 1)
Act 3: Things go badly (then turning point)
Act 4: Things go as bad as they can (can't get worse)
Act 5: Final battle and resolution (win)
then you do it all over again for a sequel.
Hayley asked us to break our story idea down into the 5 Act structure and decide the want, need and flaw of the main character. Then she suggested the 'cat, dog, trumpet' factor, e.g. Sonia Jackson was a character the viewers had not warmed to, so they gave her a trumpet and a lack of self belief to create empathy.
New pitch please! We had to write our 5 minute pitch again, taking into account all of the new things we had just learned.
She recommended Final Draft Version 9 and the BBC Writers Room as it has free scripts of BBC programmes. She told us to start with the 5 Act structure, what happens scene by scene using this structure, then add dialogue, what the characters are wearing and why and if there are ad breaks, you need to add hooks to entice the viewer back (e.g. clue to who the killer is). She believes that you do not need qualifications for a job in TV writing, just experience. There are many jobs: writer, development exec, script editor, development assistant, researcher etc. and typical salaries are £15-30K for a writer per hour script, £50-90K for a development exec, £30-40K script editor, £30-40K researcher and £25K for a development assistant.
Bang2write is a good source for general script information and BBC Writers Room for free script software. For general information about TV production, Broadcast Magazine monthly (can be found in libraries) and the London Screenwriters Festival takes place every October which is a fantastic place to meet and network with writers, they even have a pitch fest, 5 minutes with agents/execs, but it costs £250 for 4 days.
An enjoyable and informative workshop that stimulated lots of ideas.
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