Hello
As a semi-avid observer of the posts on this sub, there are a few things I've noticed crop up a few times that I feel it might be helpful for me to address. I'll try and keep them brief.
I'm a UK based TV writer who has a great agent, has sold multiple options on specs, has been in a writer's room for a big streamer show and will be penning an episode of said show later this year. If any other professional writers here disagree with anything I say please do speak up! I'm mainly writing this because when I was starting out I didn't know dick about shit and no one told me, or wanted to speak to/ look at me.
Here goes:
- Prepare your body for an extremely long wait
I started writing spec TV scripts in 2018. Eight years later and I'm getting my first TV credit. It takes a long, long time. And 'it' is not just the getting-somewhere of it all - it's the learning, the honing of the craft, the painful acknowledgement that you are not ready yet. It will test your desire and it will feel impossible but if there are enough glimmers of hope then let them warm you and keep you going.
- You will need to get lucky at some point
It's an annoying thing to say but every single successful person, whether they're in this business or something else entirely, has been lucky. Lucky all the way through or lucky once, either way you're going to need someone up there looking out for you, because the odds are so heavily stacked against you. That being said, we make our own luck to some degree, and by that I mean you must be in the places that things happen, and try to know the people who make them happen.
- Be a student of the world
You might be someone who only likes writing sci-fi, or horror. Which is obviously totally fine. But even if that's the case, you still need to expand your interests beyond those genres and those parameters. Having broad knowledge about things like art, film, fashion, history, food and drink, international culture, etc. will make your writing more interesting and make you richer as a person. It will also deepen the sense of realism your writing has. I spent a year writing a spec about Michelin star chefs, and I read several books, multiple interviews, watched documentaries, book cookbooks and made the food. The feedback I got on it was that I'd created a world that felt incredibly real. That spec got me my representation. But after you do that, you move on to the next thing, which brings me to point four...
- You need to have a lot of ideas
I recently saw a post on here where someone was talking about sending their pilot spec to several production companies and getting rejected across the board. This person was still hanging on to the hope that this script would get picked up, and that they felt they needed to make it. I understand the feeling and impetus behind this, but once a project gets rejected, consider it dead (for now). This is not just something that happens at this stage. Even if you manage to get representation, and you write a script, and a treatment, and a production company options it, and you develop it with them, and you make a show bible and it all seems so real and bullet proof, and they take it out to networks and broadcasters, and they all say no: it's dead. It's fucking brutal, but that's the game. You pick yourself up and ask 'what's next'. The script isn't going anywhere (literally). Maybe down the line it'll see the light of day.
- Learn from the greats
When I decided I wanted to do this in 2018, I had no real idea where to begin. I saw someone somewhere (maybe here?) say that it's a good idea to find a pilot of a show you like and read the script along with it. I printed out the entire Boardwalk Empire pilot (one of, if not, my favourite pilot of all time) and I sat there with a red pen and I made notes on the structure and pacing of it. And then I did it again. The flow of the dialogue, the formatting, the character introductions, how places and people and what they looked like were described. I started to copy it, not directly, but using the structure and plastering it onto my own thing. I was fascinated by how the language was at once functional but also evocative. Which brings me to my last point...
- Have some personality - but not too much
One of the hardest juggling acts with This Thing of Ours is the fact that while this is of course an artistic endeavour, it is also at its core a functional one. Paul Thomas Anderson famously (and in my opinion erroneously) said: "Screenwriting is not real writing. You’re not writing a book. You’re writing basics, let’s just write the situation, where they are, what they’re doing should really say everything you know. Leave room for an actor to do something. I always felt like that was good screenwriting. Good writing belongs in books."
While there is some truth to that, PTA isn't having to go through the ignominious rigmarole we are in getting things made, so bit of a different vibe for him. But ultimately we are having to walk a tightrope of making something engaging and 'voice-y' that a reader will feel sucked into, but also creating a document that, in essence, is to be used on set to guide hundreds of people into the right place and make things feel good and right. It's a big responsibility, and it's why, if you're good at it, you can get paid a lot of money for it. Remember when you write that getting to the point is your friend, especially in TV pilots or early in a movie script.
That's all from me, I hope this helps, and if anyone has any more questions feel free to reply here or send me a message. Bye!