Writing for Television Articles

WRITING FOR TELEVISION PART 1 - GETTING STARTED By David Jimerson, with very helpful advice from Jane Espenson, writer for Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Let’s start with a couple of terms – shooting script and spec script. A shooting script is a script written to be shot. This is almost always handled in-house on a television production. A spec script is speculative. It is written by an aspiring writer attempting to show that he or she has the skill to write a script appropriate for that show. A spec script is almost never actually shot. Its sole purpose is to be a demonstration of skill. Until you’re actually hired to write a shooting script, as an aspiring writer, you will be writing spec scripts. While they...

WRITING FOR TELEVISION PART 2 - WRITING THE SCRIPT By David Jimerson, with very helpful advice from Jane Espenson, writer for Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer With plenty of example scripts in hand, you’re ready to sit down and write a spec script. Here’s where the creative process kicks in. Creating a Story Think hard about the show you’re going to write a spec script for. Think about it deeply. What is it really about? A few thoughts based on shows which are no longer in production, but are familiar: Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn’t a gothic tale of hunting vampires. It’s about a normal teenage girl who’s suddenly thrust into a world she didn’t know existed, suddenly given a grave responsibility she didn’t ask for...

WRITING FOR TELEVISION PART 3: GETTING IN AND WORKING ON A WRITING STAFF By David Jimerson, with very helpful advice from Jane Espenson, writer for Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer The process of writing for television is not the same as writing for feature films. It’s not a solitary experience where you work mostly alone on a story you dreamed up and developed on your own, and then turn it over to be produced. Rather, it’s a highly collaborative process where most stories are generated and developed in great detail as a group, among all of the writing staff of a TV show, and the writer writes the script based on a detailed outline worked out by the staff as a whole. Some may find that surprising, imagining a...