Monthly Archives: February 2009

i’m all done with my first tv spec! the deadline for the nick writing fellowship is tomorrow, but i finished and mailed it off today. the fellowship announcements will be made in late august / early september, so now i have to forget this project and move on to my next one.

i ended up sticking very closely to my original schedule which was:

• week 1 – research past episodes, write loglines for episode ideas.
• week 2 – write treatment, outline, and start writing pages.
• week 3 – finish writing, send out for feedback, revise, and send out.

(more…)

i’m about halfway through a rough draft of my Office spec. the time i put into outlining is paying off, because i already figured out the main story beats and now i can focus on dialogue and jokes. besides being just a valuable part in the writing process, outlining is something i would have to do anyway if i were to actually get work writing for tv.

(more…)

i always outline my scripts, even for my short films. and when i outline, i always use omni outliner. it’s a great piece of software.

for the current script, i made 3 columns: one for the main story beat, one for the slugline (location), and one for any additional notes, like act breaks. i’ll start with just the bare information, like inciting incident, midpoint, climax, etc. then i’ll slowly add story beats, move stuff around, flesh it out. i also color coded it so i can quickly see the ratio of A-story beats to the B-story beats.

(more…)

i want to write a spec of The Office and i had settled on the logline after pitching to some friends, but i realized that the story needed to focus…

i came up with over a dozen ideas for possible episode ideas, but narrowed it down to 2. i double checked various episode guides online just to make sure my…

i just got an email today about the nickelodeon writing fellowship program. you have to submit a spec script on an existing half hour series. a friend of a friend got into that program a couple years ago and landed a staff job there. there is also the disney writing fellowship and you need a spec for that as well, so i decided to write one.

(more…)