finished my Office script

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.

if you break that down, i spent half of my time not writing any dialogue. when you look at a screenplay, all you see is dialogue and action so you might think that’s what takes up the most time to write, but the real work goes into figuring out the story and structure.

i read 2 books that really helped me with this project:

The TV Writer’s Workbook
and
Elephant Bucks: An Insider’s Guide to Writing for TV Sitcoms

they are great for telling you the steps to write a spec of an existing show and i highly recommend them.

NEXT PROJECTS
here’s what i want to write:
• another half hour comedy spec. i’m thinking of How I Met Your Mother.
• a half hour original pilot.
• a feature length script. it will either be something i will direct, which means low budget, or something commercial i can sell. i have ideas for both.