NEWBIES - some advice Page 3

Quote: Demay @ March 8 2009, 8:02 PM GMT

In a perfect world, a production company might love the idea so much, that they want to film the whole series immediately, with minimal changes or rewrites. Unlikely, but who knows.

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I'm afraid it's a bit more than unlikely! In my experience it's good to have outlines, even quite detailed ones, for a whole series and more; but any producer who picks it up WILL have a list as long as their arm of things they want to alter, which can very well make what you WANTED to do in future redundant. So it does make sense to have one or two episodes written, a bag load of future episode blurbs for the series, then get on with the next one. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Quote: Michael Everett @ March 8 2009, 9:27 PM GMT

My wife said that to me the day she left

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This thread should be flagged up for nebies or something, there's a lot of good advice in here that I could have done with hearing when I first started!

I think it's useful to write more than one episode before sending anything off, if only because writing more helps to hone who the people are and how they behave. But writing a full series is a step farther than necessary, and you'd probably be better off writing 1 or 2 episodes of your 2nd and 3rd best sitcom ideas instead (which will almost certainly end up better than the best one you've ever had).

Quote: Demay @ March 8 2009, 9:13 PM GMT

It sounds as though a lot of these companies just take your pilot to pieces, take all the credit, and you end up making a different show (as explained on Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe )

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It's not always like that; I have a sitcom with a company at the moment and they have made lots of suggestions, for instance the main location is now a place that was never seen in my original draft, but was mentioned. The script itself has changed quite a bit, but it is still essentially the show I first handed over and still very much MY script. A producers ideas, if they're good at their job, will only make your work even better.

Quote: Seefacts @ March 8 2009, 9:20 PM GMT

Yes, I'm afraid. The producer will want to see it as their show too. Even though you'll look at their ideas and think 'What's the point of that?'. They need their ideas in it, that's just the way it goes.

Well, it's still your show but you have to compromise in this early stage. It's annoying, yes, but you've got no choice.

I got asked to change the whole setting of a sitcom. I did it. Now a different person wants it changed back.

Hey, good luck, no one's stopping you obviously. Just be wary that while it'll benefit you as a writer, it probably won't benefit you in terms of getting the thing made.

Good luck! And do stick around the forum.

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I suppose as you move up the ranks, and gain some actual status, your amounts of creative control increase?

Yeah, I will be sticking around this place. Seems like there are some serious writers with real knowledge and experience here.

Do what I do, send it to as many companies as possible, get there suggestions on how you can make it better (which will all be different) choose the one you like, spend months changing it, re-send it, wait for it to come back as rejcted again, then take it out to the garden and piss on it, and then set it on fire and start all over again.

Quote: Lee Henman @ March 8 2009, 9:20 PM GMT

DeMay - you said earlier you're writing the entire series partly for your own enjoyment, so that's fine. (If not a tad masochistic!) :-)
As long as you're writing regularly you will get better.

But it's also very easy when you're first starting out to put all your eggs in one basket and fall in love with your first project. You should really try to resist that. Seefacts is right in that you should write your pilot, get it as good as it can possibly be, have a rough outline of future episodes, then send it out and move onto something else.

You may also be right in thinking this first project is the best thing since sliced bread. But you also have to be aware that producers like writers to be pliable and open to ideas. Having an entire series written on spec doesn't suggest that. So what I'd say is, if you're deriving pleasure from writing it, then fine, but when you come to sending your script out, take the path that's expected of you and just send the one episode, where you see the series going, and a small description of further episodes. (And I mean a few lines each, that's all.)

And in a few years time as your trembling hands reach for another glass of Tesco Value Scotch, you'll be so thoroughly f**ked off with the depressing, soul-destroying Hell that is comedy writing, that you'll curse the day you wrote your first gag, wondering what possessed you to put yourself on this lonely, desolate path so liberally strewn with would-be writers, dead-eyed husks of humanity that have seen so many of their hopes and dreams dashed into a million shards of black, obsidian despair. *

* that was a joke.

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Rational advice here Lee. I'm definitely taking mental notes!

Quote: Michael Everett @ March 8 2009, 9:36 PM GMT

Do what I do, send it to as many companies as possible, get there suggestions on how you can make it better (which will all be different) choose the one you like, spend months changing it, re-send it, wait for it to come back as rejcted again, then take it out to the garden and piss on it, and then set it on fire and start all over again.

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lol loved that!

One thing to bear in mind, Demay, is that you can write one or two episodes and then continue gathering ideas as they crop up into a working document of yet-to-be-written material, arranged into your envisaged episodes.

Most of our sitcoms have accompanying docs far bigger than the pilots, so that we can pick up where we left off and have the ideas already partially written, so it's not a cold start even if a few years have passed.

EDIT - SLAGA - Michael, watch your caps and spelling please. It's in the rules and you're lucky it's me that's asking. Other mods are rather more forceful in their requests.

P.S Yes, good advice re: rejection. END EDIT.

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my wife leaving me and pissing on scripts aside, to new writers my adivce is get use to rejection straght away (Even before you send it out), don't send a covering letter in crayon and if you want to write an entire series all in one go for it, it's your script, untill a producer gets old of it,

Good Luck

Sorry I forgot to add -

Never give up, even if it takes you forever keep at it.

Seven years and counting.........

There is still hope for me yet, I think

I'm having trouble pinning this at the mo, will do so again later.

My other piece of advice would be that if you get interest in your project, don't let it inhibit you moving on to writing the next.

In the last few days I've had some disappointing news about a script I originally wrote a year ago. This was going to be THE ONE. Despite the brilliant people I have been working with, it got passed over for the pilot - despite the network recognising me as a writer to take seriously. (The project is not completely dead, thank God, and there were unlucky factors relating to timing with the economic disaster involved).

The point is, despite having new ideas I felt paralysed on writing the next script until I knew the fate of the previous. A project can take years to come to fruition. Write the next idea rather than hope on the current one.

Quote: Michael Everett @ March 8 2009, 9:58 PM GMT

EDIT - SLAGA - Michael, watch your caps and spelling please. It's in the rules and you're lucky it's me that's asking. Other mods are rather more forceful in their requests.

P.S Yes, good advice re: rejection. END EDIT.

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Sorry forgot to read rules, I got an F in English.

With reference to the original question, with due respect to the thread starter, and as an acknowledged n00b myself, I would say the best way to learn about script formatting is to simply read a bunch of scripts and copy what they do.

The BBC has some sample scripts on the Writersroom site, and you can find hundreds of screenplays for TV and film with a few simple Googles. I've read dozens, and I've never read anything that contains the cast list in the header of a scene.