TV STORY SHAPE Once you nail your core concept, you're ready to tackle the story shape for the pilot episode. In TV, this is pretty straightforward: a teaser and four acts. The teaser is usually something dramatic or intriguing to pull the audience in. The first act develops the situation (the cops discover the murder) and ends on a story developme

· ASSIGNMENT: Identify the PLAN, CENTRAL ACTION, and CENTRAL QUESTION of your story. · What does the protagonist WANT? · How does s/he PLAN to do it? · What is the CENTRAL QUESTION of the story? And for extra credit: · What and who is standing in his or her way?

Not surprisingly, this is why scripts with murky goals result in a lot of boring scenes. Since the writer doesn’t know what the goal is, he’s unsure of which scenes are necessary to push the characters towards that goal.

First, screen dialogue requires compression and economy.