Thread: T.V. script?

just wondering. I actually have these ideas going on right now that involves two people, a guy and a girl. something happens and they end up having to seperate. so i have two seperate stories. the one for the guy I was thinking of turning into a "T.V. show" an hour long each. the girl i was thinking a movie script, but possibly a T.V. one for her too, I haven't quite got her whole story done yet.

is the format different? I read somewhere that 30 min. sitcoms do, but I forgot what.

Well, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about there, guitar chick, but

Yeah, TV format is a little different. Mostly because it's filmed around commercial breaks, so the action comes to little climaxes at certain points.
The script is divided into acts and scenes, unlike screenplays. It's a kind of challenge sometimes, but can also help structure your plot.

You can get some info on TV format on tvwriter.com

But let me suggest that you'd be better off doing something like a 2 hour film script that moves back and forth between the two stories, like Pulp Fiction or Crash or Amores Perros or some such.

Generally these kinds of multi-story scripts work around the separate strands coming together (even if only in REALLY tenuous ways, like Babel) but the idea of two people moving apart could be interesting if well done.

Hrm... I'm not sure how your projects would work together BUT TV scripts are a whole other thing to learn. Check out some scripts and you'll see that in some (1 camera shows) they look a lot more like a feature scripts in the format, this is really common in the 1-hour Dramas on TV. In others, more traditional sitcom half hour shows, the dialogue for each character is double spaced. Because the formats are different, the page length can really vary as well. Most sitcoms I've seen recently are somewhere in the 30-40 page range (longer especially if they have a lot of fast, quippy dialogue) and most dramas are around 50-60. That being said, there are shows that are consistantly out of these ranges and have made it work for them. However, if I saw a sitcom or drama pilot on my desk around these page lengths, I'd feel that it would seem about right.

If you're interested in writing TV scripts, read more scripts. I'd even recommending writing a spec script of your favorite show to get you the feel of what you need in a TV show before you write a piliot script. You'll learn more about ABand C subplots, character families, and how to use the page economically.

I was only thinking about one of the two stories be a T.V. show. a one hour drama. and the other could be a feature script. I had at first thought they should get back together, but that would mean that they both would die, so then I just thought they should get on with their lives. whats funny is that at first they are kind of neatural, one is slightly good and one is slightly evil, but when they seperate they switch and the one that was portayed as evil is now good, and the good one is now evil.