Speaker 1: Film Courage What are the different structures for television? Television usually exists as half hours, hours and limited series. Within that there's some flexibility. The half hour form which used to be limited to sitcoms and really isn't anymore really only runs 20-22 minutes. It's very short. But how is that divided? Well, some people used to say the comedy structure was three beats up, three beats down with a whoops in the middle. Well, I don't think that holds anymore. There are comedies that are in three-act structure, standard three-act structure. There are comedies that are in four-act structure. There are comedies that are what the heck is going on here? And they can all work because they're propelled by the characters and the kind of material and the kind of humor, if there is humor. Half hours are also not only comedy. More half hours are dramedy now or what you might call as simply half hour dramas. And that's different also. If you look at something like Atlanta, which is not bound by legacy structure that it has to fit within a half hour plus ads, which brings it down to like a 20-minute show, you might have a 40-minute episode. And HBO is perfectly happy to have that happen. Coming away from comedy, which is not my specialty, hours are, depends where you look. An hour might be more than an hour on HBO or might be a full hour and even a little more on HBO or Netflix or even Amazon. It might be much less than it might be on legacy television. It's 40 some odd minutes because they're allowing for the commercials. So it varies. And then the limited series are all different. If you look at something like Ava DuVernay's When You See Us, that's six hours, brilliant six hours. Most of those hours are one hour long, but sometimes I think one of them, if I recall, the beginning one was two hours long. And you often see that in the, I don't want to say many series, in the limited series, you'll often find that one of those hours is a two-hour segment. They call it special. It's also called as, you know, finishing the show. But are they an hour long? Mostly, kind of. Mostly, kind of. They have to fit on the schedule. Game of Thrones was often not an hour, it was more. Handmaid's Tale is less because on Hulu, it shows with commercials. So if you're working on a show, you have to look at that show and see how they work. Film Courage And then Better Call Saul? Dr. Anneke Vandenbroek Better Call Saul is an AMC and AMC has commercials and it could certainly, it certainly has the depth to go for an hour, but it could also be an hour. To go for an hour, but it doesn't. It runs more like 50 minutes.

Speaker 2: Film Courage What's the difference between a five-act and a six-act structure?

Speaker 1: Dr. Anneke Vandenbroek Well, I, first of all, don't really believe in act structures so much anymore. I really like to look at the four-act structure as a basis and the five-act structure is a four-act structure with the fourth act divided in half. Six acts sometimes is those five acts and then you add a tag, which is some extra material, but there's also another way of doing it, which is that every act is a little shorter. I don't, I don't recommend anybody writing a spec episode in six acts. I really think that if somebody out there is watching this, in order to learn how to write a sample, a spec sample script, which is required by many of the fellowships, that you should really go with the four-act plus teaser or no acts at all. The six-act structure is clumsy because it keeps breaking, first of all, and then also the reader anticipates it's going to be ending and then, oh, wait a minute, here's another piece. So I don't think anybody should do that.

Speaker 2: Film Courage And so for a first-time spec writer submitting something, should they stick to an hour?

Speaker 1: Well, yeah, if they're doing drama, they have to stick to an hour. I mean, if you're a comedy writer that's different, then clearly you will write a comedy sample and that's another world altogether. If it's taped, I mean, if it's multi-cam, not too many people are doing that anymore. But if it's a multi-cam sitcom in the old-fashioned sense, it's probably going to be in a different page format as well. You have to look that up. Whereas dramatic scripts and live-action filmed comedies look like feature films. Can you explain A, B, and C stories? A, B, and C stories are parallel stories that are not subplots. In dramatic shows especially, you will have major full plots that are linked to primary characters. The A story generally has more beats, the B story may have the same number of beats or fewer, and the C story is sometimes a runner. It's just a way of thinking about storytelling when you have the kinds of narrative that lap over from episode to episode. You might have an A story in episode five, which actually continues in episode six as a B story and comes back to being an A story in episode seven, and you might have it weaving. The B story, which is also very important but not the prominent one in episode five, really has a major turn in episode six. You're weaving throughout the season as well as weaving within your episode. That isn't to say the episode can't stand alone because it should, but that's what parallel storytelling is. It's just multiple narratives, they are not subplots to each other, they are full stories.

Speaker 2: Film Courage Could we try using that with an example of something, maybe BETTER CALL SAUL?

Speaker 1: BETTER CALL SAUL might have Jimmy Saul as the A story. Kim, his wife, might have a separate arc in that show, even though she also intersects with him. But there also might be a story for Nacho, which doesn't even include Saul or Kim and takes place in Mexico. It's in a different place, a different time. Well, same time usually, but a different location with different characters. They all impact each other and there's usually a thematic link, but they're actually separate stories in themselves. If you look at the precursor Breaking Bad, Walter White will have a story. Would Jesse have a separate story with different characters? Maybe, maybe. In Breaking Bad, Walter White really was the dominant person, but there are other characters who might have scenes that he isn't in and might have a number of beats that tell whatever their arc is for that show. Film Courage

Speaker 2: How do you stretch out an idea over multiple episodes without it feeling too drawn out?

Speaker 1: You never stretch an idea. There is no such thing as an idea that stretches. There's only a story that needs to be told. If you find that your material is too short, that the story you have does not last for an hour or for whatever length of time, you need to think about your story and who these people are and what more needs to be told. Never stretch and never shrink. I've seen people, I've seen students do things that are just silly, which is to work with the final draft, to make more space between letters, to make it look bigger or take out space to make that doesn't fool anybody. Plus it won't work because when you actually make the show, it's going to be what the length it is. So that's silly. If you find that you don't actually have enough story, you can do a few things. One is go back into your characters and ask, are there layers of this character that I have not yet examined? Go back into your secondary characters and say, is there more to them? Are they too superficial? Do they have arcs or stories in themselves that could become a B story? Is there a different place to end my story? If it's too short, have I stopped before it really concluded? Or more likely, have I failed to develop the middle? Generally, people who are lacking material are lacking it in the middle. They think they're lacking it at the end and they need to go on. And that's rarely the truth. Sometimes I have found early scripts that don't start in the right place. The general notion is to start as close to the action as possible. So you want to start as late as possible. But there are a number of instances where you really need to know what caused this story and they needed to back up and add essentially a whole act for what happened before or what propelled the character. So they're missing something. Never stretch, never fool with it. The idea and the story tells itself. Film Courage

Speaker 2: A better problem to have is how can I condense this?

Speaker 1: Right. You might say a better problem is how to condense it if you need to hit an hour, if you need to hit 60 minutes. And if it's running too long, there are a few things you can look at. The simplest is are your dialogue speeches too long? And that's a common error that people are just simply over-talking. They say play it, don't say it. Is there something we can see visually instead of explaining it? Or that you've got exposition that needs to go because it's obvious anyway on screen or because you have indulged in directing on the page or set decoration. So there's just simply too much writing that isn't part of telling the story. So that's an editing thing. Often editing won't…if you're way long it won't cut enough pages. I mean if you're up at 75 pages for something that should be 60 pages, editing might not get you there. What may be happening in that case is that you've actually strayed from the focus of your story or that you even have a whole other character or a whole other storyline that needs to be in a new episode. So those are things you can do if you're running long. In general…or sometimes that your script was really over and you went on. But you'd have to look at it case by case. Unless you're Aaron Sorkin and you're writing something that's normally 70 pages because it's so dialogue rich that 70 pages are going to run 60 minutes. But unless you're doing that and you shouldn't be doing that, you should tighten your script to what works within an hour. Film Courage But if your first

Speaker 2: inclination is how do I stretch this out then you know that maybe go back to what your whole idea is even about because it sounds like there needs to be some…

Speaker 1: If your question is how do I stretch this out, you're asking the wrong question. And you need to go all the way back to who you are as a writer and what is the thing you have to tell.