Writing a TV script

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I have all the ideas *in my head*. So what's the best way to get them on paper? Is there a decent free tool for Word that'll let me get the metre and formatting done easily and quickly? I checked the BBC website and they've got a template but it seems to whine when i get it going.

Any other hints and tips?

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 24 June 2005 17:48 (twenty years ago)

Scriptbuddy's free thing is pretty lame.

What are you writing?

― Huk-L, Friday, 24 June 2005 17:52 (twenty years ago)

Get an ILLEGAL copy of Final Draft. Or buy the Guerrilla Filmmaker's Handbook and use the templates that come with that. Google should turn up literally HUNDREDS of script templates, too.

Good luck!

― a real bear behind the microphone (nordicskilla), Friday, 24 June 2005 17:53 (twenty years ago)

OR, just buy this book and create a macro in Word:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0929583000/ref=pd_sxp_f/104-0054062-9896759?v=glance&s=books

― a real bear behind the microphone (nordicskilla), Friday, 24 June 2005 17:54 (twenty years ago)

is this a joke? how hard is it to lay out a script?
Here's a hint. Don't write a script if you don't have any direct contacts to send it to, because no one else will read it. Unless you're writing it to amuse yourself and yr friends, in which case it makes no difference how you lay it out.
But good luck, eh.

― snotty moore, Friday, 24 June 2005 21:05 (twenty years ago)

Make sure you are enjoying what you are writing but always have an audience in mind.

― a real live British pub hooligan (nordicskilla), Friday, 24 June 2005 21:09 (twenty years ago)

laying out a script is easy, but without a program it takes forever.

might want to try writing a spec for TV, too. Like an episode of CSI or Law and Order (something that could conceivably be used at any time by those series). Maybe someone would read it, like it, and they'd buy it. Or maybe you'd get an agent. Stranger things have happened.

― Gear! (Ill Cajun Gunsmith) (Gear!), Friday, 24 June 2005 21:10 (twenty years ago)

Laying out a script is easy, but WRITING it then EDITING it is an enormous pain in the arse. And then if Word has one of its formatting spaz attacks (I presume their *are* people who know how Word's paragraph and indent functions work, but after a decade of using it I haven't a fucking clue), the whole script is buggered unless you use the undo button about a thousand times.

Careful about writing a spec script as Gear! suggested - the producers of the show won't touch it with a bargepole (they read it, reject it and then an element of it appears in an episode = legal quagmire), but the biggest problem creatively is that unless you are a BRILLIANT writer (and, probably, mimic), it will simply appear warped, wrong or just not as good to any regular watcher of the show.

Feasibly it could impress an agent enough to take you on, but any decent agent (and I AM a TV scriptwriter's agent, though whether I'm a decent one is unconfirmed) would prefer an original piece, or at very least a commissioned script, that proves your talent.

DL, lots of agents and producers will be happy first off with a treatment or a bible (say a dozen pages giving the premise, the characters, sample storylines and potential progression of the series), and this you can just write in Word with basic formatting. If you want to talk about this more, email me off board (this address is kosher) and I'll try and give you useful advice.

― Markelby (Mark C), Friday, 24 June 2005 22:34 (twenty years ago)

specs are mostly helpful in impressing agents and I know a few people who have landed agents for with specs.

also, if you're serious about the writing, might as well drop the $179 on Final Draft. It makes things a lot quicker.

― Gear! (Ill Cajun Gunsmith) (Gear!), Friday, 24 June 2005 22:47 (twenty years ago)

Final Draft is brilliant.

― a real live British pub hooligan (nordicskilla), Saturday, 25 June 2005 01:57 (twenty years ago)

might want to try writing a spec for TV, too. Like an episode of CSI or Law and Order (something that could conceivably be used at any time by those series).

I love those stories about David Letterman in L.A. during the mid-sevenites cranking out 150 page specs of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show".

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Saturday, 25 June 2005 02:26 (twenty years ago)

For the past year or two I keep meaning to write a proposal for a TV show, but I'm too lazy to actually spend any time on it instead of reading ILX, etc.

― Tech Support Droid, Saturday, 25 June 2005 07:23 (twenty years ago)

Thanks for the advice guys. Really I'm doing it more for my own benefit and piece of mind. My flatmate and I have had the ideas for a sitcom that we've been bashing around for about four years but have never commited to paper. We know each character inside and out and have a full-plot for at least one episode and six other ideas revolving around these characters too. Really, we've been bandying ideas around too long and I want it to be written down on paper. Of course if I complete it and pimp it out and it becomes world famous then fair dos, that would be nice but for now it's a bit of fun.

a thousand times OTM. Also someone must explain why sometimes I start a new line and my formatting changes to some weird emboldened fancy wingding font. All I need is a tool that'll let me write the script without spending hours getting the formatting right and preferably without having to type out the character cues one by one because I am too young for arthritis.

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 12:43 (twenty years ago)

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