Writing the Pilot: The Streaming Series

When I published Writing the Pilot: Creating the Series in 2017 I thought it was my definitive statement on the art and craft of TV writing. But then a funny thing happened. Stranger Things because Netflix’s first massive mainstream hit, and suddenly the gravity of the television world shifted to the streaming services. And it turned out that series made for streamers would be fundamentally different from those that came before.We’ve gone from 22 episodes to six or eight or ten, we’ve traded self-contained hourlong stories to sprawling serials, we’ve lost our chauvinist blinders and embraced series from around the world, and we’ve abandoned the creative control once ceded to advertisers and given it to audiences. The result is a revolution in storytelling unmatched since silent movies gave way to the synchronized soundtrack.Today’s top series are as different from those of a decade ago as a Model T is from a Tesla. With the new style has come extraordinary new freedom for writers to tell almost any story they can imagine and find an audience.But even this period of unmatched creative freedom comes with its own sets of rules, mores, and standards. The streaming shows work in essentially different ways from the old ones – and as writers we need to understand and master those ways if we’re going to find our place in this exciting new world. This book is my attempt to do that. Read more