Screenwriting : Transforming Film Screenplay to Pilot Script? by Kyanna Simone

The main difference with pilots as opposed to films is that the story you pitch should be more open-ended. TV gives you more time to come to resolutions to your character and plot arcs, so there's gonna be more ups and downs for characters, in addition to more twists and turns in the plot. There is less of a rush to solve problems immediately or find simple answers. Characters can go through more steps and more time can be spent in a pilot getting to know characters without feeling the need to advance quickly through the plot, like you would do in a feature. The best advice I have for converting your feature to a pilot is to focus on the character arcs first before plot. In a feature, around page 30, that is where your hero is committed to their journey and heads off on it. In a pilot, that same moment can typically be the end of the first episode. Which means your pilot should include the Ordinary World/Intro period, the Inciting Incident, the Call to Adventure, the Rejection of the Call, then end on the protagonist heading off into this new world. The other main difference is in TV, you should make sure to move the perspective/points of view around a bit more. In films, it can be useful to focus on the main character's point of view primarily and play with it mainly in relation to the antagonist's point of view as a foil. But in TV, every character needs a more focused point of view and perspective because more time is going to spent with every character, so it's useful to think about how each of the supporting roles will be changing and evolving across the course of a series as well!

Hi Pat! This is SO helpful! Thank you for the thorough advice. Seems like I need to flesh out my pilot with a lot of my ACT I elements. I'll keep you updated on the pilot progress!

OK so pilot structure is not at all like feature structure. Your feature Act One will NOT make a functioning pilot! My absolute best advice from having done this with hundreds of clients and students is to learn about television structure and the elements that make up a good series, including how a series is driven by a story engine - an unresolvable central conflict that arises out of the characters and the world, rather than a plotline that is a "quest." Television also has multiple storylines, so instead of one story that is an arc of events, you will be interweaving at least three separate but related storylines - which actually means a pilot has more plot than a feature in some sense, yet less in another sense. It's just a totally different medium - what you're trying to do is akin to transforming the Mona Lisa into a sculpture - pasting a copy of the painting onto a piece of marble is not how it works. Once you learn about pilot structure and the rules of writing for television, and you watch lots and lots of shows in your genre, then take a deep breath and discard your feature entirely. Put it in a drawer. Then take your characters, your world, and your story from the feature and completely reconceive it in this new medium. The sooner you are willing to let go of your feature and embrace TV, the sooner you will have a pilot that doesn't feel like someone stretched out the first act of a feature so everything is moving slower than molasses, and then had one interesting thing happen on pg. 60, after which they ran out of ink. If you make your hero committed moment the end of the first episode, then your first episode will be the "prequel" to your show, while the pilot needs to BE the show. The logline of your show needs to be the logline of your pilot - you have to "fulfill the promise of the premise." So that absolutely does not ever work! Your pilot story has to launch in Act One, and then towards the end of your pilot (not at the very end!) you need to launch the series - which is something new you need to learn how to do, because it's not something any feature does, and it's definitely not just leaving things open-ended. "To be continued" doesn't work - the audience has to be made to care about what happens next so they want to come back. Seriously, please do not try to massage your feature into a pilot. Please do yourself a favor and actually learn pilot writing as a separate medium. Happy to help, and in the name of shameless self-promotion, I have a FREE Netflix webinar here on Stage 32 about pilot structure that you might find helpful as a starting point.

Hi Anna, Thank you!!

Thats bad advice from UCLA professsor; you're going from simple tell one complete story (feature) which you can do with your own ppl, own schedule to writing multi stories on someone else's time & corporate rules (tv).

Thanks guys!!! My professor isn’t a producer but a sales agent. So he works more-so in marketing and distribution. He loved the marketability of the story and thought it’d be a great limited series marketing-wise. I agree! on the screenwriting/producing side I know there’s a lot of work that has to be done to make the switch! So, thanks SO much for all of the insight!!