Does My Pilot Have Too Many Characters?

March 25, 2018

Five times in the past week I’ve either given someone feedback or heard someone else give feedback that a writer’s pilot script had too many characters.

This is obviously a common note, but many writers are resistant to this feedback and I understand why. These characters are our babies! And frankly, cutting entire character arcs is a lot of work.

So the question is: does your pilot really have too many characters or — as one writer suggested — is that just feedback people give when they can’t think of anything more insightful to say?

This post is divided into three parts:

How many characters do “real” (produced by a major broadcast, cable or streaming network) pilots have? I analyzed 30 recent pilot scripts to find out. I’ve divided speaking parts into major characters, minor characters, and walk-ons, and I give you both an average and a range. I’ve separated half-hour pilots from one hours (I analyzed 15 of each).
If it turns out your character count isn’t higher than average, then why are people giving you the note that you have too many? I’ll explore some possible explanations for the “note behind the note.”
If it turns out you do have too many characters, how can you cut them down?

How Many Characters Does an Average Pilot Have?

Let’s start by getting some definitions out of the way.

I define major character as a character who appears in a large number of scenes, has an important goal, and/or has some sort of emotional arc in the episode.

Possible examples: the protagonist, the antagonist, the protagonist’s love interest, the protagonist’s sidekick, the protagonist’s mentor

I define minor character as a character who doesn’t have that many lines or only appears in one or two scenes, but who has a name (usually) and it’s clear this character will be back in future episodes.

Note that sometimes these characters will become major characters later in the series, but I base my categorization on their function in the pilot.

Possible examples: the protagonist’s mother-in-law, the protagonist’s neighbor, the protagonist’s roommate

Sometimes walk-on characters can play a substantial part in the pilot while still not being a character we need to keep track of for future episodes. I refer to these as walk-on characters with substance, meaning they aren’t a recurring character, but they have a memorable scene or they play a larger role in the episode.

Possible examples: a failed Tinder date, a mean bartender, an interviewer for a job the protagonist doesn’t get

I define walk-on character without substance as a character we’ll probably never see again after this episode. They are likely only in one scene and have at most a handful of lines. In most cases they don’t even have a real name.

Possible examples: Cute Barista, Drunk Guy, Uber Driver, Guard #2

I define half-hour pilot as a pilot between 20-40 pages, whether it’s a multi-cam network sitcom or a single-cam streaming dramedy.

I define hour-long pilot as a pilot between 50-70 pages, whether it’s a 6-act network police procedural or a streaming family drama with no act breaks at all.

All of the scripts I used are for pilot episodes of shows produced by a major broadcast network, cable network, or streaming platform in the past three years. The 30 scripts I analyzed were chosen basically at random from a file of recently produced pilots.

Half-Hour Pilots

The average length of these scripts was 33 pages.

Major Characters
Average: 3
Range: 1-6

Minor Characters
Average: 5
Range: 1-10

Walk-on Characters with Substance
Average: 3
Range: 0-9

Walk-on Characters without Substance
Average: 4
Range: 1-11

Total Speaking Parts
Average: 15 (of which only 3 are major characters)
Range: 9-25 (of which only 1-6 are major characters)

One Hour Pilots

The average length of these scripts was 60 pages.

Major Characters
Average: 5
Range: 3-10

Minor Characters
Average: 12
Range: 5-17

Walk-on Characters with Substance
Average: 4
Range: 1-13

Walk-on Characters without Substance
Average: 9
Range: 1-17

Total Speaking Parts
Average: 30 (of which only 5 are major characters)
Range: 24-40 (of which only 3-10 are major characters)

Summary

It’s interesting that the average number of characters in a one hour pilot is literally double the number in a half-hour. I actually wouldn’t have expected that.

The average number of speaking parts, particularly for one hours, is much higher than I expected. I’m guessing a lot of writers who have gotten the feedback that their pilot has “too many characters” actually have fewer speaking parts than that! If that’s you, read on…

Why Do People Think My Pilot Has Too Many Characters?

There are two possibilities: (a) your pilot does have too many characters, or (b) your pilot doesn’t have too many characters but it feels like it does.

The first possibility is easy to diagnose. Just look at the numbers above and compare to your script. If your number of speaking parts is at the high end of the range above (or even beyond the range), then you probably really do have too many characters.

The second possibility is a little tougher. If your script doesn’t actually have too many characters but people keep telling you it does, there are a few explanations that are pretty common. Read through them below and see if one or more resonates with you (or echoes feedback you’ve gotten from readers).

Too Many of Your Characters Are “Important”

Maybe the total speaking parts in your half-hour pilot is within a normal range (let’s say you have 14), but if you’d consider eight of them to be major characters, you’re probably asking too much of them. It’s hard for a reader to identify with any one character if they’re all spread so thin, let alone keep them straight. Your job will be to downgrade some of them to minor status or cut them entirely.

One way to do this is to ask yourself: How many of your characters have at least one scene by themselves or with only one other character?

Monica Beletsky had another great Twitter thread this week, this time pointing out the importance of 1- and 2-person scenes in pilots. Intimate scenes like this are a signal to the reader that this is a character we should care about, and they give us an opportunity to connect more with that character’s thoughts and feelings. You probably can’t manage scenes like that for more than a handful of characters in 30-60 pages without losing story momentum, so choose wisely.

Your Characters Aren’t Distinct Enough

This is a common one and there are several underlying issues that could cause it:

Their names are too similar.
This might sound dumb to you but it’s a real problem. If you have one character named Max and another named Matt, readers will probably struggle to keep them straight.

It’s not just about names that start with the same letter. It can also be that too many of your characters have the same kind of name. If all of your characters have common “middle-class white American who was born in the 1990s” names, readers may still get them confused.

If Max and Matt are the only two characters in your pilot, we might be ok because we’ll get to know each of them really well, but if there are six main characters and 5 minor characters and another five walk-ons? We’re going to forget who’s who.

The good news? This is probably the easiest fix on this list. In Final Draft, just go to Edit > Replace Character and swap some names. (If you switch a short name to a longer name, watch out for a possible increase to your page count.)
Their voices are too similar.
I’m not suggesting you give each character a different accent or a weird speech pattern (though that’s one approach). I’m suggesting you get clear on who each character is, and make sure that information is on the page.

And I’m not talking about writing lengthy character bios. It’s much simpler than that.

Immediately after reading your pilot, a reader should be able to pass the following pop quiz: for any major character in your script (and most minor characters), the reader should be able to name — off the top of her head — at least one adjective that describes that character’s personality.

Can your readers do that? Or do they say: “She’s… a lawyer?”

Or worse: “Which one was that again?”

You don’t need to worry about a lot of nuance at this stage, except maybe for the protagonist. This is only the first episode! You have to cover a lot of ground in very few pages. There will be time for nuance later.

At this stage, you just need to communicate one adjective about each minor character (e.g. status-conscious, hyper-analytical, grumpy, easily scared), and for major characters, you might aim for two adjectives (e.g. dumb but kind, generous but passive-aggressive, anxious but intelligent, irritable but brave).

This might sound like oversimplifying but if you read just about any successful, critically-acclaimed pilot, it really is this simple. Think about Tahani on The Good Place. Think about Jesse on Breaking Bad. Think about Josh on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Think about Princess Carolyn on BoJack Horseman. These characters gained nuance later in the series, but in the pilot? You could probably sum them up in one or two clearly-indicated adjectives.

At the very least, if the feedback you’re getting on your script is that people can’t tell your characters apart, this can be a first step on the path to fixing that.

Make a list of adjectives like the ones above and try them out on your characters. How might it strengthen your characters if you assigned one or two of these adjectives to each and rewrote their scenes accordingly? (Note: beware of playing into stereotypes or cliché tropes.)
Their purposes are too similar.
For this one, you need to understand the point of your story. What is the theme your series is going to explore?

Each major and minor character should be serving a different purpose in your series by exploring a different angle of your theme. It’s like each character is making an argument for the audience, and over the course of the series the culmination of all of those arguments will present a unifying idea to the viewer.

If you have two characters that are presenting the same argument, that’s going to feel redundant.

(Keep in mind that when I say “present an argument,” I don’t mean that the character actually speaks this argument in dialogue, though sometimes that might happen. More often it’s that her worldview, choices, and experiences make the argument for her. To understand what I mean, think about the ensemble on a show like The Wire or The Good Place.)

As an example, let’s say you’re writing a legal procedural that explores the theme: “Is it more important to follow the letter of the law or the spirit of it?”

Your protagonist is a by-the-books prosecuting attorney who pulled herself through law school by her own bootstraps and as a result believes in the beauty of the letter of the law, however flawed it may be.

Her boyfriend is the anxiety-prone defense attorney she often goes up against, who also believes in the beauty of the letter of the law because he worked hard to put himself through law school and thus has a romanticized idea of the legal profession.

These characters have different jobs and personalities, but their function in the series is the same. They’re both making the same argument in the series’ conversation about theme.
Their roles in the story are too similar.
Let’s say you have two antagonists. It’s not uncommon for a story to have two or more antagonists but they should be distinct from each other and they shouldn’t have the same level of menace. One can be the evil overlord who lurks in the shadows, but they can’t both be that. The other should be the blustery bully or the passive-aggressive meddler. They should play different antagonistic roles in the story.

Another example is if you have two characters who are the “bad boy with a heart of gold” or two characters who are the “goofy comic relief.” LOST didn’t need two Sawyers. Seinfeld didn’t need two Kramers.

Your Characters Aren’t Memorable Enough

Maybe your characters are all different, and you don’t have too many of them, but when you quiz readers on which character they liked best, they struggle to remember any of them specifically.

Or, more likely, one or two characters stick out memorably but the others melt into a pile of mush.

There are a few ways to fix this problem:

Give your characters goals.
Even if it’s a minor character, they probably have something they care about in life, or at least that they care about for the next 30 minutes of this episode, or the next 30 seconds of their scene.

Maybe they want to escape. Maybe they want to avenge a loved one’s death. Maybe they want someone to notice their haircut. Maybe they want to get high. Maybe they want to be left alone. Maybe they want the waiter to refill their glass of water.

It doesn’t have to be anything dramatic and you don’t need to spend more than a line or two on it, but if you give a character something to want, that will make them more memorable.
Give your characters a great intro.
Maybe they enter the scene covered in blood. Maybe their first line is a non-sequitur. Maybe they’re only wearing a towel. Or maybe you just give them a really insightful and hilarious introduction in the scene description.

If you just describe them as “JOHN, 32” and their first line is “Hi, how are you?” we are not off to a memorable start.

How Do I Reduce the Number of Characters in My Pilot?

Okay, so you’ve decided that you really do have too many characters. It may seem like they’re all crucial, but that’s pretty unlikely! Other pilots have clearly gotten by with fewer characters and you probably can too.

Ask yourself what narrative purpose each major and minor character serves in your story:

What is the primary adjective or adjectives a reader would use to describe this character after reading the pilot (based on the actual text of the script)? Would they describe any other characters similarly?
What does this character do that’s necessary for the plot to move forward? Could someone else do it? Does it absolutely have to be done?
What thematic argument does this character make? Does your story need this argument? Is another character making the same argument?
What role does the character serve in the story? (e.g. goofy comic relief, unstoppable antagonist, etc.) Does your story need someone to fill that role? Is anyone else already filling it?

This will illuminate a lot. After you’re done answering those questions for all major and minor characters (but not walk-ons), you will probably have ideas for who to cut and who to combine.

Another thing to consider: if there are any characters you introduce in the pilot who won’t be important until a later episode, consider cutting them unless they serve another important purpose. The harsh truth is there will probably never be a second episode. These scripts are usually just writing samples. Even if we do sell our pilot script, it’s unlikely it will ever make it to air, let alone get a full season.

But if by some miracle all of that does happen, we can bring those deleted characters to the writers’ room and add them back in.

***

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Your Pilot’s Twist Ending: You Might Be Doing It Wrong

January 1, 2018

I’m excited about a pilot I’m working on right now, partly because it’s a unique concept set in an interesting world, but partly because I had an idea for a really badass Twist Ending to End All Twist Endings. It’s a stunning visual, a huge surprise, and the kind of thing that if I was watching it on TV, I would sit up in my seat and be like “WHAAAAAT” and immediately text everyone I know.

But after some reflection, I’ve decided to change it.

A common theme across most pilots, whether it’s an hour-long family drama like This is Us or a half-hour sitcom like How I Met Your Mother, is that it ends with what I very scientifically refer to as a “‘whaaaaaaat’ moment.”

You might call it a twist, a reveal, a reversal – it’s something that happens at the end of the episode that you were not only not expecting but that completely changes how you see the show, and that ideally makes you excited for the next episode. It’s hard for me to think of a single modern pilot that doesn’t end this way.

How Do Pilot Twist Endings Work

These kinds of endings usually involve one of the following on the last page of the script (or close to it):

the introduction of a new main character
the death of someone we thought was going to be a main character
a surprising reveal that the relationship between two characters is not what we thought it was (they’re not really married, they’re actually related, they haven’t actually met each other, etc.)
the entire situation we thought the characters were in is not the situation they’re really in (it’s actually a computer simulation, it was actually a dream, we’re not actually on Earth, we’re actually in the past, etc.)
a main character is not who we thought she was on a fundamental level (she’s actually a villain, he’s actually a superhero, she’s actually a ghost, etc.)
something we accepted on faith is not actually true (the murder victim isn’t really dead, the faithful husband isn’t really faithful, the successful business isn’t really successful, etc.)
the predicament the main characters are in is actually much worse than we thought (not only are they trapped back in time but there’s also a supervillain after them, not only is the detective on the trail of a serial killer but the serial killer is also on the trail of her, etc.)

These kinds of twists, as a concept, are a great idea. They can make your pilot memorable, they give people something to talk about after reading, and they can make us anxious for the next episode. They’re especially helpful if your pilot on the whole isn’t very good, because at least the twist will trigger our natural human curiosity.

Why Pilot Twist Endings Often Don’t Work

But there are three huge downsides to them if handled poorly, and almost every unproduced pilot I have ever read has made at least one of these mistakes (and I’ve made them myself):

It’s all about the twist.

When we fall in love with our own twist ending, we’re tempted to make it the focal point of the pilot. Instead of telling a great story in a fascinating world with characters the audience cares about, we kill time for 25-60 pages until we can get to the “good part” which is the big abracadabra ending.

The obvious problem is that no one will actually make it to the “good part” unless they’re being paid to finish reading it (or are a very loyal friend).
The twist invalidates what the reader understood – or worse, liked – about the show.

We just spent 60 pages getting the reader invested in a hero only to, on the last page, kill off the only character they empathized with.

We just spent 25 pages introducing the reader to a world they loved, only to reveal on the last page that the rest of the series will be taking place in a completely different setting.

At best, this kind of twist is confusing because the reader isn’t sure what to expect from the rest of the series (since it will obviously be nothing like the pilot). At worst, it takes away or invalidates the only thing the reader actually liked about the script.
No one is going to be surprised.

If your entire pilot’s success rests on the surprise twist of the ending then we really better not see it coming. Unfortunately, readers and viewers are savvy these days and have learned to expect a twist, so we’re likely to see it coming from three acts off.

Worse, if by some miracle your pilot was actually produced, what would the marketing campaign look like? Won’t it need to spoil the twist to sell the concept of the series? It’s bad enough to spend a whole episode stalling for the big twist reveal – it’s even worse if it’s a reveal everyone knew was coming.

Some Examples

In the real pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it’s Buffy’s first day at a new high school. Before the episode began, she was expelled from her previous high school for burning down the building. She already knows she’s a vampire slayer.

During the course of the pilot, Buffy learns how things work at her new school, she meets the main characters that will populate season 1, she comes around to accept her role as slayer (which she rejected at the beginning), she deals with ordinary high school things, and she slays vampires with the help of her new friends.

Though this is a “premise pilot” (in that it sets up a new situation that did not exist before the show started), it is representative of a typical episode of the first season. These are the characters we’ll be spending time with, these are the kinds of things they’ll be doing, and this is where they’ll mostly be doing them.

But what if the pilot had taken place at Buffy’s old high school when she first found out she was the slayer? What if that was the surprise ending? That’s arguably a more interesting “bang” for a pilot – an ordinary teen finds out she’s a vampire slayer, burns down her high school, and is forced to move to a new town. The obvious problem is that we’d spend the whole episode with characters and a location that are not representative of the real show (plus, what would the show be called? Buffy, the Totally Normal Teen, We Swear?).

If you haven’t seen the first episode of this season of Black Mirror, I won’t spoil it for you, but there’s a twist in the episode that felt so much like a typical Black Mirror twist ending that I thought it was the end of the episode. It turned out to be the end of Act 1.

Alec Bojalad nails it in his review of the episode when he says:

“The best part of ‘USS Callister’… is that it takes what would have been the ending to a weaker episode of Black Mirror and turns it into the beginning. Black Mirror, great as it is, sometimes falls into a science fiction trapping that has felled many other fine sci-fi stories. It treats the ending as the ultimate ‘ta-da!’ This can, of course, be a thrilling experience still but the best science fiction stories treat the ‘ta-da!’ as the beginning.”

How to Fix Your Twist

Does your pilot have one of these problems? Luckily, there are three things you can do to fix it.

Make the rest of the pilot more interesting.

Easier said than done, I know, but if your pilot is just spinning its wheels until the big reveal at the end of Act 5, go back and figure out how to use those five acts to tell a real story.

Give your characters goals and values and stakes and obstacles. Put those characters into conflict. Have a clear plot arc with complications and at least a partial resolution.

Now you’ve earned your twist ending, if you even still want it.
Make the twist underline what came before it, not ~~strikethrough~~ it.

The best twists are shocking while simultaneously emphasizing, confirming, or deepening the premise or theme put forth by the preceding 25-60 pages, rather than invalidating them. This is a tricky line to walk, but if you know what you’re trying to say with your story, you’ll know if your twist upends it or cements it.
Move the twist earlier.

Take the big twist you planned for the end of the pilot and make it the end of Act 1. Or even the end of the teaser! Instead of making the pilot about the twist, make the pilot about the story that happens after the twist. This will make for a more interesting pilot and will make for a pilot that feels more like a typical episode of your show.

Now you can come up with a second surprise for your pilot’s ending – but one the audience truly doesn’t expect and that doesn’t invalidate the story you just spent five acts telling.

For my own pilot, I decided to make my abracadabra twist ending the end of Act 1 instead, and then spend the next four acts telling an interesting story that’s more representative of a typical episode of the show.

But don’t worry – I came up with another twist for the end.

***

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Structuring Your Half-Hour Dramedy Pilot

December 27, 2017

So now you know what makes a half-hour dramedy what it is and you know how to get to the core of what yours should be about. The next step is writing the actual script, or punching up one you’ve already written.

As promised, I analyzed the structure (length, act breaks, number of characters, and narrative arc) of a group of half-hour dramedy pilots. I found that all the pilots I studied were structured in a very similar way¹, even across networks.

I did a less in-depth version of this analysis for one-hour drama pilots here.

I share this information not to give you a paint-by-numbers template because there are hundreds of TV series out there that take a paint-by-numbers approach to storytelling and most are instantly forgettable. But if you write about something that matters to you and set it in a world you find interesting, comparing its structure to this template might help you see what your story is missing or why it feels too slow or too rushed.

There are definitely some outliers, like FX’s Better Things, which is more of a stream of consciousness “slice of life” pilot, but even that episode has act breaks and still loosely follows the pattern of the other shows I studied, just in a quieter, more subtle way. (It’s a beautiful pilot that I recommend watching even if it’s hard to take many structural lessons from it.)

Better Things on FX

Amazon’s Transparent is another pilot that doesn’t fit comfortably in the structure of most half-hour dramedies because each season is written as a five-hour movie.² The first episode is really just the first half of Act 1 leading up to the inciting incident. So it does have a formal structure, it’s just not TV structure. I would not recommend attempting this unless, like Jill Soloway, you already have a full season order from a streaming network.

How Long Should Your Pilot Be?

The half-hour dramedy pilots I studied all had 4 or 5 acts (usually 5), including any teaser or tag that might be included. Across those acts, the episodes were divided into 11-16 scenes, usually in the 14-15 range. These pilots were all 21-27 minutes long (most were 21-22 minutes), but one minute doesn’t always equal one page. Note that at least one of the major TV writing contests requires half-hour pilots to be at least 25 pages. I assume the higher page count is because comedies have historically had more quick back and forth dialogue which means more line breaks on the page in a short period of screen time.

So your pilot would feel similar to a produced pilot if it was 5 acts (possibly including a teaser and/or tag), divided into 14-15 scenes of about 1.5-2 pages each (on average).

I don’t mean that prescriptively, but if something about your script feels off, that’s a place to look if your script differs wildly from this very common template.

How Many Characters Should I Introduce?

I read a lot of pilots and some of them feel too thin because there aren’t enough characters to create conflicts between, while others feel overwhelming because there are too many characters to keep straight in your mind.

Of course, it’s much less about the number of characters you have and more about how you differentiate those characters and how you make use of them. Every character should represent a different side of the argument you’re making or the theme you’re exploring, and those characters should have between them inherent potential for conflict and inherent potential for connection in as many different combinations as possible.

What really makes a script feel like it has “too many characters” is when multiple characters are serving the same purpose in the story, and what makes a script feel like it has “too few characters” is when there aren’t enough built-in opportunities for conflict or connection between characters.

What really makes a script feel like it has “too many characters” is when multiple characters are serving the same purpose in the story, and what makes a script feel like it has “too few characters” is when there aren’t enough built-in opportunities for conflict or connection between characters.

This is why shows like The Walking Dead (in later seasons particularly) keep piling on more and more new characters – it feels like there aren’t enough characters even though there are already so many, but it’s actually just that the characters they already have don’t have enough different combinations of naturally-occurring opportunities for conflict and connection between them. This is a common problem I see in pilots I read.

All of that said, the pilots I studied had between 10-20 speaking parts, and of those speaking parts, there were only 2-4 main characters. I define “main character” here as a character who is in a lot of scenes and will obviously play a major role in the series going forward with their own problems to solve and a meaningful character arc. This is important because if you have more than 3 or 4 main characters in a half-hour pilot, it’s going to be hard for the audience to keep track of and care about all of them.

People of Earth on TBS

We also see between 3-10 secondary characters introduced. I define “secondary character” here as a character with a name who will be coming back in future episodes. These characters usually don’t have their own goals, problems, and arcs, though they might develop them in future seasons. These are characters like Dory’s boss in Search Party, the priest in People of Earth, or Sam’s dad in Better Things.

These kinds of characters are important because while they do not initially have goals and problems of their own (or at least not ones we’re invested in), they can create or complicate conflicts for our main characters, and they’re waiting in the wings in later episodes when you start running out of story ideas for your protagonists.

Last, these pilots had between 2-10 minor characters, which I define here as characters that only have a line or two, usually don’t have a real name, and most likely will not return in future episodes. These are characters like “Bellhop” or “Protestor #2.”

It’s worth noting that the line between “main character” and “secondary character” can be blurry. For example, in the pilot of The Good Place I considered only Michael, Eleanor and Chidi to be main characters, while I classified Tahani, Jianyu, and Janet as secondary characters. This is accurate based on the pilot, but if you keep watching the show, those three secondary characters take on a much bigger role and some minor characters step up as new secondaries. This happens on most series, but for the purpose of this analysis, you should think of your characters in the context of just your pilot.

What Happens in Each Act?

First Section (Teaser or Act 1)

The first section (either a teaser or Act 1) is 1-2 scenes and lasts between 1-3 minutes. In this section, we establish the basic premise (what this show is about on the most logline-y level) and the tone (funny and action-packed, heightened reality, a musical, dreamlike and tender, etc.).

These are really important concepts that are missing from the first section of most pilots I read. We don’t need to understand every complexity of the plot and theme in the first three minutes of your pilot, but we should be able to state the logline of your series (or at least the first half of it) based on these three minutes.

It’s also important that we get the tone of your show – if it’s a show that’s mostly funny, the first scene should be funny. If it’s going to have scary parts or a heightened, fantastical quality, that tone should be presented in the very first scene so we understand what we’re watching and can view it through the right lens. If it’s a musical, there better be a song real quick.

In this first section, we also usually meet the main character, but sometimes not if it’s a teaser. If we do meet the main character, we might also meet one or two other main or secondary characters, but almost certainly not all of them.

Search Party on TBS

Second Section (Act 1 or Act 2)

The second section (either Act 1 or Act 2) is 3-6 scenes and lasts between 3-8 minutes. In this section, we meet the rest of the main characters. We learn what we need to know about the world. The main problem of the series/season/episode is established.

When I say that we meet the main characters, it’s not enough that they are just physically on screen. We should understand their deal, at least on a basic level. What is one word that most strongly describes their personality? Of course your characters are more complex than can be summed in one word, and we’ll hopefully have a chance to learn this over the course of many episodes and seasons, but there’s probably one quality that describes them most simply: arrogant, insecure, sullen, idealistic, selfish, gullible, logical, etc. That one word should come across right away so the audience has something to hold onto about this character, even if later we will come to understand them in a more nuanced way (which we hopefully will).

This is also where we’ll probably meet the antagonist if there is one. Remember that an antagonist doesn’t have to be a mustache-twirling supervillain, just a character whose choices, values, and desires stand in opposition to our protagonist.

When I say we learn what we need to know about the world, this is sometimes as simple as an establishing shot of a city skyline and a scene in the office that makes clear what everyone’s job is in a company. In other shows, the world is unfamiliar and complicated and so a lot more time must be dedicated to explaining how it works.

If your pilot is in an unfamiliar, complicated world, you’ll need to figure out exactly what the audience needs to understand in the first episode to understand and enjoy the show, and then communicate that in as succinct and entertaining of a way as possible. You don’t need to explain every single fact about your world in the pilot, but you need to explain enough that they feel grounded in the story. Watch the pilot of The Good Place for a great example of how to do this.

THE GOOD PLACE -- "Michael's Gambit" Episode 113 -- Pictured: (l-r) Ted Danson as Michael, Kristen Bell as Eleanor Shellstrop -- (Photo by: Vivian Zink/NBC)

The Good Place on NBC

If you have any unusual elements like magic or musical numbers, it’s especially important to introduce these right away so it doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of nowhere later. Similarly, if your world has a complicated geography that’s important to understand, you might need to spend some time laying that out visually.

Last, this is the section where you’ll introduce the main problem of the series (or the problem of the season or of the episode). The problem might be as small as “teen girl doesn’t get along with her mother” or it might be as large as “aliens have invaded a small town” or “a mild-mannered accountant must solve a murder.” Whatever the problem is, this is when you introduce it.

Third Section (Act 2 or Act 3) *OPTIONAL*

The third section (either Act 2 or Act 3) is usually 3 scenes and lasts 5-7 minutes. This section is optional. Some pilots skip this section and instead make their first or second section (or both) on the longer side. You’d be especially likely to skip this section if your pilot requires more world-building due to a complicated setting or situation.

If you do include this section, it’s where you’ll do any combination of the following, depending on the needs of your story: introduce B-stories, explore the primary relationship, explain mythology, or complicate the protagonist’s problem.

If your show is about several characters with their own separate problems, you might choose to introduce B-stories in this section to tee up conflicts that will play out over the course of your season. These will not be lengthy, complicated scenes, because you don’t have time for that. You’ll need to introduce these stories very efficiently. For a good example of how to do this, watch the pilot of Search Party.

In some pilots, there’s a primary relationship that’s key to the show. In a show like Please Like Me that has a love interest at its core you might use this section to explore the primary relationship.

Please Like Me on Hulu / ABC (Australia)

If your show has a complicated mythology, like in the case of People of Earth, this section might be when you explain the mythology.

The last thing you might do in this section is complicate the protagonist’s problem if the main issue in your pilot is a problem the protagonist is individually facing.

Fourth Section (Act 2, Act 3 or Act 4)

The fourth section (either Act 2, Act 3 or Act 4) is usually 5-7 scenes and lasts 8-11 minutes. In this section, you’ll do some (but probably not all) of the following: resolve some problems, bring the protagonist’s main conflict to a climax, have a “moment of real” in which the protagonist reveals their vulnerability, complicate B-story situations previously introduced, culminate the main relationship, and escalate the protagonist’s problem in a way that’s caused by their own actions.

In some cases you’ll also have the protagonist choose to “step across the threshold of the series” and introduce a twist to launch us into the next episode, but sometimes those two things are done in the following section instead.

You’ll definitely want to resolve some problems in this section because there’s nothing more frustrating than a story that only asks questions and never gives answers. Leaving some of those mysteries unsolved and problems unfixed is necessary to bring people back next week, but to gain trust you need to show the audience that you are capable of resolving some problems and giving some answers.

For example, if it’s the kind of show that has a Problem of the Week along with a larger season- or series-long arc, this is where you’ll want to resolve this week’s problem.

This is the section where you bring the protagonist’s main conflict to a climax. Whether that’s an explosive fight with her daughter or a final showdown with the Monster of the Week (can’t it be both?), this is where things come to a head for this episode’s story (not the larger arc of the series).

In this fourth section, you’ll almost certainly have a “moment of real” in which the protagonist reveals their vulnerability. Depending on the tone of your show, this might be played half for laughs or it might be a truly dark moment. In this moment, the protagonist will often reveal a secret such as a fear, a weakness, or something in their past.

If you have B-stories in your pilot, this is the section where you might complicate B-story situations previously introduced.

If there’s a primary relationship in your pilot (not necessarily a romantic relationship), this is probably the time to culminate the main relationship by the characters either finally coming together or finally breaking apart.

This also might be the time to escalate the protagonist’s problem in a way that’s caused by their own actions. In other words, make them suffer, and make sure it’s their own fault.

Fifth Section (Act 3, Act 4 or Tag)

The fifth section (either Act 3, Act 4 or a tag) is usually 1 scene and lasts 30 seconds to 3 minutes. Usually this section is where the protagonist steps across the threshold of the series and a twist is introduced to launch us into the next episode, but sometimes this section is just a funny scene to end the episode if the threshold/twist happened in the previous section.

In very rare cases like Better Things, you might not have a threshold/twist at all because the show is “smaller” and lower concept, but keep in mind this is very rare and you will generally only see that in pilots created by showrunners with a proven track record. Your pilot should probably not be like that. But as always, listen to your own story.

If this is where your protagonist steps across the threshold of the series, what I mean is that they make an active choice to leave their ordinary world and step into the new world of the series. The audience should understand from this action what the show is going to be about (the second half of the logline) and that the protagonist is actively choosing it.

If you have a last minute plot twist that spins us into the next episode (and many pilots do, but not all), this is most likely when it will happen. This is usually a surprising piece of information revealed to the audience at the last minute that complicates what came before it and makes us anxious to see how it affects what happens next week.

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How Long Should the Acts Be in My Pilot? (Data Analysis)

December 9, 2017

There was a discussion in one of my writers’ groups this week about how long a teaser should be in an hourlong pilot. We all thought it should be fairly short, but we had different ideas of what “short” actually meant. I remembered that awhile back I’d made a spreadsheet analyzing act lengths from 51 hourlong pilots so I decided to go to the data.

(If you’re interested in half-hour dramedy pilot structure, I broke that down here.)

What I found: across all pilots that had a teaser, the average length of that teaser was 8 pages (with the shortest teaser being 3 pages and the longest at a whopping 16 pages). This surprised me! I would have guessed that teasers were more like 3-5 pages on average.

I shared this info with my writers’ group and someone asked if I could also share average act lengths for the other acts. This is tricky because I assumed the average length of an act would depend on how many acts the pilot has in total – this group of pilots ranged from 4 acts to 7 acts.

The most common three structures among these pilots were:

teaser + 4 acts (17 pilots)
5 acts (13 pilots)
teaser + 5 acts (11 pilots)

So I decided to break down average act length by structural type:

TEASER + 4 ACTS
Teaser: 8 pages (range: 3-16)
Act 1: 17 pages (range: 11-22)
Act 2: 14 pages (range: 5-22)
Act 3: 11 pages (range: 6-16)
Act 4: 11 pages (range: 4-18)

5 ACTS
Act 1: 17 pages (range: 11-30)
Act 2: 13 pages (range: 8-18)
Act 3: 11 pages (range: 7-15)
Act 4: 10 pages (range: 5-15)
Act 5: 9 pages (range: 4-14)

TEASER + 5 ACTS
Teaser: 9 pages (range: 5-13)
Act 1: 10 pages (range: 6-15)
Act 2: 11 pages (range: 7-17)
Act 3: 11 pages (range: 7-15)
Act 4: 9 pages (range: 6-13)
Act 5: 9 pages (range: 1-15)

As you can see from the ranges provided, the range of lengths for each act is quite broad which means there is not some hard and fast rule about act length that every professional writer follows. Some individual networks and shows may have rules about act length, but that’s not something you can really concern yourself with when writing an original pilot.

Because there are so many different ways you can tell a story, even on television, you should obviously choose a structure that you feel fits your particular story (or possibly the network you’re hoping to be on, which is a different analysis entirely).

That said, one hunch I had that this data backs up is that acts do tend to get shorter as you progress through a pilot (with the exception of the teaser, if there is one, which is usually shorter than Act 1). This makes sense because it creates a sense of quickening pace as we barrel through the story to the inevitable BANG at the end (which then hopefully propels us to episode 2).

That isn’t a rule you must follow, but it might be a helpful thing to look at it if you’re writing a pilot and the pacing feels slow. Maybe your earlier acts are too short or your later acts are too long.

Another interesting observation is that the total number of acts in a pilot didn’t seem to have as much effect on individual act length as I expected. The only exception is that in pilots with five total acts ([teaser + 4 acts] or [5 acts]), Act 1 is quite a bit longer than the other acts, whereas in the six act structure ([teaser + 5 acts]), the acts are all a more uniform length. You can see this is true even in the broader ranges and not just in the average.

One last fact: the average total page count across all 51 hourlong pilots was 61.5 pages. The shortest was 56 pages (nine pilots were 56-58 pages) and the longest was 69 pages (six pilots were 67-69 pages).

Some caveats on the stats here:

This dataset is not huge. It only includes 51 hourlong pilots: 17 are [teaser + 4 acts], 13 are [5 acts], 11 are [teaser + 5 acts], and the rest are a sprinkling of other structures composed of teasers, acts, and tags in various combinations.

These pilots come from a mixture of cable and broadcast networks but none are from streaming networks like Netflix. (Look out for a future imaginary post titled Stop Using “My Pilot is Written for Streaming” as an Excuse to Be a Lazy Storyteller.)

This list includes pilots that premiered as long ago as 2002 and as recently as 2017. It’s possible (even probable) that trends have changed. That said, 22 of the 37 pilots premiered in the past three years (14 of them in 2017), so most of these are recent.

Speaking of recency, I’d need to do a different kind of analysis to confirm this, but it seems like among the more recent pilots, the [5 acts], [teaser + 5 acts], and even [6 acts] structures have increased in popularity over the classic [teaser + 4 acts].

Genre isn’t taken into account here at all (except that they’re all hourlongs, so no sitcoms). This may not be true, but my hypothesis is that teasers for crime shows might be shorter than other types of dramas because it’s a more traditional find-a-dead-body “cold open.”

Keep in mind that “average” can be a misleading statistic – all datasets have a calculable average, but just because you can calculate a statistic doesn’t mean it’s meaningful.

For example, let’s imagine that my dataset had included 20 pilots and that in ten of them the first act was 10 pages and in the other ten the first act was 50 pages. In that case, the average length of act 1 would be 30 pages. The problem is that if you took that information and wrote a pilot with a 30-page first act, you would be writing a pilot that doesn’t look like any of the pilots in that dataset. If you were trying to mimic existing pilots from that list, you’d actually be better off writing either a 10-page first act or a 50-page first act, not splitting the difference down the middle.

Fortunately, our data here is not that dramatically split. Most of the data tends to be grouped around the averages with a few outliers that are much longer or shorter than the average. I included the full range of lengths for each act so you can see how long and short some of those outliers were.

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