Ever dreamed of writing a TV show but didn't know where to start? Now's the perfect time to pick up your pen (or hit that keyboard) and dive in - no experience needed, just your imagination.
In a new series, screenwriter Ray Lawlor - creator of RTÉ's popular black comedy series Obituary - offers some tips for the budding TV writer...
Breaking story sounds destructive, but it’s the opposite: it’s the process of building an hour of TV, piece by piece, until you have a map of your episode and, down the line, the rest of your series.
Focusing on writing just one episode for now, breaking story always starts with a beat sheet: a list of basic story beats in order, spanning about two pages. After the producers of the show provide their feedback, I expand the beat sheet into an outline, turning those beats into scenes. This outline can grow up to fifteen pages. From there, the outline becomes the script. This process might sound mechanical, but it’s what fosters creativity. Most importantly, with this solid structure in place, you can spend more time crafting inventive scenes and dialogue, which attracts great actors and is the really fun part of writing.
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Listen: Ray Lawlor talks Obituary Season 2 with RTÉ Arena
I work with the five-act structure. Based around American TV's ad breaks, it allows me to break down the story into smaller sections so I never feel overwhelmed. It also gives me clear markers: turning points, climaxes, and reversals, that I can hang a story on. Inside each act are scenes, and within those scenes are turning points and twists (new information delivered to the viewer that surprises the audience and keeps them watching).
This is how I like my five acts to look, with the assumption that the script is 45 pages:
Act One (also called The Teaser or Cold Open)
Running for about five pages, this can serve as a sort of short film that immediately grabs the viewer's attention. It can, of course, continue from the conclusion of last week, but I often prefer them to be a bit of a digression in the story that will eventually pay off or add to the theme. In Season Two of Obituary, I needed Elvira to be someone who was competent with the electrical setup of a house. As I had never established this, I used an act one of an episode to flashback to her childhood, showing her being transferred to electronics class as a punishment for acting out. It was a fun little aside that also established it was believable for her character to produce a screwdriver and get up to no good in someone’s house.
Act Two
Act Two, running for ten pages like acts three, four and five, covers two main points. It can tidy up some story elements from the previous week while presenting a target for Elvira to kill. By the end of the act, she will have decided to kill her new potential victim, setting the rest of the story in motion.
Act Three
At its basic level, Act Three is Elvira researching her victim and discovering the best way to kill them. The most crucial point in this act is the end, which is the episode's midpoint. This is a significant twist that alters the course of the story. An example could be Elvira killing someone and then discovering she has made a mistake that she will spend the rest of the episode trying to rectify. It should be shocking and unforeseen.
Act Four
This is where you plunge your main character into real trouble. It should be tense, as if there is no way out. By the end of the act, Elvira should feel doomed. But just when things look lost, she hits upon a way to make things right.
Act Five
This is where Elvira mends the chaos she has caused while also introducing a new problem or cliffhanger to end the episode and send us hurtling to the next.
For Obituary, breaking one episode meant figuring out who Elvira was going to kill that week and what obstacles would derail her. Breaking the series arc was different: it meant plotting Elvira’s growth from a nervous first-time killer to someone embracing that life, while weaving in the lives of other characters around her. In TV, you always work on two levels at once: the episodic plot and the series arc. Balancing both is the art of television storytelling. In the next article, we’ll look at how the first draft is never the final draft, and why rewriting is the key to making a show shine.
Season 2 of Obituary is on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player - catch up with both seasons here
