why no one is responding to your TV pilot

It feels like my entire life right now is prepping TV Camp, but I do have some other exciting things (and less exciting things) going on!

I am getting to know the fantastic cohort of writers in the Sundance Collab course I'm advising this month.

I'm catching up on "writer admin" now that my pilot is done -- applying to grants, playwriting fellowships, updating my website etc.

Getting ahead on work so I have free time for WGF Festival and Tribeca next month!

Doing some reading and ideating on my next feature script and play :)

Script consults for a few writers who wanted notes on their drafts.

Schitt's Creek gif. Catherine O'Hara as Moira proclaims, while furrowing her brows, "I'm positively bedeviled with meetings et cetera..." which appears as text. — Im Busy Out Of Office GIF by CBC

I do thrive when I am busy, but I also very much want to go off grid on a beat somewhere. If you go on vacation any time soon, send me a photo so I can live vicariously through you!

Let's get into the meat of today's newsletter. How do you know if your TV Pilot is strong enough to be the leading sample in your portfolio? Let's get into it.

This is a more common problem among tv pilots, I think but the same principles can be applied to features as well.

So, if you wrote a TV pilot you think is good but it’s not delivering the results it should --

No eager responses from people wanting to read it. No accolades from your beta readers. No traction on the Blacklist or responses from queries.

And you’re feeling frustrated because you KNOW TV is what you’re meant to write, you just can’t figure out why your work isn’t landing with folks the way you hoped.

It could be a number of things, but here are the two most common culprits: the execution or the idea.

Execution being the reason things don’t vibe is pretty common, especially among beginners. The writing needs work, characters need depth, structure needs… structuring. You get it. You may have sent it out before your craft is at the level to get the results you’re looking for, which is totally normal and, thankfully, something we can fix. Practice makes perfect. Study up, get feedback, keep writing, try again.

The more common culprit though? The Idea.

The problem starts at the root. Your idea might be an okay script idea, sure, but it’s not a sample. It’s not something fit for your portfolio, even if it’s a competent piece of writing. Here’s why that happens:

1. There’s no unique angle. If you’re writing yet another “group of twenty-somethings in the city trying to make it” show, you’d better have a good differentiator, or I will… scream. I can only read so many versions of the same story. So chances are if it's similar to a show you've seen before, readers have read 50x as many versions of it as pilot sample. You need to stand out among the back with a unique idea and point of view.

For example, my first solo-original pilot that started opening doors for me was a YA coming-of-age period drama set in the civil rights era. In an age where people were churning out their version of "Gossip Girl" or "Pretty Little Liars" or where most period dramas centering black people were slave narratives, this felt novel at the time. Even though the writing could use some work, since I was a beginner, it was a novel concept that was refreshing.

2. It’s not really a TV show. So many writers have ideas that are maybe too short for a feature and too long for a short... so they land on “TV pilot.” But that’s not quite what a TV premise is. A good story does not a TV show make. Ultimately, a pilot is the first episode of a series, whether you ever produce it or not. The people reading your scripts know that, and they’re looking for the runway from your written episode to the imaginary show that could exist. A pilot is a prototype for a bigger story as well as a satisfying story in itself. So while you're laying out the story of your pilot, you also have to seed in the potential of the future of the show-- in the characters, the conflict engine, all of it. Learning to tailor your ideas to a solid TV premise is the key to a great TV sample, not just a competent but forgettable piece of writing.

3. It doesn’t represent you. When people read a script, especially in the early stages of your career, they need to get a sense of who you are. Who are you? How do you think? What stories do you want to tell? What stories can only you tell? It doesn't need to be your autobiography, but it should give them a snapshot of your voice. What skills would you bring to a room? What point of view would you bring to the subject? It's a lot of leg work this script is doing for you!

The sample that ultimately got me repped was about the high stakes world of..... high school academics! Makes total sense if you know me personally, but the pilot was about something I had experience in (but it wasn't an autobiography). It was set in Maryland, where I went to high school, it represented my passion for inclusion, diverse casts and stories through the characters and themes, and it showed my comedic sensibilities while being a 1 hour soapy pilot, and my craft skills through some of the devices I use throughout the script. When you read it you knew what I care about, what I was like in high school, my sense of humor, even my taste in music, and that I could write a great YA ensemble drama!

Think of it this way. A talented artist can probably paint a beautiful naturalist still life of an orange. That doesn’t mean they were meant to do still lifes, or that they even like still life paintings. They’re just good at painting.

Okay, so what? That doesn’t make me scramble to hang this orange in my gallery next to like… a Basquiat. You know? I don’t care about the orange or the person who painted it, because it doesn’t have any personality. But a Warhol or Basquiat fruit painting and a basic still life fruit painting are completely different things, because their unique styles and points of view are what make them interesting.

"Bananas" by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat

Your pilot needs to be the fruit with a distinct style and of view. Does this analogy make sense? I’m famous for my odd comparisons. Anyways—-

Part of building a strong portfolio is learning which ideas are worth pursuing and sharing as your calling card. You want a pilot with a novel angle that stands out in a sea of bland still lifes. You want the story to represent your voice as a writer, your POV, the subject matter and themes you’re passionate about, and stylistic choices that feel true to you. And you want it to show potential: make managers imagine what your career could look like, showrunners imagine what you’d bring to a writers room, and producers imagine what episode 2 could be.

Tall order, right?

I’ve developed a process for finding this unicorn idea and I'm teaching it inside TV Camp! If you want support on finding this idea and developing it into a full pilot, then you should definitely check out that program!

As a little surprise for you, I'm releasing the Portfolio Worthy Pilot breakdown early to give you a taste! Just click here to join the TV Camp Waitlist and get the Portfolio Worthy Checklist to reference when you write your next pilot!

xo, Alicia