Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Pitched my new idea last night

My writing group has the advantage of being able to pull from alumni to speak at panels and give ideas. Last night I was able to pitch my half hour sitcom idea to a comedy exec from ABC and a writer from "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia."

I've pitched before, a bit, but have been on few official, in-office pitches. I didn't do much planning, really just beefed up my character bios and went through it in that way. To be frank, I was kind of winging it.

And the first reaction I get from the ABC guy is, "Very well presented, I liked the structure of your pitch." The conversation then steered into notes on the idea itself, which were very helpful, especially since I'm approaching this as someone who thinks like a one hour writer, not a sitcom writer.

It's just funny that I got a note praising my preparedness when I was pretty sure I was under-prepared.

I think what it really comes down to is whether or not you can speak clearly about a subject in a room. If you're writing a script, you should know it well enough to not really need to read from a crib sheet in giving your presentation.

Hopefully this means I'll be good at pitching. It's a necessary skill that a lot of writers either don't have, or struggle to develop.

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