Last week I went to this one night screenwriting seminar sponsored by my college's alumni in entertainment group. The speaker had a whole talk about what made a good movie/tv pilot, and how it's all about finding your voice as a writer.
She started listing things that made a good character, and engaging story. Every point she was making I thought back and recognized in my last pilot script, the one that got me the meeting at a cable network. I then thought ahead to the new half hour sitcom pilot I was working on, and it just wasn't there.
Suddenly it made so much sense to me why the last pilot was a joy to write, and the current one felt like pulling teeth to get anything down on the page. So I decided to drop the sitcom pilot, and instead I'm having my group help me workshop my webseries, because as it stands it's pretty much a half hour pilot on it's own. Since I need to get that thing off the ground basically on my own, and I've been trying to get notes from friends anyway, it felt like the right thing to do.
The next pilot I write will be closer to my own "playful and a bit nerdy" voice again. Perhaps Writress and I will get cracking on the idea we broke story for a few months back. Maybe I'll come up with something else that makes my inner child go, "coooool." Because let's face it, that's who I am. And that's what I'll have fun writing. I still think I could write a good sitcom, and could certainly write a How I Met Your Mother spec script or something like that, but especially when I'm working a full time day job it just isn't as much fun to write comedy alone. It works a zillion times better when there's someone else to bounce jokes around with and you're able to just have fun with it.
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