Episode Structure Quotes

Typically on a TV series, the writers on a show are writing for their life almost every episode. When someone sits down to write a Netflix show, they know there's going to be a 13th hour.

I was fortunate enough to do an HBO show, 'Rome,' in which my arc was built in by historical fact, and over the course of 22 episodes, we were able to tell the stories of these people. We had a beginning and middle and end, and as we went on, you changed every week.

I don't really watch shows as a regular routine any more, but I loved 'Happy Valley'. Yes it was depressing, but at least I knew it would all be over in six episodes.

On 'Master of None,' the majority of the episodes were just one story, and that was by design because we really wanted to focus in on the character of Dev and get the audience in his head.

Even though shows like NYPD Blue are soaps in my opinion, but they're individualized to an extent that you can still follow what's going on if you miss a week.

There's this thing in TV that I find hysterical where the writers and creators will ask us if you want to know what happens to your character or if you want to experience it episode by episode. In the theatre, we always know the ending; we always know where the character is going.

My character on 'The Good Wife' is a smaller character, and his story arcs are typically season-long, unless it's a big episode for him. His transitions take place over many, many hours.

Writing for television is completely different from movie scriptwriting. A movie is all about the director's vision, but television is a writer's medium.

When you do 22 episodes of a network show, it's incredibly useful to have a format that gives you a jumping-off point for a story.

Every first episode of a season has been crafted like another pilot.

'The Names' is planned as a nine-part series. I have a kind of road map: I know the final scene of episode nine. But as to exactly how we get there, what detours or horrible accidents we might have to pass through, I like to keep that a little fluid.

You never know, especially on episodic television, you just don't know week to week what's going to happen.

One of the things that takes a bit of getting used to on an American series is having a different director, and often writer, every week.

That's the definition of a mini-series. A mini-series is a show that has no continuing story or narrative elements between one group of episodes and another, so no, I wasn't surprised.

The audience has a level of control, when you watch 'Invisible,' that nothing in 2D can give you. The overall climax of the series will work no matter how you get there, and the climax of each episode will work no matter how you get there, but no two viewings of an episode will ever be the same.

Every episode has a purpose to move the story forward.

Tweeting is a great way to practice writing jokes, but there is so much more to comedy writing than just jokes. Jokes are a necessity, but you also have to learn how to write characters, to break a story, to keep coherence between episodes. I've learned more by being a TV writer than I ever could've on my own.

There are story-room sessions where you think about the big picture, like a novel, but once you have certain things in place, you have to treat each episode like an hour of TV, and think that maybe this will be the only episode that anyone will ever watch. You want to have some sort of beginning, middle, and end to the episode, even if you have storylines that are carrying over. You still want it to feel like a cohesive hour of entertainment. And you can't think about both at the same time.

I think it's not uncommon for new television shows to spend certainly the first year, but without a doubt, like, the first eight or ten episodes, kind of figuring out what the show is.

We have a full writers' room, and with something like 'MyMusic,' we've scripted it out with professional writers. There is some very basic improv from the actors, but everything is very to the letter, so it's easy to edit down to an episode. There are fun little things an actor might throw in there.

The key to any good comic strip or television sitcom is to reset the board at the end of the episode because people like familiarity.

Crime is one of the leads of the show. If there's ever anything that deals with a character's personal life, you don't have to worry about it getting too crazy. People don't have to worry about character arcs. Each episode is a self-contained unit.

Sometimes there were certain things in 'Limmy's Show' where I'd be having to come up with six episodes and as a result there was stuff in there that wasn't my favourite and I'd think, 'ach I'll shove that in this episode.'

'Law & Order' has the same plot every single episode.

I tend to write the episodes in the middle of the season, which can be a challenge because you've got to balance all these threads that have begun - and also make sure they will make sense with the overall plan going forward.