Screenwriting 101: Jeff Lieber

“I think the one thing that people mistake when they’re writing a TV pilot is it’s aimed at the plot of the pilot. When I go to pitch an idea with somebody, I pitch them the world, I pitch them the characters, I pitch them the long arc. As I’m walking out the door, someone says, ‘What’s the pilot about?’ The pilot is the least important piece when compared to just getting arcs for the show.

For example, if I were pitching ‘Breaking Bad’ — and it’s one of the best pilot scripts out there, you’ve got to read it — I would talk about, ‘There’s this guy and he’s the most overworked person in the world. He’s a math teacher at a high school that nobody gives a shit about. His marriage is going south. His kids are annoying and so and so forth. Then, he gets cancer and he decides to get something for himself. And while he’s going to get something himself, he decides to cook meth.’

Now, I say, ‘This is the show about a guy that starts to dip into cooking meth and he’s the least likely character out there.’ Then you pitch around character and you say, ‘That’s the show and we’re going to watch him over a five season arc. The long arc is about he goes from your least powerful person to one of the most powerful, and he does it through cooking meth.’ None of that requires you to know too much about the pilot. It’s all about the large arc to the series. Then someone says, ‘Cool! Well, how in the hell did he get involved in cooking meth?’ And you go, ‘OK. Now I’m going to tell you the pilot.’ You’re selling the world and you’re selling characters, and then, at the end, somebody says to you, ‘OK, what’s the first episode about?’”

— Jeff Lieber

From Go Into The Story interview, August 16, 2013

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