What happens inside the TV Writers' Room?

[@dranipani]

Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

[@dawnatkinson7704]

Fascinating stuff. I am a huge consumer and lover of film and tv and I has aspirations as a younger person to go into the industry but life threw me a few curveballs and i went into a different field. However its so interesting for me to see the process. Thank you xx

[@LindaAronson]

Thanks Dawn, great that you enjoyed it. Ever considered creating web TV?A whole new medium. People make short films and TV series ( 10 minutes per episode) on their phones.

[@mnqobi0]

Love this platform Thank you

[@LindaAronson]

Thanks Geoffrey, I'll try to keep the videos coming. Hope your writing is going well.

[@AristotleFullThrottle]

Brilliant! Thank you for the insight.

[@LindaAronson]

My pleasure!

[@LindaAronson]

Hi Tuna Cat, Yes you can use beat theory in feature film. Absolutely! It's a lifesaver. In fact, if you are writing flashbacks or nonlinear or multiple protagonist films you have to use beats. Traditionally, writers learnt in the Writers' room of TV series, unfortunately it's hard these days to get into Writers'Rooms. I sometimes run online courses on it and I talk about it in my website and my newsletter. www.lindaaronson.com What are beats? Beats are steps in a story. In a nutshell, A happens, then B happens, then C - you get the idea. TV involves multiple storylines and to maintain suspense you jump between stories on beats. For example say I have 3 storylines in my TV episode and the episode has eighteen beats in all. I might start the episode with the first few beats of story 1 then jump to the first beat of story 2 then the first beat of story 3 then back to story 2. .. and so on. It means you have to create all of the storylines first then interweave. Watch a couple of episodes of a show like East Enders and you'll see what I mean. It's difficult but a fabulous tool. And if course essential in TV.

[@Who56211]

What do you mean by creating a story with beats? Beat theory, where can I learn more about that? And could it apply to feature scripts?

[@LindaAronson]

Hi Tuna Cat, Ive written a reply to your question as a comment below the video . Hope it's useful. I'll notify people in my newsletter if I'm running a class on beats.

[@stevennour]

Thanks for sharing

[@LindaAronson]

Glad you liked it!

[@SHVDETHEDON]

The only problem is not a single writer is able to explain " what is a beat " ...

[@LindaAronson]

Hi , Linda here. Thanks for taking the time to write. Interesting point. I'm sorry you've hit that problem. Of course I can't speak for every writer around the world but as a professional writer, in my experience I'm puzzled you've encountered confusion. In TV writing we would use the term all the time in practical plotting to describe a story step as I've described. I've written for production companies in UK , Australia and USA and never experienced problems being understood. I've also run seminars for pros in many countries where English is not a first language and the writers understood. We called a step by step structural description of a script a ' beat sheet'. Maybe the confusion was caused by another use of the term ' beat'.There is an acting direction used occasionally when writing dialogue to tell the actor to insert a slight hesitation, as if the character is reluctant to tell another character difficult or bad news. For example, writers might write: 'Mrs Brown, I'm sorry but ... (BEAT) I'm afraid your husband has passed away". But that's used rarely since the actor can usually pick the meaning. Personally I would prefer just to use three dots if anything . Best not to clutter scripts. I've heard actors use the term in that sense., come to think of it.

[@SHVDETHEDON]

@LindaAronson Hi Linda, first of all thanks for your answer, you're right there is multiples meaning for the word " BEAT " - Script (BEAT) for pause - Stanislavski (BIT) with his accent turned into (BEAT) which is a shift in the action being made. - Blake Snyder's (BEAT) - Robert Mckee (BEAT) an exchange of behavior in action/reaction. Beat by Beat these changing behaviors shape the turning of a scene. And then you have the people that talk about BEAT in a scene ! So i'm really confuse, if you have a course that i can download or directly watch on a website in which you REALLY take your time with the concept of beat with examples... i'll be more than glad to buy it RIGHT NOW cause beat is the only writing concept that bugged me that way ... Thanks