TV writing exercises: A, B and C stories, setups and payoffs

Most lists of "TV writing exercises" are scene prompts that would work just as well for a feature or a play. The exercises TV writing courses actually set are about the things only television has: several stories in one episode, act breaks, and secrets and promises that run across a whole season. Here are three of them, built on what published syllabi set, with the syllabi's page counts and a worked example you can copy.

What TV writing courses actually assign

Published TV syllabi follow the same ladder: study a show, break a story into A, B and C lines, write a short beat sheet, expand it into an outline, then write pages. The documents are graded separately, which tells you how much weight the planning carries.

If you're self-taught, that's your curriculum. The three exercises below are the parts of it you can practise on their own in an evening or a weekend. The film-side versions of these skills are in our outline exercises and in the round-up of what film schools assign.

Exercise 1: Reverse beat sheet an episode, then break your own into A, B and C stories

Time: 2 hours for the reverse beat sheet, 2 hours for your own break. Deliverable: a one-page reverse beat sheet of an aired episode, three pitches each for an A, a B and a C story, and a 2-page beat sheet of your episode.

Step one: take an aired episode apart

Before you can build an episode you need to see how one is put together. USC's half-hour comedy course has students choose the show they'll spec, then "make a reverse beat sheet for a recent episode of that show. Note the Act structure." Do it with the sound on and a notepad, pausing after every scene.

For each scene write one line: who it belongs to (A, B or C), what changes in it, and whether it ends an act. You'll probably notice three things:

• The A story belongs to the lead and gets the most scenes. TV writer Eric Haywood describes the A as "the most important (and longest)" story, followed by a B, a C and sometimes a D, which is sometimes called a runner.
• The stories rarely share scenes until late in the episode. They hand off to each other.
• Each act ends on an act break, which Haywood says will usually involve "some kind of big plot twist or revelation".

Step two: pitch before you plot

Next comes the pitch. USC asks for at least three free-standing pitches each for the A, the B and the C. Each pitch is a few sentences: whose story it is, what they want, what's in the way, and roughly how it ends. UCLA's intro course starts with "two potential A and B stories". Pitching several options stops you marrying the first idea.

Step three: break it on a board

"Breaking" a story means turning a pitch into an ordered list of beats. In Haywood's account of how a writers' room works, the staff break each story on a whiteboard and then "blend" them, deciding the order in which the episode cuts between them. He sometimes identifies the act break first and works backwards to the beats that lead up to it. The USC course asks for a 2-page beat sheet with "emphasis on creating cohesive structure for A, B & C stories (keep storylines separate for now)". Keep them separate first and blend them second.

A worked example

Here's an original half-hour comedy pilot, Open Late. Priya, 29, has just taken over her father's 24-hour laundromat. The theme is letting go of how things used to be done.

• A (Priya): a fire inspector is coming Friday, and the dryer vent has never passed.
• B (Dev, her "retired" father): he keeps showing up and undoing her changes.
• C (runner): Mrs. Okafor, a regular, washes the same wedding dress in machine 7 every night.

Filter that table down to one column at a time. Each story should still have a start, a turn and an end. If the C disappears for two acts, it needs a beat or it needs to go.

Spec or original pilot?

A spec is an unsold episode of a show that already exists. A pilot is the first episode of your own show. Many courses still teach through specs because they force you to learn how an existing show is built. USC CTWR 421's stated objective is to "write a spec script for an existing TV drama series". Gotham Writers' TV Writing I focuses on specs, calling them "the best way to learn how TV episodes work", and notes that original scripts are "more desirable these days" as samples.

The industry has moved to pilots. The 2027 Disney Entertainment Television Writing Program asks for two original writing samples and says plainly: "Both scripts must be original pilots." Its checklist also asks whether "the underlying conflict, setting, and circumstances of the next 99 episodes" are clear from the script. TV writer Michael Jamin explains why. When there were a few giant hits, every reader knew the show you'd specced. Now, if you spec your favourite streaming show, "there's a very good chance that your reader has never watched it."

Here's how the two paths compare, pulling together the course, fellowship and Network ISA sources above:

On length, a Network ISA article by a screenwriting career coach gives these limits: one-hour pilots "up to 65 pages", ideally 55–60, and half-hour pilots "up to 38 pages", with a minimum of around 32 for new writers. For a spec, open the show's own scripts and match them.

If you want the room experience outside a university, Stowe Story Labs' Writers Room is a 12-week remote program capped at 12 writers. It ends with "both an outline and a complete pilot episode", and participants leave ready to write a series bible.

Exercise 2: Map every setup to its payoff, across episodes

Time: 45 minutes. Deliverable: a ledger of every plant in four episodes, with the episode it's planted in and the episode it pays off in, and no row left empty.

The principle is older than television. In a letter of 1 November 1889, Chekhov wrote that one must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it. He repeated the point in other letters, which is why several versions of the line survive. What TV changes is the distance. A plant can sit for half a season.

Breaking Bad season two is the clearest example. The teddy bear floating in Walt's pool appears in the opening teasers of "Seven Thirty-Seven", "Down" and "Over", with no explanation. The season finale, "ABQ", written by Vince Gilligan, pays it off. Jane's grieving father, an air traffic controller, causes a mid-air collision overhead, and the bear falls from the sky into the pool. The audience has carried the image for most of a season.

Comedy does the same with jokes. Arrested Development, created by Mitchell Hurwitz, keeps "numerous running gags and catchphrases" going across a serialized story. In season two Buster's hand is bitten off by a loose seal that Gob had accidentally trained to crave meat. The name is a pun on Lucille, his mother, and NPR's chart of the show's recurring gags flags the lost hand as one of the jokes the show foreshadowed.

How to do it

1. List every plant in your episodes: objects, lines, habits, promises, open questions.
2. Beside each one, write the episode it's planted in and the episode it pays off in.
3. Anything with no payoff gets one or gets cut. Anything that pays off without a plant gets planted earlier.
4. For comedy runners, make each return different from the last, not just a repeat.

Here's the ledger for Open Late, episodes 1–4:

That last row is a question, not an object, and it leads straight into the next exercise.

Exercise 3: Who knows what, when (dramatic irony across a season)

Time: 45 minutes, plus an hour for the scene. Deliverable: a grid showing the episode in which the audience and each character learn one secret, and a 2–3-page scene played in one of the gaps.

The standard teaching text is Hitchcock's bomb under the table, from his interviews with François Truffaut. Two people chat, a bomb goes off, and the audience gets a surprise. Now show the audience the bomb first:

"In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed." (Hitchcock, quoted in Slant Magazine; a shorter version is quoted in New Left Review)

Television can stretch those fifteen minutes to years. Three shows mark out the range:

• One episode. In Columbo's "Murder by the Book" (1971, written by Steven Bochco, directed by Steven Spielberg), we watch Ken Franklin kill his writing partner and set up his alibi. The episode's pleasure is watching Columbo close in on something we already know.
• Most of a series. Breaking Bad's audience watches Walt become Heisenberg while Hank doesn't know. In "Gliding Over All" (written by Moira Walley-Beckett), Hank leafs through Walt's copy of Leaves of Grass and finds a note from Gale to his "other favorite W.W." The handwriting matches, and Hank finally realizes the truth.
• The opposite choice. Broadchurch series one, created by Chris Chibnall, withholds the killer from everyone until the eighth episode, when Joe Miller confesses. That's surprise, not dramatic irony. It's a valid choice, but it's a different tool.

UCLA's intro TV course teaches "logistical tracking as a tool for story structure" and has students apply it to a comparable show. This grid is one version of that: a row per secret and a column per person, including the audience.

A worked grid

For Open Late, the secret is that Dev called the fire inspector on his own daughter.

The scene to write is in episode 3. Priya thanks Dev for helping her pass the inspection, and we know he started it. Keep it to 2–3 pages and never let either of them name the secret. For more on keeping things unsaid, see the subtext exercise.

A two-week plan

If you're working alone, this is roughly a course's first month compressed:

1. Days 1–2: choose a show, watch the pilot and two recent episodes, and write a reverse beat sheet of one.
2. Days 3–4: pitch three A, three B and three C stories, then pick one of each.
3. Days 5–6: break it into a 2-page beat sheet, stories separate first, then blended, with act-outs marked.
4. Day 7: write the setup/payoff ledger and the who-knows-what grid for four episodes.
5. Days 8–10: write a 5–7-page outline for a half-hour, or 5–8 for an hour.
6. Days 11–14: write the cold open and act one. Read it aloud.

You can do all three exercises in ScripTao, which is free, needs no sign-up and keeps your work in your browser. Each box above opens a practice project already set up for that exercise.

FAQ

What is a spec script for TV?

A spec script is an episode of an existing show that you write without being hired, to prove you can match its characters, tone and structure. Courses such as USC's CTWR 421 still use specs to teach episode structure. Fellowships increasingly want original pilots instead. Disney's 2027 program says "Both scripts must be original pilots."

How many pages is a one-hour pilot? A half-hour?

One Network ISA guide puts a one-hour pilot at up to 65 pages, ideally 55–60, and a half-hour at up to 38, with about 32 as the floor for new writers. For a spec, match the page count of the real show's scripts.

What does it mean to "break" a story?

Breaking a story means turning a pitch into an ordered list of beats (roughly, scenes), then blending the A, B and C stories into one running order with the act breaks in place. In a writers' room it happens on a whiteboard. On your own, index cards or a board of cards work the same way.

What is the typical structure of a TV episode?

It depends on the show. The USC hour-long syllabus asks students to examine "Teaser, Act Breaks, character arcs and storylines" and to ask "How many acts, how many storylines/runners? What does your show demand?" So count the acts and storylines in the show you're writing for rather than using a universal template.

How do I write a script for a TV show?

Follow the course ladder: study the show, pitch A, B and C stories, write a beat sheet, expand it into an outline, then draft. In the two USC syllabi above the outline alone is worth 20–25% of the grade, which shows how much of the work happens before pages. The logline exercise is a good place to start if you don't have an idea yet.

What are some good exercises for TV writers specifically?

The three above: a reverse beat sheet plus an A/B/C break, a setup/payoff ledger across episodes, and a who-knows-what grid. For character work that has to hold up over a season, try want, need and wound. Once you have a draft, the rewriting exercises cover turning notes into a second draft.