That show I make I rarely post about (Vampire Mob) is audience-funded and our budget is staring down the barrel of zero as of Sunday. If you’d like to help us tell this story, please drop by our site and grab a shirt, coffee mug, script or other rewards that help us fund production. Thank you! http://www.VampireMob.com/
“I think that writers are made, not born or created out of dreams or childhood trauma — that becoming a writer is a direct result of conscious will. Of course there has to be some talent involved, but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing” - S.K.
The Hollywood Bowl in the rain…
Elegance…
Vampire Mob: Confessions of a Lucky #Webseries Creator (What about fun?) -
On this #webtvwed / #webserieswed I’d like to remind you, and myself, have FUN!
Isn’t that why you started in the first place, because it’s fun?
Yes, it’s hard work and yes, most people making a web series aren’t getting paid a dime, including myself. So, under those conditions, fun’s…
Treehouse of Horror XX to auction on eBay and help pay for season two! Marcia Rocketh!
WRITING IS ORCHESTRATED DAYDREAMING.
Writing is not work, it’s daydreaming on paper. The work is actually sitting down and doing it.
I’ve never been asked how to write a web series, until last week.
The questions included how to structure a series, both an episode and an entire season.
There’s rules in screenwriting, both for TV and feature film, but there really aren’t any similar rules for web series. There are no rules dictating length of an episode or a season. There are actually NO RULES, WHATSOEVER!
Please note and enjoy that fact - there are no rules.
Yes, there are a lot of people who have recommendations based on metrics, genre, audience engagement, blah, blah, blah.
Again, please note - there are no rules.
You don’t need to structure an episode to have an act break that will sustain interest in an audience until the commercials are over, as is needed on TV. There’s no inciting incident, plot points, rising action or the like, as in a movie.
I think writing a web series goes back to the basics of storytelling, that’s where the rules are found. Things like having a beginning, middle and end, some conflict and resolution, character development and evolution. Structure of how a story is told is not confined by screen time, it’s confined by how much screen time you can afford to create.
As always, in any genre of storytelling, the battle to communicate exposition without boring an audience is still there. Try to have something interesting happening while your characters are communicating information, like loading a gun in an alley.
I kind of retro-fitted how I write feature screenplays and came up with a system that works for me.
Here’s how I write a web series:
Outline.
I never sit down and start typing a story without first having found out what the story is about, who it is about and where it’s going.
I like to freeform jam on a legal pad about just those ideas, things about the characters, bios, lines of dialogue - ANYTHING that pops in my head and pages of it. What I’m doing is tricking my mind into spending time in the world where the story will be told. It almost becomes a place I visit when I’m writing.
Then it’s on to relationships between the characters, who wants what from whom? Any secrets? What do I know about the character that the audience doesn’t?
I like to draw a character map (below) so I can get a view of who knows whom and who doesn’t know each other at all, which is important in a mafia story. 
I will often write scenes by hand out of sequence just to see if an idea will fly.
Then it’s on to structure!
I take a legal pad, turn it horizontally, draw a horizontal line across it, and three short vertical lines, one at each end and one in the middle. That’s my season map.
My goals in an episode:
- Have three things happen, three story beats.
- Try to have three different locations per episode and cars count!
When I’m mapping out a season, I am looking at the overall story being told and where I want to leave that story for another season.
I wanted to have six episodes in the first season, so I drew vertical lines along that long horizontal line on my legal pad to represent each episode.
Now it’s on to storytime! I draw a little arrow at the beginning of episode one and write a phrase as to what happens at that point, the first story beat. Episode one of Vampire Mob has three beats: Don finds out about mom, Don kills some people, Don and Annie face off at home.
The first season overall structure was about the impact of Don’s mother-in-law arriving, but there was a B-story running the whole time that took over at the end - the Mob part of the story. The second season has a different set-up regarding the overall story, but I ain’t tellin’!
I continue writing story beats across that horizontal line, sometimes adding additional stories and scenes, but keeping with the goal of three story beats per episode. What I end up with is a map I can easily look over and see the arc of the story.
If I didn’t outline and I was writing the script, I would have to read the script to get a feel for the arc of the story. For me, a little shortcut like that legal pad timeline makes it easy to read it over and see what the flow is like.
There were three scenes in the second season that individually were fine, but the order in the story didn’t feel right. I swapped them on the timeline and saw why changing them would be better. If I had to do that from the script stage, it would slow me down.
I write in feature format, so each page is ballpark, one minute of screen-time.
Keeping dialogue no longer than four lines thick when possible helps to keep things moving. I like a lot of white space on my script pages!
For a web series script, I try not over-describe or direct too much, a habit leftover from feature spec writing. Keep in mind that a cast still has to read your script and wading through paragraphs of description when you’re not getting paid much, or at all - not fun.
Have table reads of your script! Even if it’s not with your cast, just to hear what it sounds like. Those robot voices in Final Draft, in addition to often being funny, just having their synthesized humanity saying your dialogue will give you insight.
Rewrite it! Get feedback from someone who will tell you the truth, not just tell you it’s good.
Imagine you’re editing what you shot and you realize a there’s fundamental flaw in your story that you would’ve found had you done a rewrite. Now, you just shot a bad script, YOUR bad script, because you wanted to get it out fast and good enough. It’s a shitty feeling.
Rewrite, trust me, it will make your project better and asking all those people to do you a favor of reshooting? That’s not a question you want to ask.
Carl Carlton’s “She’s a Bad Mama Jamma”
I will not be traveling or seeing family for Thanksgiving because I’m on line outside Wal-Mart waiting for sales to start Friday. Believe the hype! Camping out to buy stuff IS all the fun you’ve seen on the news!
If you are currently on line outside of a store, awaiting Black Friday sales, you are an unpaid extra for retailers and the news organizations that sell advertising to those same retailers. Also, you are a jackass.