Introduction to Creating and Pitching for Television

The "Creating for TV" area of our site provides a brief and professional view on how to create a TV show, as well as pitching and selling your ideas for TV shows in a marketable format. It will help you learn how to think and formulate concepts and TV show ideas in today's thriving and competitive television programming world, as well as understand the inner-workings of the television industry to streamline your creative efforts in the most viable directions.

Learn how TV show ideas and scripts are sold at the TV Writers Vault:



The most valuable tool in learning how and why production companies will buy and produce certain ideas is experience. Pitching your concepts and scripts to executives in the industry will also build relationships regardless of whether or not your pitch is purchased. It is creating and building those direct relations that enables the creator of concepts to better understand how to create and sell a new idea for a show, as well as knowing what the Producers are looking for. Most importantly, you will learn to refine your ideas into a language that TV Producers can sell because they understand it's potential.

Unless you are able to concentrate your story or program format into a brief synopsis with a highly marketable "logline", a producer will never invest the time in reading the entire script or treatment, and there is no chance of the project being produced.

The foundation of any project's success is built on the ability of the executives and producers to communicate the project efficiently throughout the development process, not to mention the fact that if a busy executive isn't interested in the basic concept or premise of your show they will never invest the time in reading the whole pitch.

The potential for a sale is in the originality and power of the core idea, and that is where an executive will see the project's potential entertainment value. In the end, it is similar to the broadcasting Network communicating that very specific and original concept to the viewing audience in the advertising and marketing of the TV show.

At the Television Writers Vault we help the writer bring the "idea power" of their project to this form of presentation, and provide the industry executives with exactly their preferred method of reviewing materials for development and sale. You can read more about creating and pitching TV shows here.

The following is a simple structure (content not included) of presentation for any project, and is similar to the registration/submission form used for the Television Writers Vault. Most project outlines describing a show will be 1 to 5 pages in length:

Title of Show:

Logline: 1 or 2 sentence description of your concept. Similar to what you might see in TV Guide or on a poster for a movie, but a bit more descriptive of content.

Synopsis: A detailed description of your show as we would see it on TV. Usually 1 to 3 pages in length. It's important to be efficient with your descriptions, yet give enough information to provoke interest of the reader. The golden rule: Show the reader what we are watching-

There is no "right" way to form a TV pitch for the various reality-based and scripted genres in television. However, there are philosophies and formats that will help the buyer see more clearly what your TV show idea is, and its potential. Please refer to the additional articles within the "Creating for TV" menu at top for professional insight on creating projects for all genres of television.

 
Read Success Stories from the TV Writers Vault..