All Media Access 2025 (Part Two)

We are still waiting to find out how Wicked ends, but our two-part look at matching story ideas to the medium they can best be told in? Ends now! Let’s look at story ideas best suited to...

EPISODIC TV IDEA

A TV series is about a Person who solves other people’s Problems. An Hour Long program is about a character or characters who solve other people’s problems - Firemen (and women), Policemen (and women), Doctors, Detectives, Teachers, etc. These shows have a “franchise” - a type of occupation that brings them into contact with People who have Problems and need help. Usually, every week a different Person (or People) is in trouble and they help them. Even on old Western shows like Gunsmoke, a problem would come into town and Marshall Dillon would deal with it to protect his town. I’m sure there are exceptions to this, but those might be a hard sell.

You get “extra points” if you can come up with a franchise idea we’ve never seen before - so Brilliant Minds follows a neurologist like Oliver Wolf who deals with behavioral disorders. House was the Sherlock Holmes of doctors who solved medical mysteries - what caused this patient to have these symptoms? When I was a kid there was a show called The Flying Doctor about a rural doctor who would fly his plane to wherever the patient was. CSI was a cop show we hadn’t seen before. You need a series idea that we haven’t seen before. What makes this different?

Related: All Media Access 2025 (Part One)

These shows often have a “C Plot” about the lead character’s problem...so The Fugitive had Dr. Richard Kimble wrongly convicted for murdering his wife, and searching for the real killer for 120 episodes. But each episode had Kimble hiding out in some town, encountering someone with a problem, and helping them...and in the background there was always that “C Plot” about Lt. Gerard closing in on Kimble.

Half-hour shows, which are usually sitcoms, center around a workplace with a group of unusual employees that provide the laughs. These also need to run 100 episodes. Again, the “C Plots” in sitcoms are changing relationships between characters. The other most watched streaming series is The Office (US version). If you think about the romances and relationships over the 201 episodes of that series, that’s what kept you watching. You need a story idea with character conflicts and the chance for changing relationships as the series goes through those 100 episodes.

One of the important things about a traditional Network TV idea is that it needs to be able to spark at least 100 different episode conflicts. Usually, a TV show doesn’t make any money until it goes into syndication and sells to a secondary market (after the late-night news, etc) - or these days to a streamer like Netflix - where the most watched series is Suits, a fourteen-year-old network series! It ran 134 episodes, so it would take you 17 days if you spent 8 hours a day binging!

The reason for 100 episodes when a TV show is sold into syndication is it can play 5 days a week for 20 weeks without a repeat, and when you factor in holidays - that’s half a year before the same episode plays again on Channel 44 (or whatever). They run it for a full year, and by the time an episode repeats, people want to watch it again! So your series idea needs to be able to generate 100 episode ideas!

LIMITED SERIES IDEA

A single story that runs one season. Network shows like 24 and Lost and cable shows like Game Of Thrones made these popular, and streamers like Netflix and Disney+ and Peacock have normalized them. Basically, imagine an Episodic show where the “C Plot” (the Protagonist’s problem) switches places with the “A Plot” (episode’s problem) and you have a story that deals with our Person with a Problem (one big central problem) but it’s told in “Chapters” each with a beginning and middle and end centered around the episode’s problem. 

By the time you read this I will have finished watching the new version of Day Of The Jackal on Peacock, a ten-episode retelling of the Frederick Forsyth novel, is kind of a reverse James Bond about a slick assassin who globe-trots through Europe committing impossible assassinations...and the MI-6 weapons expert hot on his tail. Though this is one continuous story, it’s broken into chapters with a beginning, middle, and end.

And that is the key to a limited series idea. Because it’s going to be consumed in 1-hour segments, there needs to be a logical beginning middle and end for each episode. Disney Plus’ Agatha All Along has Agatha and her make-shift coven of witches following a dark version of the Yellow Brick Road to regain her powers. Each episode has one of the challenges that must be accomplished/survived on the way to the final challenge which will restore her (evil) powers. So each episode is both part of the larger story and a contained segment with a satisfying ending. Not some abrupt end in the middle of the story, but an end of a chapter in the story.

The example that I used to use was Ray Donovan on Showtime’s Season 1, 3rd episode “Twerk”. Donovan is a “fixer” who solves problems for the rich and famous (while dealing with his own family problems) and Season one's plot is focused on his mentor Ezra getting into trouble at the same time his father is released from prison. 

“Twerk” is an episode in the continuing story where everything is related to sex. Ezra’s affair is uncovered, Ray is dealing with a movie star who wakes up with a dead woman, Ray’s ex-con father becomes obsessed with a woman who twerks online, and every other plot thread or subplot has to do with sex! So even though the “A Story” is about Donovan protecting his mentor Ezra, this episode has a beginning, middle and end and all of them are connected through unity - it’s not a mish-mash of unrelated things, it’s one “chapter” in the larger story, and each of the plot threads are connected.

That’s why some of those 230-page feature screenplays that people think they can just turn into a Netflix show probably won’t work. First, they often don’t have that one big central Problem that the Person is dealing with, and next - it’s not a story that can be easily cut into “Chapters”. It’s not a Limited Series Idea - it’s a feature idea that went too many pages and really needs a major rewrite that focuses the story. Get rid of all of those extraneous subplots! It’s unlikely to work as a Limited Series.

But if that 230-page screenplay can be easily cut into 45-minute/page segments with a beginning, middle, and end that are “chapters” in the larger story? You’re good! If not? Just keep rewriting that story until you get it down to 110 pages! That’s usually the real answer!

Another aspect of streaming shows is that, unlike the 100 episodes of a Network show, they are only going to run 2 seasons. Probably 6-12 episodes a season. I believe there’s a SAG contract element that requires a cast raise after the second season...so there will be no third season! Whether it’s an Episodic Show or a Limited Series, it will probably only run 2 seasons...and then you need to wrap it up.

Any idea for a paid streaming service like Netflix needs to not only be an idea that can be told in chapters like a novel, but it also needs to be a big exciting story! Every episodic on a streamer is there to retain viewers. To keep them paying that annual subscription every year. Streamers are becoming more focused on finding those shows that are “bait” for subscribers. Not just some standard show, think “must-see TV” show ideas.

FICTION PODCAST IDEA

One of the big changes in the business since March of 2003 has been the popularity of fiction podcasts. Many people with spec features or pilot scripts that didn’t sell are now thinking about adapting them into fiction podcasts that they can record themselves and put up online. The attractive part of this for writers is that it’s kind of like making our own movies, but we don’t need camera equipment and lighting and a huge crew. We just need microphones and some actors. Decades ago I did this before I had sold a script because I knew actors and was a fan of old-time radio shows (thanks to KSFO radio in San Francisco programming old shows like “Lights Out” and “Candy Matson” and “Fibber McGee And Molly”), so I wrote some scripts designed for the voice rather than the screen...

And that’s going to be the big problem with adapting your screenplay or TV pilot to audio. An audio story is told through Dialogue and Sound Effects - so even simple things that we can see on screen (a kiss, someone sitting down, etc) need to work with sound only. When we get to more complex actions? Fight scenes? Car chases? Even a character seeing someone from across the room? Those are going to be difficult in a Fiction Podcast. So stories for this medium are going to be dialogue-driven. We can’t see the expression on someone’s face, or the clue, or the color of the mystery woman’s ball gown as she runs away. So these story ideas need to focus more on what is said than what is seen - and that’s usually the exact opposite of a movie idea or a TV idea (which tends to be visually told). So if you are adapting your movie script or TV pilot? Does this idea work with sound only?

Related: SCRIPT SECRETS: Speech! Speech!

I would suggest that you listen to a bunch of old-time radio shows (you can find them online) because there was a time when that was TV. You can hear how they found the audio way to tell the story, and even get a clue as to what kinds of story ideas work best if we only have the speakers and not the screen. 

What might also be of interest are the radio versions of feature film stories. These tended to be a half hour to an hour shorter than the film version (all of those visual scenes were replaced by audio scenes) and often had the same movie stars playing the roles. So you can watch a movie and then see how they adapted it to audio. Sometimes they worked well, sometimes they didn’t. If the story idea wasn’t suited to being told with sounds only?

NOVEL IDEA

Where a movie is a story that is visually told and fiction podcasts use audio, all of the above story ideas use only Sight and/or Sound, and stories that use the other senses are probably better told in the novel form. One of the problems with many ideas that new screenwriters post in groups is that they are internal - dealing with thoughts and feelings instead of actions (things that we can see on screen). 

If you have a character who is worried about a problem but not doing anything to act on the problem? That’s a person just standing there! We can’t see thoughts and worry! So that type of story is better told as a novel where you can explore thoughts and feelings. Hey, “Remembrances of Things Past” by that Proust fellow is 3,369 pages about a guy in his jammies eating a cookie and remembering his life. He just eats a cookie and thinks for all of those pages. Imagine a 56-hour movie of a guy eating a cookie and thinking!

That’s an extreme example, and the films that have been made from that novel like Swann in Love (1984) take one of the memories from the seven volumes of the story and dramatizes it. No longer a thought or memory, now we see what happened. Except part of those seven volumes is how memories might not be accurate. Plus we don’t know his thoughts and feelings about the events.

They always say that a book is better than a movie, and that great novels make lousy movies...and lousy novels make great movies. Both of those are about how the thoughts and emotions in a novel usually don’t make it all the way to the screen...and a book that’s mostly all actions with little thought or emotional content (like a big pulpy best seller or beach read or genre fiction) can be made into a good movie. The type of idea that makes for a great book might not be a very good movie and vice versa.

I’m in the process of adapting some of my screenplays that got me a bunch of meetings but no sales into novels, and it’s not just changing the format. Everything is different! I am only using the script as an outline - and even though I am writing it third person, every chapter is from a character’s point of view. I get into their thoughts and feelings as they do all of those actions and say all of that dialogue from the script. Plus there’s new dialogue and actions, too! 

But getting into the minds of the characters has changed some parts of the story. There was a character in the script that was PILOT and now they have a name and a family and fears and dreams and thoughts and an entire life that we never saw because it was all offscreen. 

Related: SCRIPT SECRETS: Low-Budget Screenwriting, Part 1

All are unimportant in the script version, but very important in the novel version. It’s not just about what characters do, it’s now about how they feel and what they think and how something that they are doing now might remind them of what they had done previously. My protagonist - a man of action who is quick with his fists in the script, is now a man of doubts and fears who is haunted by past mistakes. That makes it almost a different story!

Novels need a story that can generate 70,000-100,000 words and have something exciting or interesting happening on a fairly regular basis to keep those pages turning, but unlike a film script, it doesn’t necessarily need a single central conflict. That conflict can be internal, like that guy in his pajamas remembering the events of his past for 3,369 pages or it can be a series of problems that can add up to a person’s life. Because the number of pages isn’t an issue like in a screenplay (where each page is probably a minute of film time that will cost $1 million to film), you can go into details that might not make it into a screenplay. You can take the time to build the story and explore tangents.

DOOR TO DOOR PUPPET SHOWS

This article has been about matching the story idea to the best medium to tell that story, but some of you are probably pointing out successful stories told in mediums that might not have been the best choice. In one of my first columns back in 1991 in the magazine that would become Script, I said that you should think of everything as Tools Not Rules - things that work most of the time and can help you write your screenplay. Nobody cares how you wrote the script, they only care that it’s great! 

So you might be pointing out that movies can often get turned into TV series. Madigan (1968) about an old-school NYC Detective in the changing world of the 60s was successful enough to become a TV series in the 70s...even though the Madigan character is shot dead at the end of the film! The character and situation could work as a franchise - with that old-school detective solving a different crime every week. 

Some story ideas can also work in different mediums...if they have those elements that are critical to those other mediums. Lots of movies that take place in a “franchise” that can generate those 100 episodes or maybe just 8 to 10 for Netflix or some other streamer.

Just because one medium is the best place for that story idea, doesn’t mean that it’s the only place. What matters is that it has to work. That small dramatic story that’s all about thoughts and feelings and internal conflicts might work best as a novel, but as I pointed out in “My (Scary) Personal Story” article, you might be able to drop that story into a genre and demonstrate all of the internal conflict through physical actions in the Horror or Thriller or Action or Comedy genres. Find the metaphor that takes your personal story and use genre to tell your story in a more external, visual, action-packed way. There are ways to take your story idea which works best in one medium and make it work in another medium.

There’s a “best medium” for every story idea, and part of our job is to find the best way to tell that story. As writers, we can write anything! We have the words!

New to screenwriting? You probably have questions! And William C. Martell has answers in his book 101 Screenwriting Answers!