Writing the TV Pilot

In this eight-week workshop, Montreal-based screenwriter Allen Markuze will give you the tools to be able to write a TV pilot. He’s going to do so by asking and helping answer the following…

• What is your TV series about?
• Is your idea sustainable?
• What happens episode to episode?
• What’s the theme of your show?
• What are some similar shows?
• Who are your characters?
• Is your pilot going to be a premise episode or an episodic episode?
• What is a three-act structure and five-act structure?

These intimate sessions will involve a mixture of group discussion, critical analysis of TV pilots and shows, and workshopping participants’ own ideas with the goal of completing their own TV pilot. Ideas will be workshopped in groups as well as one-on-one with the workshop leader and fellow participants.

Allen Markuze is an award-winning screenwriter who has taken part in writers rooms and has written for a variety of live-action and animation TV shows that have aired on the likes of Netflix, Disney, Nickelodeon, Hulu, and CBC. Before embarking on a screenwriting career, Markuze spent several years working in LA at Dan Halsted’s company, Manage-ment, where he helped manage a roster of writers from shows such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad, and on feature films like Friday Night Lights and Wall Street. Prior to that, he worked as an assistant to screenwriter Janus Cercone (Leap of Faith with Steve Martin). Markuze’s foray into the entertainment industry began as a development intern in LA at Underground Films (FX’s Snowfall) where he read countless scripts, books, and plays, and eavesdropped on A LOT of conversations.