So, I'm horrible, and I haven't posted anything in more than a month. So, I apologize for that.
But mostly I've just been doing a TON of writing and outlining, which is great. Well, more outlining than writing, unfortunately. But we're getting into the all writing, all the time part of the semester. So it's going to be amazing.
So, where do I begin catching you up? Well, in TV writing, we were assigned a show to watch. That show is "The Americans," a show from FX about KGB spies in the '80s who have to pretend they're normal Americans and have a family and everything. So, we watched 6 episodes of that, wrote a Show Bible, which is like a 25 page document all about the characters, series paradigms, plots for the first six episodes, normal things the series does, and things the series would never do.
Then, we each pitched our own idea for a spec idea for "The Americans." A spec script for a TV show is a script in the style of the series (i.e. same writing, same sort of story, etc.) that is a sample episode. So we pitched ideas for our own episode of "The Americans," and our great teacher, George, chose one of our three ideas we pitched, and we made beat sheets and outlines and now we're finally writing.
So that has been great. Spec scripts serve as writing samples, so when we're out in the industry, someone might see our spec script and, based on that, hire us to write an episode of their own TV show. You barely ever sell a spec script to be an actual episode of the show the spec script is written for. It just serves to show your capabilities as a writer.
So that's been awesome. TV Writing in general is just fantastic. Our professor, George, is the most amazing person and most fantastic professor ever. He's amazing. He's had so many years of experience writing for TV (around 30 years), and he is the nicest guy. He makes me feel like I'm the best writer in the world. He's so encouraging, and he always likes everything we write. But he also has great ideas and criticisms on how we can make our stories/ideas better.
He's awesome at thinking on his feet, too. We pitched three ideas each, and he instantly had ideas on what would make them better. Like three seconds after we were done, he had a million tips that were amazing and helpful. He's great.
Oh, and we also just started pitching our own original series ideas for TV writing! I'm really excited about one of them, a period drama, and I hope I can do it. For that, we'll write the first part of the pilot episode, the Teaser, which is the short part you see before the opening title/credits. And we'll do the story bible for our own series so that we could go and pitch our idea if we really wanted to. And I might want to! I'm really excited about it!
Feature writing is good, too. We finally finished outlining, and after four outlines, I've finally started writing. For this week, I have to have my first act done. I sat down the other day and wrote, and I ended up writing my entire first act (23 pages) in about two hours. I was so excited to finally have the chance to start writing!
I really love my story. It's an adventure/fantasy/family film, and I feel like I was born to write it. So I'm having an amazing time.
Meanwhile, the weather is hot. I mean super hot. And I take back every word I ever said about liking hot weather, because this is absolutely insane. I hate being inside, but it's too hot to go outside! I go outside to read and come back, 30 minutes later, sweating like I've run a mile. It's mad.
And I miss London like crazy. Like crazy, like crazy. Thinking about it makes my stomach hurt and makes me feel really heartbroken. But I'll be back there.
But anyway, summer is great and writing is great and amazing and I love it. And I feel so lucky to never have to do anything except write. It's really incredible.
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