Kam Miller - The Hero Succeeds: The Character-Driven Guide to Writing Your TV Pilot

T L ;DR: introduction Im Kam Miller. Ive written and produced TV shows, and now I create and sell TV pilots to many of the industrys biggest players. All writers who want to work in TV need stellar pilots in their portfolios. The Hero Succeeds delivers a groundbreaking, character-driven script structure and other essential tools to create TV series that sell to Hollywood. Ive helped thousands of students at top film schools launch their writing careers, and The Hero Succeeds can help you build or expand your TV career, too!

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W elcome to The Hero Succeeds : The Character-Driven Guide to Writing Your TV Pilot. Im stoked to share with you the tools and techniques that have helped me throughout my career as a TV writer and creator.

Since Aristotle first mused about a wholes beginning, middle, and end, innumerable writers have further quantified storytelling, with more-recent works focused on writing feature-film screenplays. The deceptively complex TV pilot has remained less-explored territory. Now, the explosion of TV showsa record 412 original, scripted TV series in 2015and the advent of premium cable and other TV shows with no commercial act breaks have ushered in a new era of television writing.

Televisions current high profile has been driven in part by an influx of award-winning film actors and directors pursuing TVs rich storytelling and rich paydays. Today, there are more platforms and buyers for TV shows than ever before, and they all need great content. Pilot writing used to be reserved for a rarefied few, but now every writer who wants to work in TV needs original pilots in his or her portfolio.

So why listen to me? Ive been writing, pitching, selling, and developing TV pilots for years with some of the industrys biggest players. Now, The Hero Succeeds character-driven structure unifies all television writing, including dramas and comedies on premium cable, basic cable, broadcast network, streaming, and on-demand platforms. The Hero Succeeds guides you all the way from your idea to your polished pilot script. Before we dive in, Id like to tell you a bit about me and what sets The Hero Succeeds apart from some of my other favorite books about writing. Id also like to tell you who I think you may be and how you can benefit from this book.

Im Kam Miller. Im a working TV writer-producer and creator. Ive written TV shows and features. I wrote for the long-running series Law & Order: SVU. Now, I primarily create, develop, sell, and write TV pilots. I have developed pilots with FOX, 20th Century Fox, CBS, CBS Television Studios, and Universal Cable Productions, among others.

How did I get here? After earning my MFA at USC and staffing on others shows, I wrote a couple of original TV pilots that gained executives attention and trust. On the strength of those two original pilots and my pitching skills, I landed a pilot deal with a major studio.

Since then, Ive continued to work in the TV pilot world. Ive sold pilots in the room. Ive sold pilots months after the initial pitch. Ive written spec pilots that I later sold with pitches. Ive also partnered with New York Times bestselling authors and sold TV projects with underlying intellectual properties. Ive even sold pilots over the phone.

Ive continued to learn from and train with talented writers and creators. Im a graduate of the outstanding WGA Showrunner Training Program, which is competitive and open only to WGA writers with TV projects in active development.

Through my teaching and professional programs, Ive helped thousands of writers break into Hollywood. Ive taught television writing at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Boston Universitys Film and Television program, two top film schools.

While in graduate school, I created the highly successful USC First Pitch, the official pitch festival for the School of Cinematic Arts. As an alum, I co-created USC First Team and the Assistant Training Program for Television. I applied techniques youll find in The Hero Succeeds throughout both of those successful programs.

USC First Team brought together alumni writers, directors, and producers to form teams around feature film projects. My co-founders, director Barbara Stepansky (Ex-Best, Hurt, The Trojan Cow) and producer Henry Lowenfels (Visioneers, Rock the Bells), and I shepherded these feature projects through development and took them out to the industry. Two of the USC First Team feature projects have been sold, produced, and distributed to date. One of those features, Kelly & Cal, won the SXSW Gamechanger Award in 2014. Kelly & Cal, written by Amy Lowe-Starbin and directed by Jen McGowan, stars Juliette Lewis, Jonny Weston, and Cybil Shepherd. Other First Team projects have been optioned and are in development.

Carole Kirschner (WGA Showrunner Training Program, CBS Writers Mentoring Program) and I co-created the Assistant Training Program for Television. For our pilot program, we selected recent USC writing grads and provided an intensive, 40-hour training workshop about how to be a great TV assistant. We invited guest speakers from 22 current TV shows to share their insights, and we secured shadowing experiences on TV shows for all of the trainees.

All but one of our talented trainees landed TV assistant jobs that helped launch or advance their TV careers. Theyve now written for shows that include Sleepy Hollow, Falling Skies, The Good Wife, Scandal, Family Guy, Dog with a Blog, and Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn. One of our writing grads decided to return to her successful career as an attorney.

While Ive read a ton of screenwriting books, Ive never found a book that explains television writing the way I do it and teach it. Fellow TV writers and students have asked me for years, Is there a book I can read about how