Niceole R. Levy, Screenwriter/Author: I had all these secondary characters in my world and I took them all out.
Film Courage: Does every writer need to know how to write a pilot?
Niceole: Yes, it is absolutely a necessary skill because it’s your calling card to get executives to be interested in you, to get showrunners to hire you (most of the time), except for those picky ones like me who like to see a spec if you’re breaking into the business. It’s ultimately what you will be doing later in your career because once you reach that mid-level-to-upper level point your reps are going to want you to start developing and developing is all about writing pitch documents and then hopefully selling a show and writing a pilot. So it is absolutely something everyone should know how to do. There are plenty of books out there about how to do it. I think Kam Miller has a really good book about writing a pilot, Jen Grisanti has all kinds of great material about writing a pilot. There’s resources out there to help you figure out how to demystify it a little bit. But if you love to tell stories, it’s just a specific way of telling the story.
Film Courage: How did you learn to write a pilot?
Niceole: I learned how to write a pilot first of all by just being a huge student of television. There was a time when my friends Charles Murray and Terence Paul Winter would tease me mercilessly about how I watched every show on television and it used to be true. It is no longer true, there’s too many shows, I can’t do it. But I would have a list of pilots that I like when I was writing a new pilot and I was like Oh, the tone doesn’t feel quite right. If it was gritty, I had a list of pilots that I would go watch to get my brain in that place, not to take anything from the pilot, but just to have the tone in my head of this is, what I’m going for and then go back to work on mine. Studying existing pilots is incredibly valuable and it’ll give you some guideposts for how they did it, what the pacing of those pilots were. Different types of pilots can have a different rhythm to them if you’re doing a big…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BUY THE BOOK – THE WRITER’S ROOM SURVIVAL GUIDE: Don’t Screw up the lunch order and other keys to a happy Writers’ Room by Niceole R. Levy
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED IS THIS SEGMENT:
THE HERO SUCCEEDS: The Character-Driven Guide to Writing Your TV Pilot
TV WRITING TOOL KIT: How To Write A TV Pilot That Sells
BIO:
After growing up near China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the middle of the Mojave Desert, Niceole escaped to the bright lights of Los Angeles. While studying acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she realized her true love was writing stories, not playing them out. She worked as a police dispatcher to pay her way through USC undergrad and then completed the Master of Professional Writing program, also at USC. An alum of the CBS Writers Mentoring Program, NBC’s Writers on the Verge, and the WGAW Showrunner Training Program, Niceole has written on “Ironside,” “Allegiance,” “The Mysteries of Laura,” “Shades of Blue,” “Cloak & Dagger,” “Fate: the Winx Saga,” “S.W.A.T,” and “Graymail.” She also co-wrote a feature, “The Banker,” with former “Allegiance” showrunner and director George Nolfi, available on AppleTV+, and is now writing “Spark,” a film inspired by the life of Claudette Colvin. Niceole is currently a co-executive producer on an upcoming Netflix series and has several TV and feature projects in development. Her first book, “The Writers’ Room Survival Guide,” will be released in October of this year.
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