How to Write a TV Pilot: Teasers, Act Breaks and the Series Engine

This guide covers the three things a pilot must get right: format and length for each type of show, the act structure that gives an episode shape, and the series engine that gives a show a future. It assumes you know standard screenplay format; television uses the same elements with a few additions.

Formats and lengths

Two format additions beyond the feature elements. First, act headings: TEASER, ACT ONE, END OF ACT ONE, centred and underlined, on their own lines, each act starting a new page in broadcast scripts. Second, in multi-camera format, scene letters (SCENE A, SCENE B) and capitalised action lines. If you are writing single-camera or drama, ignore the second.

A pilot is often accompanied by a short series document (a "bible" or "pitch document") describing the world, characters and where the first season goes. Readers increasingly want the pilot to stand on its own, but the bible is where you show the engine has fuel.

The teaser (or cold open)

The teaser is the section before the main title, usually two to five pages, and it does one job: make the reader unwilling to stop. In drama, the teaser typically presents the episode's problem (a body, a crisis, an arrival) and often ends with the series' central question posed. In comedy the cold open is frequently a self-contained joke that establishes tone, sometimes unconnected to the episode's plot.

The mistake in most first pilots is a teaser that establishes the world rather than the problem. Readers do not need to understand the world yet; they need a reason to want to. The world can be explained in Act One, once they are already leaning in.

A useful test: if your teaser were the entire trailer, would someone watch the show?

Act structure

Broadcast hours are built around commercial breaks, and each act ends on a turn strong enough to survive one: a reveal, a reversal, a decision, a threat. Streaming removed the breaks and kept the turns, because the turns are what make an hour feel like an hour rather than a long scene. Whatever you are writing, outline in acts.

A common four-act drama shape, with a teaser:

• Teaser (pp. 1–5): the problem arrives.
• Act One (pp. 6–18): the protagonist engages the problem; the world and the main relationships are established through that engagement, not before it. Ends on the first complication.
• Act Two (pp. 19–32): the approach that should work does not. New information. The B story (often the personal life that the job or situation strains) surfaces. Ends on a reversal.
• Act Three (pp. 33–46): the protagonist commits to a riskier approach. Stakes rise. Ends on the episode's low point or biggest reveal.
• Act Four (pp. 47–58): resolution of the episode's problem; consequence for the character; the series hook in the final scene or tag.

Half-hour comedy compresses the same shape: cold open, Act One (setup and complication, ending on a problem), Act Two (escalation, ending on the worst point), sometimes a short Act Three (resolution), then a tag, a thirty-second button scene after the story is done.

Within acts, the fifteen-beat model can be scaled to a single episode, but do not force it. Episodes are more like Act Two of a feature than a whole feature: the situation exists, the character acts, something changes, and the changed situation becomes next week's starting point.

A story, B story, C story

Television carries multiple threads per episode, and the pilot must show that it can. The convention:

• A story: the episode's main plot, usually driven by the protagonist and resolved (or deliberately not) by the end.
• B story: a secondary plot, often the personal or emotional thread, running parallel and intersecting the A story at least once.
• C story (runner): a small thread, often comic, that surfaces three or four times.

In a pilot the B story is doing extra work: it is usually where the series' long-term relationship or arc is planted. The detective's A story is the case; the B story is the marriage that the job is quietly ending, and that marriage is the reason to watch episode two.

The series engine

Here is the difference between a pilot and a short film. A short film's story ends. A pilot's story ends in a way that produces more stories. The mechanism that produces them is the engine, and it has to be visible in the pilot itself, not only in the bible.

Engines come in a few recognisable forms:

The case engine. A job or role that delivers a new problem every week: detectives, doctors, lawyers, teachers, fixers. Renewable by construction. The risk is sameness, which is why the durable ones pair the case engine with a serialized personal arc.

The goal engine. A protagonist pursuing something that takes a season or a series to reach: escape, revenge, building a business, surviving. Each episode is a step or a setback. The risk is that reaching the goal ends the show, which is why writers plan the goal to transform rather than complete.

The situation engine. A set of characters trapped together by circumstance (a workplace, a family, a small town, a spaceship) whose conflicts regenerate from their personalities. The mainstay of comedy. The risk is stasis; the engine needs a pressure that keeps changing.

The secret engine. A protagonist who is not what they appear (a double life, a hidden past, a lie at the centre of a relationship). Every episode risks exposure. The risk is the secret's eventual reveal, which the strongest shows treat as an escalation rather than an ending.

Most successful series combine two. The pilot should demonstrate the engine by running it once: the case is solved but the personal cost is planted; the goal is approached but the obstacle is bigger than thought; the situation produces its first conflict and its first reason it cannot be escaped.

A good check before you draft: write loglines for episodes two through six. Not outlines, just one sentence each. If the sentences come easily and are different from each other, the engine works. If they are all versions of the pilot, it does not.

Premise pilot versus episodic pilot

A premise pilot dramatises how the situation begins: the nurse's brother arrives; the teacher starts cooking; the family moves to the town. The advantage is that the audience shares the protagonist's discovery. The disadvantage is that the pilot is atypical: it does not show what a normal episode looks like, and readers may worry that the show has to reinvent itself in episode two.

An episodic pilot (sometimes "typical episode pilot") drops into the world already running: the precinct on a Tuesday, the hospital mid-shift. The advantage is that it proves the engine directly. The disadvantage is that world-building has to be done on the fly, through a newcomer character or through economical exposition.

Drama today leans toward premise pilots; procedurals and comedies toward episodic. A workable middle path, common in the best recent pilots, is the disguised premise pilot: the world is running, the engine turns once in a typical way, and the final act introduces the change that will drive the season.

Character introductions

Because a pilot introduces everyone, introductions become a craft in themselves. A few rules that experienced pilot writers follow:

• Introduce each regular in action that reveals their function in the engine. The doctor who breaks a rule; the detective who notices the wrong thing. The introduction is an audition for the character's role in the series.
• Keep the description short and specific. Age, one or two physical or behavioural details that matter, and nothing about their inner life; that is what the scenes are for.
• Limit the regulars in the pilot. Six is plenty. A large ensemble can be introduced across the first season.
• Give the protagonist a want for the episode and a need for the series. The episodic want gets resolved; the series need does not.

Exposition

Pilots carry more exposition than any other script, and readers forgive none of it if it is delivered as speech. Techniques that work: a newcomer who needs things explained (but who has their own agenda, so the scene is not just explanation); conflict that exposes information (two characters arguing about a fact tells the audience the fact); and visual shorthand (a wall of photographs, a name on a door). Techniques that do not: two characters telling each other things they both know, and the protagonist explaining themselves to a mirror.

The last page

The final scene of a pilot is the promise. In a serialised drama it is often a reveal that reframes the episode; in a procedural it is a quieter beat that shows the personal cost; in comedy it is the tag. Whatever form it takes, it should make the reader form a question that only episode two can answer. The most common failure is a pilot that resolves too neatly, as a feature would. A pilot should end slightly open.

Korean drama and the pilot

If you are writing for Korean broadcast, the structural principles above hold but the format differs: scripts use S# scene numbering, prose stage directions and name-colon dialogue rather than the American column layout, and episodes commonly run over an hour. The first episode of a 16-episode drama is functionally a premise pilot and is expected to end on a strong hook. Our K-drama format guide covers the page conventions.

Try it in SparkLore

SparkLore's script projects support episodes that share characters, locations and a story bible, so the pilot and the loglines for episodes two through six can live in one place while the engine is being tested. Both American and Korean script formats are available in the same project. To try the tone of a teaser before committing, the free AI script generator drafts a short scene from a premise. Episode-based projects begin when you sign up.