Arts & Entertainment, Writing

Teach Yourself TV Writing

Lesson time 11:16 min

Shonda discusses the importance of knowing your television history and how you can learn some of the fundamentals of storytelling on your own.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Television vs. Film • Read and Dissect Scripts • Rules of Television

Shonda Rhimes

Teaches Writing for Television

In 6+ hours of video lessons, Shonda teaches you her playbook for writing and creating hit television.

Preview

I always say, film is for the director. It really is. The director makes all the decisions. It's the director's vision. What's in the director's head is what's on screen. In television, what's in the writer's head is what's on screen. In film, the director fires the writer; in television, the writer fires the director. That's the joke-- which isn't really that funny if you think about it. Nobody wants to get fired. But it really is this medium in television where, when I think to myself, I want it to look like this-- interior, operating room, day-- they build the operating room that I imagined. And that's fantastic. I love the fact that I can have an idea and that idea can get realized that quickly. That is extraordinary. I think I love the intimacy of TV. You know, we spend more time with people in their living rooms-- my characters are in people's living rooms-- people spend more time with them than they do with members of their own family. You know, if you watched Grey's, you spent more time with Cristina Yang than you probably did with some of your closest friends. So when she left, you lost a friend. And psychologically that is true. Emotionally that is true. But also, you went on the journey that she went on; you learned things from her. You were with that character. There was an intimacy there. And it means that the world becomes a little bit smaller, to me. You know, 60 countries of people and 207 languages, that show. That means that the world is a much smaller place than we thought it was, because it means that all of those people are watching the same shows at the same time and caring about those characters. The storytelling in film is very closed-ended, obviously. You've got three acts. You've got your hero on a journey and that journey has to end. There's always sort of a very short character arc for your characters. A television show, what's wonderful is that your character-- your lead character or your lead characters, depending on how you're telling the story-- can go on sort of an endless journey. It's an endless adventure that you get to tell for as long as you'd like. I've been telling Meredith Grey's journey for 13 seasons now, and it's been going on and on and on. And so you get to watch a character grow and change and evolve, which is exciting. It's just a different level of activity, I think, and inner character development. I think all the writing is the same. It's not that the writing for television and the writing for movies is so different. I think any lesson I learned writing for movies is very similar to writing for television. Storytelling-- the art of storytelling is fundamentally the same, which is, if you are not writing from character, and what would a character do and is this actual human behavior, then you're not writing honestly. It's not going to resonate, and...

About the Instructor

When Shonda Rhimes pitched Grey’s Anatomy she got so nervous she had to start over. Twice. Since then, she has created and produced TV’s biggest hits. In her screenwriting class, Shonda teaches you how to create compelling characters, write a pilot, pitch your idea, and stand out in the writers’ room. You’ll also get original pilot scripts, pitch notes, and series bibles from her shows. Welcome to Shondaland.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Shonda Rhimes

In 6+ hours of video lessons, Shonda teaches you her playbook for writing and creating hit television.

Explore the Class