Checklist for successful TV scripts

Back in 1985, readers in the BBC’s Television Script Unit were given guidelines for assessing scripts. These ingredients are still a good guide for checking through your own TV scripts and stories (and also for giving feedback to colleagues).

Handy Check List for Script Assessment

Characters

Did you believe in them?
Is the speech pattern of each character (i) individual, (ii) true, (iii) consistent?
Do we know enough about everybody important to understand them fully? Are they written at sufficient depth?
Are their motivations clear?
Do they develop or do they end the piece the same actual people as when it began?
Do they have a life of their own or are they puppets manipulated by the writer for his own purposes?

Conflict

Is there any?
Is the conflict something vague in the background (‘Fred v. Life’) or is it personalised?
Is the background too much in the foreground?
Is anything of importance to the characters at stake?

Action (Not to be confused with mere activity)

Do people do things?
Does anything happen?
Does anybody make anything happen? (Or is it all a business of people chattering about things, or a mere portrait of an individual or a group?)
Does the play mark time while the characters unburden themselves?
Do people actually get to grips with things or is it all shadow boxing?

Plot

Is the story a mere succession of events (e.g. ‘A day in the life of...’)?
Is it full of cause and effect?

Construction

Is there sufficient variety of pace?
Are the climaxes right?
Does the plot develop at the right speed?
Does the end work?
Are the audience’s expectations satisfied?

Content

Is the theme implicit or explicit?
Is it clear what the piece is actually about?
Do the characters know?
Should they know?
Is the theme clearly illustrated or brought out by the plot?
Does the writer bring to his theme an individual point of view?
Is it the right length for what he wants to say?

Practicalities

How expensive does it look?
Are all the characters necessary? (Are there enough?)
Are there too many sets? Could we actually fit them into a studio?
If film is suggested, is it necessary?
Do exterior scenes add to the visual and/or emotional content?
If it is (intentionally) an all-film piece, is it containable?

[Note: when these guidelines were written, most drama was made in a studio. These days a lot of it is all-film or videotaped on location. But the basic concerns about avoiding unnecessary expenditure still apply. — IB]

The Object of the Excercise
Discounting your own personal prejudices on its theme or subject matter and regarding it only as an artefact:

Did you want to turn the page?
Did you instinctively like it or dislike it? Or were you just bored?
Does the writer know his stuff?
Has he got the vital spark?
Would you want to work on it?
Would a wide contemporary audience of ordinary men and women (i.e. the same audience that Shakespeare was aiming at) be entertained?

The foregoing is a mere checklist. It does not aspire to lay down a set of unbreakable rules, because there aren’t any. If the script fires you in spite of breaking every ‘rule’ in the book, then say so.

A useful checklist of ingredients for good TV scripts and other stories.

Checklist for Writing TV Scripts

Handy Check List for Script Assessment