Different types of writing Im covering

Osiyo. Dohiju? Hey, welcome back.

Let’s cover some of the types of writing I do a lot of: screenplays, sitcom scripts, vlogs, blogposts. Each has a structure, a format, even a formula that guides people. I may also cover editing, we’ll see.

With my blogposts I write stream of consciousness. I don’t know how it’s going to go, where it’s going to end, or anything in between. I know about what I’m going to write about and that’s about it. My blogs are an insight into my brain and how it works and hopefully give you a personal insight into how I do things and maybe that will help you. I don’t rewrite, usually. I will go back and make sure I didn’t have any loose ends, but not always.

I’ve covered how I work on vlogs. They’re essentially the same as my blogs, a little more refined. If it’s a specific vlog I want to teach about I’ll write it as a blog then cut cruft and write it as a script I then follow. I have an idea about what I want to show as I go like inserts and cutaways. Introduce a question or problem that needs to be solved. Lead the viewer on your journey with a beginning, middle, and end. You can read more about that process here and here.

Sitcoms are a lot like screenplays in formula, structure, story, etc. Let’s look at some of the most popular sitcoms like Friends, Spin City, Murphy Brown, Man With a Plan, Frasier, Seinfeld, and Dharma and Greg. Some are older sitcoms, but they still hold their own. They start with a Cold Open that introduces the show to the viewers and maybe the central theme of the episode. After the credits, we’re given more insight into the episode, a B-story and maybe even a C-story that envelops all of the characters. We follow the main story until the first commercial break where something happens. There could be two or three commercials, two main acts, or even three. I prefer a specific formula. Cold Open, theme, Act 1 and part of Act 2 ending in something major the midpoint, commercial, Act 2 and Act 3, commercial, and Tag. The Tag is a point of the show that is an additional scene that’s just funny. I’ll outline this more in a different post. However, there is a specific formula that I follow as well as how I arrange everything. I like for the Cold Open and Tag to be related together. If the Cold Open starts with one element, then Act 3 is only a couple pages and is the conclusion, moral of the story, and resolution to the story. I’ll have a whole post about sitcom formulas and the different types of scripts out there.

Screenplays. We’ve kind of covered this a bit. I’ll cover more of the formula as we go on in this series.

At the end of this series of posts I’ll publish my screenplay structure. It contains all of the plot points, some descriptions of what each are, what pages they usually appear on, and more. I’ll also go through the sitcom structure and publish that at the end of this series.

Right now, however, I’m going to outline this series because, well, now I need to make sure I accomplish everything I’m setting out to.

Until next time, dodadagohvi.