How To Break A Story — Niceole R. Levy

Film Courage: What does it mean to break a story?

Niceole R. Levy, Screenwriter/Author: Breaking a story is how you figure out what all the actual scenes are in an episode whether it’s your own pilot you’re writing at home or whether it’s an episode of a show that you’re working on. There are different methodologies about how to do it. I can tell you my favorite methodology of doing it. This is a combination of ways I’ve seen it done in multiple rooms that like now this is the system that I like. First of all I think it’s just a question of What did we think our main characters would be doing in this episode? If you’re doing a pilot it’s like What is the story I want to tell about my main characters? You can write on note cards or on a whiteboard as simply as:

I need Niceole to figure this out

I need Adam to go here

We need conflict between the mother and daughter to get us to the place we need to be in the next episode

Big ideas like that, they don’t have to be super specific. It’s just like Here are things we…