A structural diagnosis of your TV pilot’s engine. Across two sessions, one upstream answer: what’s keeping your script from sustaining a series.
The sessions are delivery. The read is the product.
Comps, structure, the engine. I arrive with the diagnosis: which of the six it is, and where it lives in your script.
What’s wrong and why, upstream of the page. The thing a reader feels in the first twenty pages, with the reason attached.
Not notes. The structural move that fixes the problem at its source, so the rewrite is one rewrite.
Two hours of conversation. The work happens before the first one.
“I mentioned my pilot to a friend who buys for a major streamer, and he loved the concept. Then I sent him the actual script, and didn’t hear back. That told me something in the pilot itself wasn’t working, but I didn’t have the tools to see what. Nick showed me what those tools are: clear goals and stakes for my protagonist. I’m thinking about my pilot now in a much more immediate, visceral way, and honestly, it’s changed how I approach everything I write.”
I developed the audit because I’ve seen far too many pilots make the same exact mistakes. The basic building blocks of story, conflict, stakes, questions, are all intertwined with the story engine, an oft-misrepresented tool in writing circles.
The audit identifies the structural reasons a reader bumps on your work, and saves you months, sometimes years, of aimless rewrites. “Market ready” and “undeniable” get thrown around a lot. What I’m aiming for with writers is a script with integrity that has sustainability.
If you want to move fast, let’s talk. If you want to keep solving it on your own, I’ll see you down the line.
Nick Jobe is a development consultant. He’s developed projects at Netflix and Apple, and his clients have sold pilots to Amazon and Netflix and premiered work at Tribeca and Sundance. He tells you exactly why the experience you want the reader to have is not the experience they’re having, and how to fix it.
“Nick marches to the beat of a very different drummer. From strategic conversations to scene work, there are few like him in the market.”
“Nick is my secret weapon. There are few direct routes to creating a project that gets you interest from the major TV players in Hollywood. Working with Nick is just about the closest thing.”
Two sessions. One structural diagnosis. The upstream answer you’ve been rewriting around.
A few questions so I know where you’re at.
I’ll send a recent one to your inbox personally.