By now you have the series act breaks, story lines and story arc.  You’re not done yet!  You need to break down each act into scenes and note what happens when.  If you’re thinking, “I already noted what happens when while looking at the story arc”, you may have noted the major plot points for your story, but you haven’t noted the details.

If this is your first time breaking down a series, I always advise writers to jot down more than less.  Once you get a handle on how the process works, you’ll get a clear sense of what is noteworthy.

When you study scenes in your show, remember this format isn’t always consistent from episode to episode so it’s not carved in stone.  This is why you study at least three random episodes.

What are you looking for?

Each act is comprised of several scenes.  Your job is to figure out roughly how many scenes are in each act, what these scenes are usually about, how long each scene typically runs, and how they serve the story.  If it’s a comedy you’re writing, then you need to know how often the funny pops up.

Remember, you’re looking at what happens not how it happens.  What I mean by that is if in the first scene Dick tells Jane she’s stupid and that happens in every episode, you jot that down.  However, if in one episode, Dick smacks her across the head and in another, Jane shoves Dick down the side of a mountain, but the scene is still about Dick telling Jane she’s stupid, these details are irrelevant.  It never happens the same way twice so don’t write down the how.  Not at this point anyway.

There’s also a tendency for some writers to get too caught up in the details and they focus on character or line delivery or basically rewrite the script down to the finest detail like “Cliff Claven scratches head then walks into the pool room.”  So not important.

The fact that a character always cracks a joke at someone else’s expense isn’t relevant unless he or she does it every time usually at the same point in the episode.  Like when Norm in Cheers comes into the bar, everyone says “Norm!” no matter what.  Or in CSI, the lead investigator at the end of the teaser always says a pun relating to the crime.  The fact that David Caruso always takes off his glasses before he makes a deduction has to do with his character not plot, so ignore it at this stage.

Do look at the length of each scene and what story line they belong to.  Parks & Recreation typically uses short, quick scenes cutting back and forth between the A and B stories, but some episodes don’t do this.  Some episodes have the A and B stories happening in one location and the scenes are longer and smoother.  You need to know this so I advise studying EVERY episode produced to date in the series.

If your show never has scenes longer than three minutes, then your spec shouldn’t either.  If your show doesn’t use quick cuts between story lines, neither should your spec.  If your scenes are all set-up, punchline, yours should be too.

In a show like Cheers, there’s only one location (at least in the early days) so it’s harder to determine the end of a scene.  For those of you who don’t know, a scene is a self-contained interaction between two or more people, like a mini-story.  Look for a change in direction or an entry of a new character.

For example: In Cheers, “Behind Every Good Man”, the first scene in act one is about Coach going to a family reunion, which really only explains why Coach isn’t there.  The next scene starts when Norm comes in and he talks about eating at the Hungry Heifer, which sets up the B story.  The A story starts in the next scene starts when a woman walks in and Cliff says she’s the “next notch on the Claven bedpost.”

It’s only by knowing the episode’s story lines that you start to see how these scenes fit together.

After you’ve analyzed your three episodes for the act breaks, story lines, story arc, and scenes, you average it all out and put together a guide for the series episode structure.