Exercise 1: Once upon a time

The prompt

You’ve been invited pitch an idea for a Netflix series that reinvents an old fable, folktale, or fairytale for an audience of 18–34-year-olds. Your goal is to create a series that conveys the deep cultural wisdom contained in the tale in a way that’s relevant -- indeed, captivating -- to a contemporary young audience.

You can use any fable or fairytale you like (e.g., from Aesop’s Fables, 1001 Arabian Nights, Arthurian legend, etc.), so long as it’s more than a hundred years old. And you can modify, adapt, rearrange, update, or outright scramble the tale’s elements anyway that you please. The important thing is to achieve your purpose: to develop an idea for a series that viewers and critics alike will praise for its deep insight and irresistible entertainment value.

For next class, you are to write a pitch for your series that'll persuade the Netflix executives to pony up a bunch of money to make a pilot episode of your show. In TV lingo, a pitch like this is called a "treatment." Your treatment should be at least 500 words and no longer than 750, and it should include the following:

• A logline, or one-sentence summary of the series concept, that highlights the unique “hook” that makes the series appealing.
• A vivid but concise description of the overall story arc for the series’ first season and the themes it will explore. 
• A vivid but concise description of the series’ main characters. 
• A vivid but concise description of the plot of the pilot episode.
• A compelling case for the show's strong appeal to both viewers and critics.

With the exception of the one-sentence logline, each section will be at least a paragraph long, maybe more than that. The last section -- in which you make your case for the show's appeal -- will definitely be at least two paragraphs long, and probably longer, because it's here, in this section, that you'll make your case to have the show produced. 

Please be sure to label each section in your treatment.

You can find some tips for writing treatments here and for crafting loglines here. (Loglines from some familiar movies and shows are here.)

Next time we meet, some of you will make your pitches to your classmates, who'll play the roles of Netflix execs and a focus group of viewers. So think of your treatment as something to be delivered aloud -- a script for a persuasive oral presentation.

Goals

You're not only looking to make a work of art (a TV series); you're seeking to persuade other people to fund its creation (the Netflix execs). So your goals are both imaginative and argumentative: you want a brilliantly original idea for a show and you want to persuade an audience of TV network professionals that viewers and reviewers will appreciate its brilliant originality. So put on your creative and critical thinking caps. And bear in mind also that your genius ideas can only shine to the extent that they're expressed in clear, coherent prose.

Format and requirements

Follow the formatting instructions here.

Please post your treatment to Google Drive by the start of next class. Instructions for posting and sharing documents on Google Drive are here.

From the TV series Grimm