The TV Showrunner's Roadmap Creating Great Television in an On Demand World

This all-new edition of the best-selling guide The TV Showrunner’s Roadmap provides readers with the tools for creating, writing, and managing your own hit streaming series. Combining his 30+ years as a working screenwriter and professor, industry veteran Neil Landau expertly unpacks essential insights to the creation of a successful show and takes readers behind the scenes with exclusive and enlightening interviews with showrunners from some of TV’s most lauded series, including Fargo, Better Call Saul, Watchmen, Insecure, Barry, Money Heist, Succession, Ozark, Schitt’s Creek, Euphoria, PEN15, and many more. From conception to final rewrite, The TV Showrunner’s Roadmap is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to create a series that won’t run out of steam after the first few episodes. This groundbreaking guide features an eResource with additional interviews and bonus materials. So grab your laptop, dig out that stalled spec script, and buckle up. Welcome to the fast lane.

Also by Neil Landau Foreword How To Navigate This Book Introduction 1. From Concept to Pilot Script 2. Intellectual Property and Adaptation 3. World Building, Specificity of Setting, and Revising History 4. Fueling Your Story Engine: Central Questions and Central Mysteries 5. The Power of Empathy 6. The Value of Family Dynamics 7. Get to the Heart of Your Story 8. POV and Subtext 9. Antagonists 10. Defying Formulaic Structure 11. Theme 12. Cliffhangers 13. Life on the Cringe: Comedy and Culture 14. Pitchingand Selling Acknowledgments About the Author Index

Neil Landau is an award-winningscreenwriter, producer, and author. He is currently an Associate Professor at Grady College of Journalismand Mass Communication and founding Director of Screenwriting in the MFA Filmand Television Program at the University of Georgia. He served as Executive Script consultant for Sony Pictures Television International for many years. His movie credits include the teen comedy Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead; his TV credits include Doogie Howser, M.D., Melrose Place, The Magnificent Seven, The Secret World of Alex Mack, Twice in a Lifetime, and MTV’s Undressed, and pilot deals at CBS, Disney, Freemantle, Lifetime, Spelling, and Warner Bros. Television. Neil currently chairs the preselection committee for the Entertainment category for the Peabody Awards.