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How to Hook Your Audience: Nailing The First 5 Pages of Your TV Pilot (Comedy) 3-Week Zoom Intensive with Allegra Leal Starts Sunday, May 4th, 2025
Begins Sunday, May 4th, 2025
The class will meet via Zoom on Sundays, 12PM - 2PM Central
This class will meet every other Sunday on 5/4, 5/18, and 6/1.
Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.
Allegra Leal attended NYU Tisch as a Drama major, where she began writing, producing, and acting in her own plays. Shortly after graduating, Allegra moved to Los Angeles, where she earned an MFA in Screenwriting from Emerson College. Most recently, Allegra spent two years in the writers’ room of the half-hour comedy Bumper in Berlin, where she completed her first freelance episode of television. She’s spent years doing freelance coverage of scripts, specializing in comedy pilots. With this background and her personal experience as a screenwriter, Allegra has learned how to pinpoint the most common challenges that weaken a script in its first pages.
Read an Interview with Allegra on How to Hook Your Audience.
This class will focus on how to help your script make a strong first impression. The first five pages should keep the reader engaged, establish a clear premise, and showcase your unique voice, each line progressing the story forward in some way.
This class will act as a workshop with a writers' room vibe and will be collaboration-based. I want students to become comfortable sharing their work before it’s complete.
We will focus on the importance of taking things one page at a time while having the entire story of your pilot in mind. How do we get from page one to the end of this episode? An audience needs to learn things on every single page, and every single page must move the story forward in some way. The goal is to craft an engaging and crystal clear start to your pilot, and to essentially not let the reader put your pilot back into the pile. Nailing the first 5 pages can give great insight into your unique voice and show them you are a good, capable writer right off the bat. Prove yourself immediately. Make sure someone can put down your pilot and know exactly what this show is.
We would take a look at some scripts of popular TV shows that have strong pilots.
COURSE OUTLINE:
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Week 1: Cold Open (Pages 1-2)
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Week 2: Discuss cold opens as a class. Strengths and weaknesses. Next steps (Pages 2-5).
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Week 3: Share and Instructor Feedback.
COURSE TAKEAWAYS:
- A succint, concise story is always better.
- How to clearly establish your premise in a cold open.
- Taking things one page at a time, making sure the story builds.
- So many scripts I have provided coverage on fail to establish clear story until too late in the pilot.
- Hooking an audience doesn't neccesarily mean something wild needs to happen, it just needs to be clear and well-written.
ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:
This class meets over other Sunday via Zoom. Come prepared for a super fun class with live interaction on Zoom each week and plenty of writing, reading, and talking!
PAYMENT OPTIONS:
Tuition is $225 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.
- Instructor: Allegra Leal
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Begins Sunday, May 4th, 2025
- The class will meet via Zoom on Sundays, 12PM - 2PM Central
- This class will meet every other Sunday on 5/4, 5/18, and 6/1.
- Tuition is $225 USD
Contact us HERE if you have any questions about this class.