I’ve lightly touched here and there that I’ve been developing a few web series—a few, because I spent much of May 2015 to the present researching series development and all that jazz.

Because I felt search engine optimisation (SEO), a former special interest, could interest me no more. I needed something new to figure out, so I went and looked up this. The fact that it very well might take me a year or more to fully develop even one web series isn’t totally uncommon.

I learned even television series can take several years to be written/developed/etc. before they even see the light of day.

I also decided I might as well get used to the formatting of it all, so I began formatting my stuff accordingly, and…it sucks.

Like, it really sucks: one page = one minute.

So, if I really wanted to create a quality web series adequate for TV, but “unacceptable” for TV in terms of what networks might allow, each episode would be between 8 and 15 minutes…maybe 20. It depends on the series. For this one, we’ll call it Project CS (CS for short). CS is a comedy about a family who is pushed back together after having been separated from each other for so long. There’s a lot of drama, but it’s funny in the way it happens—perhaps a little like CBS’ Mom, but more with the kids…but it’s not really a series for kids.

Since I like lists more for relaying various thoughts sometimes, let’s use a list:

• Scripts include cues/actions.
• They also include certain camera movements/tendencies.
• I used to think TV series were too short. Now I see how much dialogue and of a scene can fit in one page…which is one minute.
• Web series ≠ lack of quality. If anything, it should be something that really shows the creator’s abilities…and other technical stuff. The same goes for budgeting.
• It’s hard to fill pages with content.
• A 40-minute episode is approximately 40 pages.
• Episodes I had already written, which I thought would fill at least eight minutes, didn’t—they turned into about one or two minutes.
• All my TV-watching has kind of paid off.
• Watching TV + venturing into screenwriting = a whole new TV-watching experience. I now see certain plots as if they’re techniques. I’ve known about various special effects’ development, but when you tie the scripting into it, you see it in a whole new light. It’s cool, but it’s also really weird.
• Whilst it’s harder to write in this format, I’m starting to wonder/think this might become my “dream” medium. I use it lightly, though, because I still really want to be a published author. It’s just…cool(?) because I could possibly create a whole network of series (Crackle or Watch Wigs, anyone?) and express my creativity through that.

I wanted to do this in high school, but felt like it just wasn’t possible, because I wasn’t popular enough, skilled enough, brave enough, productive enough, adequate—and I wasn’t accepted into the Art Institutes and was a little bad at school, despite my grades. Grades were based on doing the work, though. >.<

But last year, I learned and realised you don’t have to be accepted into your dream school or have people on your side who believe you can do it; you just have to want to. There are a lot of resources available to creatives today than there were five or ten years ago.

So I’m gonna make it happen. It might not even begin to happen until 2017 or 2018, but I’m going to do it. Loads of symbolism, humor, drama, digital cloning, diversity—and I could drop spoilers.

I hate the writing part, but I love the idea of the end result and have kept up with it for a long while, methinks. <3