Chernobyl: How To Write A Miniseries

Chernobyl: How to Write a Miniseries
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Today, we’ll be talking about Chernobyl created by Craig Mazin. If you haven’t seen this new miniseries, you definitely want to check it out. For the most part, I will avoid any major spoilers.
What we’ll be talking about is writing miniseries. We get so many questions from students who want to write a miniseries, or who wonder whether their project would be better suited as a miniseries. 
There are amazing things happening right now in the world of miniseries and Chernobyl is one of them. 
So, we’re going to talk about how to know if your project is a miniseries and how to think about miniseries, as well as some of the commercial challenges of selling a miniseries to help you make the best decisions when writing your own script.
We’ll do that by talking about Chernobyl and looking at how this miniseries on HBO functions and what made it so effective and essential.
Before we get into talking about miniseries, I’ll share a warning. Most emerging writers working on miniseries are working on them for the wrong reasons. 
They are doing so because they don’t yet have the muscle – the physical, technical skills as a writer – to tell their story efficiently.
Many writers end up thinking they need to write a miniseries because they don’t actually know how to zoom in close on the part that represents the whole. They don’t know how to narrow their screenwriting down to the essence of the story that needs to be told, how to find their hook, or craft their character’s journey in an effective way.
What happens for a lot of newer writers is their projects bloat. It seems like, “Wow, I could never fit this into a 100-page script or a 60-page series episode.” It seems so big because you simply haven’t learned the tools of efficiency yet.
So, the first thing you want to do if you’re writing a miniseries is to make sure you’re writing it for the right reasons. You should be writing a project that really needs to be told as a miniseries. 
The other thing to be aware of when thinking about writing a miniseries is that it is harder to write a miniseries than it is to write a series. It is harder to write a miniseries than it is to write a feature. It is certainly harder to write a miniseries than it is to write a pilot.
A miniseries, such as Chernobyl, is a huge investment. 
Unlike a series that can grow an audience over time or many years, with a miniseries you really just have that one shot to get it right. It’s a huge investment of capital, it’s a huge investment of time, and, as a writer, it is a huge investment of your time and energy in the writing. These things are hard to write and they are big.
So, the first question you want to ask yourself is, “Does this need to be a miniseries?” If it does, then you better do the work and figure out how to do it, because you’ve got to tell the story in the form it wants to be in.
But if you’re a writer early in your career, if your craft isn’t all the way there yet, you might want to ask yourself,