teleplays

Teleplays are screenplays written specifically for television, intended to be realized on a TV screen rather than a cinema screen. They may cover episodes of ongoing series, stand-alone TV movies, or anthology telecasts. Teleplays differ from feature-length screenplays in their pacing, structure, and production constraints, such as commercial breaks or strict episode lengths. They focus on dialogue and actions within the visual language of television, and may include camera notes or shot directions used by directors and editors.

In the early history of television, live anthologies and variety programs relied heavily on teleplays to guide performers. As production shifted to recorded formats, teleplays established conventions for episodic storytelling, with recurring characters, ongoing arcs, or self-contained plots. Writers commonly work in staff rooms or become freelance contributors, and pilots serve to introduce premise, characters, and setting. The term teleplay is often used to distinguish TV scripts from feature film screenplays, though both share core elements of scene structure and dialogue.

Structure and format: Teleplays typically present slug lines (scene headings), action paragraphs, character cues, dialogue, and parentheticals. In many markets, acts and commercial breaks divide a one-hour episode into multiple segments, shaping pacing and cliffhangers. Modern streaming series may reduce or remove explicit act breaks, but writers still plan scene boundaries and emotional beats accordingly. Formats may vary by network, studio, or country, yet the core objective remains the same: to translate story beats into on-screen performances within television production constraints.