<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

A television story Outline is a condensed prose version of a story a writer intends to develop into a full teleplay for a series or movie of the week.

The outline is written in the present tense, is broken down into acts to show where the commercial breaks would fall, and usually runs about ten to fifteen pages in length for an "hour long" program, though some run up to twenty, depending on the writing style of the author. They rarely contain very much dialogue and are intended to give the producers of the television program a chance to review and edit the story to their liking before the writer is paid for a full teleplay.