Rewriting Your TV Pilot and Crafting Your Pitch

Session: May 2026

With: Alana Sanko and Emmylou Diaz
May 13–July 12 | Wednesdays, 5–7 p.m. PT
$750
Payment plan available
8 weeks
30
Rewriting Your TV Pilot and Crafting Your Pitch
30
Rewriting Your TV Pilot and Crafting Your Pitch

About this Live Online Course

Looking for support to polish your original pilot and prepare your TV series pitch? Revise your pilot with an accomplished TV writer as your guide. In this live online, eight-week course designed for aspiring and experienced TV writers, a Sundance Collab Instructor will offer a comprehensive approach to refining your pilot, creating a deck for your show, and preparing a compelling pitch to industry professionals.


How the course is structured:

At the beginning and the end of the course, your instructor will read your pilot and will meet with you for two dedicated, 45-minute, 1-on-1 sessions.


Outside of the 1-on-1 sessions, you will meet weekly with your instructor and cohort to discuss core concepts and be guided on a revision schedule. The final 1-on-1 session will occur one to two weeks after the last class session.


By the end of the course, you will have a polished pilot, a compelling TV pitch, and the confidence to present your series to industry professionals.


This course is meant to follow TV Writing: From Outline to First Draft of Your Pilot, but can be taken on its own if you have a full draft of a pilot script. This is the final course in the TV Writing Track. 


Note:

To register, you will need to submit a draft of your TV pilot script along with an Intention Statement. You will have the opportunity to submit a revised draft of your pilot two weeks before the first class. At this point, all pilots from the cohort will be sent to the instructor to read to prepare for the course.

The Intention Statement is a one-page document that describes what you hope to accomplish with your story, what you want the audience to take away, and what type of feedback would be helpful to you before you dive into your rewrite.


What you bring to the course:

  • a full draft of a TV pilot (under 60 pages)

What you’ll get from the course:

  • a greater understanding of TV pilot structure and character development
  • tools to develop your own approach to rewriting and polishing your work
  • how to effectively incorporate feedback to enhance your script
  • how to develop and practice a formal pitch for your TV series

This course will:

  • provide tools and techniques to apply to any project
  • build a creative community of writers to support each other
  • offer personalized feedback on your pilot script and your series pitch via 1-on-1 sessions with a Sundance Collab Instructor


A limited number of need-based scholarships are available and are considered on a rolling basis as they are received. Those who apply earlier will have a greater chance of getting support. To apply for a scholarship, please complete the course registration form.


Sundance Collab provides accommodations and support services to participants with disabilities. Accommodations and services are designed to meet the needs of each participant. Please email us at accessibility@sundance.org to arrange for services.

Live Online Course
Advanced
Live virtual class sessions
Individualized feedback
Two 1-on-1 sessions with your Instructor
Certificate of Completion
Access to course for one year

Scholarships

Sundance Collab offers a limited number of full and partial need-based scholarships for individuals who need assistance. 

Due to limited scholarship funds available, we prioritize one course scholarship per participant in a 12-month period. Scholarship applications are available up to one week before the registration deadline and do not stack with discounts or promotions, including early registration.

Outline

What to expect:

  • You will meet with your instructor and a small group of writers for a two-hour small group session to get to know each other, discuss how to approach rewriting your pilot, making a plan and a schedule, and best practices for receiving feedback.
  • Suggested assignment: make a plan and schedule for your revisions.

What to expect:

  • Your instructor will read the draft of your pilot that you registered for the course with and meet with you for a 1-on-1 mentoring session to discuss your plan for revisions.
  • Suggested assignment: revise your plan following your mentoring session.

What to expect:

  • You will meet with your instructor and a small group of writers for a two-hour small group session to discuss character introductions, creating characters with stakes and agency, and crafting the world around your story.
  • Suggested assignment: do a character pass on your pilot.

What to expect:

  • You will meet with your instructor and a small group of writers for a two-hour small group session to discuss act breaks, A/B/C stories, returning to outlines and beat sheets to re-break story.
  • Suggested assignment: review your act breaks to ensure they are as effective and compelling as possible.

What to expect:

  • You will meet with your instructor and a small group of writers for a two-hour small group session to discuss scene craft, identifying subtext, and revealing character through behavior, scene description, and dialogue.
  • Suggested assignment: review your pilot to determine if the theme and tone are consistent.

What to expect:

  • You will meet with your instructor and a small group of writers for a two-hour small group session to discuss your next steps in rewriting and polishing your screenplay, dialogue punch-ups, utilizing verbs, getting distance from your draft, and creating a habit for writing in your life.
  • Suggested assignment: do a final pass focusing on punching-up dialogue and polishing for a reader in order to submit your pilot to your instructor.

What to expect:

  • You will meet with your instructor and a small group of writers for a two-hour small group session to discuss the different types of pitches you need to prepare, lookbooks, pitch decks, and sizzle reels.
  • Suggested assignment: practice your pitch.

What to expect:

  • The course concludes with a 1-on-1 mentoring session with your instructor. Your instructor will read the latest draft of your pilot and meet with you to give you feedback on a five-minute pitch and discuss your next steps.

Team

Alana Sanko

Instructor

Alana Sanko is an award-winning writer and creator whose work explores the authentic realities of life’s different chapters and the complicated women who navigate them. Across comedy, drama, and animation, she has developed a wide-ranging body of work that began with a staff writing position on the legendary CBS series, Murphy Brown. She has since written and developed for numerous platforms, including her produced pilot, See Jayne Run for ABC, the original Disney Channel Movie, Get a Clue with Lindsay Lohan, and MTV’s Spy Groove, where she served as Head Writer for the Annie-nominated series. Alana created and supervising produced the WGA award-winning series Just for Kicks alongside Whoopi Goldberg – the show that launched the career of Jessica Williams (Shrinking). Her background in television also includes writing for numerous children’s favorites, such as Dragon Tales, Little Einsteins, and HBO Family's, A Little Curious. 


Recently, Alana made her directing debut with the short film, The Happiness Intervention, shot in Iceland, and is currently co-writing and producing an independent feature. Dedicated to mentoring the next generation of writers, Alana teaches at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, SUNY Purchase and is a recipient of the Artemis Rising Filmmaker Fellowship, where she teaches a TV Writers Room class at Barnard College. Alana is a proud member of the Writers Guild of America, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and New York Women In Film and Television.

Emmylou Diaz

Instructor

Emmylou Diaz is a writer/producer who launched her career on Jane The Virgin, rising from writers’ assistant to staff writer, and has since written and produced for acclaimed series including Girlfriends’ Guide To Divorce, Charmed, Station 19, and The Watchful Eye. She works as a Co-Executive Producer and trusted “number two” to top showrunners. Emmy is a recipient of the NHMC Series Scriptwriters Fellowship and the RTT Hollywood Impact Fellowship, and she serves as Advisor to the prestigious Humanitas New Voices Fellowship, mentoring the next generation of television writers. She is also an emerging director -- her short A Peculiar Morning (2025) is currently on the festival circuit with several official selections and a premiere to be announced.

FAQ

In Sundance Collab’s Live Online courses, participants attend live, virtual class sessions on the same day and time for a specified period. These sessions are led by an instructor and in some cases, supported by a team of advisors. In some courses, you are given assignments with submission deadlines to help you take the next step with your work. 

  • Each week you will be able to attend live lectures via Zoom video and ask questions of your instructor.
  • In some courses, you will receive individualized feedback from your course advisor on elements of your work.
  • In some courses, you will have the opportunity to have a 1-on-1 session with your advisor. Depending on the course, this session may be included or may be purchased separately for an additional cost. Check the course description for specifics. 

All members of the Sundance Collab community are welcome to register for Sundance Collab courses. Please review the course description and any eligibility requirements to ensure the course is a good fit. If you have any questions about a course, please email collab_courses@sundance.org.


Note that space is limited. If the registration window is open, you will see a “Register” button on the course page. If there is an application, applications are considered as they are received and applicants are accepted on a rolling basis until the course is full or the deadline has passed, whichever comes first. 

We do not allow creative partners to do our live online courses as a team. However, both creators can individually register for the course.

Part of Sundance Collab's unique educational approach is to create a teaching team for every course. Each class is led by an instructor who may be accompanied by additional course advisors. This allows us to keep an intimate ratio of participants to advisors and to provide a diversity of voices and approaches to the course content.

We often offer a limited number of need-based, full or partial scholarships. Check the course description to see if that course currently has scholarships available. Scholarships are prioritized for one per person per year (from the date of issue). Scholarship applications are available up to one week before the registration deadline. To apply for a scholarship,complete the registration form by clicking the REGISTER button and selecting the option to apply for a scholarship, if available.

Applicants will be notified about their scholarship decision prior to the first day of the course. Due to the volume of applicants, we are not always able to provide a scholarship, but we may still offer a spot in the course. In this case, depending on the course, payment plans may be available and can be selected at checkout.

Yes, we offer two or three-part payment plans for Live Online courses, depending on the length of the course. In all cases, the first payment is due at the point of registration. The remaining payment(s) are spread out throughout the course term. For specific payment plan dates for a course, please reach out to our team at: collab_courses@sundance.org. 

Yes, you are welcome to take a live, online course even if you can’t make the live sessions. Recordings of each class session are available online by the following day so you can keep up with the course lectures. For courses that include a 1-on-1 session with an advisor or instructor, the meeting is scheduled according to your (and their) availability.

All sessions are recorded and usually made available within one business day. The videos will also contain the chat and transcript from the class session, viewable in the video playbar.


Participants will have access to the recordings for one year following the last class session.

All participants will receive a Certificate of Completion. The certificate will include the name associated with your Sundance Collab account.

You can find any courses that you are enrolled in or have already completed in the profile section of your Sundance Collab account under “Courses.”

You can join a course via a computer or mobile device. All of our live, online courses are conducted via Zoom.


Download and set up the Zoom software (https://zoom.us/download) and make sure you have the latest update. Here are some great resources from Zoom’s Knowledge Base to take a deeper dive into using Zoom:

 

If you have any further questions, please email collab_courses@sundance.org.


Sundance Collab provides accommodations and support services to participants with disabilities. Please contact us at (435) 776-7790 or email us at accessibility@sundance.org to ask any questions or to discuss your specific needs after you have been accepted into the course.

Upcoming Sessions

$750
May 13–July 12 | Wednesdays, 5–7 p.m. PT
With: Alana Sanko
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* A 3.5% + 20 cent processing fee is applied to all transactions.

Payment Plans:

  • A three-part payment plan is available after you register.

  • Payments are spaced two weeks apart with the first payment due at the time of registration.

Scholarships:

  • A limited number of need-based scholarships are available.

  • Scholarship applications are available up to one week before the registration deadline and do not stack with discounts or promotions, including early registration.

  • To apply for a scholarship, complete the registration form by clicking the REGISTER button above and selecting the scholarship option, if available.