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adventures of Dr. Jonathon Scott, a prominent psychiatrist whose life is turned upside down when he’s suddenly visited by an imaginary voice.
     
    I like to try and get the logline down to one concise sentence like this, but it could be a little longer if necessary. Just think about how you would tell someone your story if you only had about fifteen or twenty seconds to do it.
    Now let’s look at the theme. Identifying your theme allows you to hone your message and solidify it in your mind. You can’t tell a good story if you don’t have a clue as to what you’re trying to say with it. I generally dig a little deeper into this one, but still try to keep it relatively short and sweet:
     
    Theme :
    This voice, whom Scotty dubs “Liberty,” magnifies discordant feelings already deep within him—that his career has gone awry, and that his purpose in life is still largely unfulfilled. To remedy this, Liberty encourages Scotty to make a daring choice—to give up all he has and go out and truly heal the troubled hearts and minds of the world.
     
    But obliging Liberty comes with a heavy price. Not only is Scotty stigmatized as a crazy person, but where he must now go, his wife and children cannot follow.
     
    At the heart of Scotty’s journey is the thing that we all seek as human beings, a sense of certainty that our life's struggles are meaningful. Throughout the series then, Scotty will be faced with both the external dilemmas of the people he meets and the internal longing that he has to return to his former life.
     
    Now let’s talk about tone. In some ways tone is more about your overall voice as a writer than it is about each individual story you write, because as you develop you will naturally gravitate toward those subjects and genres you enjoy and are able to excel at. Just think about a few writers you admire. You like these writers as much for the way they tell their stories as the stories themselves. In other words, you like their voice, which grows out of the tone they infuse in their work over time, which in turn is something that you’ve come to expect from them. Yet each story they write also has its nuances and uniqueness. Taking time to describe the tone of each individual piece is a great way to understand the voice of the story you’re working on, as well as help you define your overall voice as a writer. Here’s how I did it for Scotty’s Travels:
     
    Tone :
    The tone of the show is both dramatic and comedic as each week Scotty blindly stumbles into the travails of a stranger’s life. The drama comes out of his efforts to help these people. The humor comes out of his "insanity," which we see from the inside out. That is, we see both the insane person wandering aimlessly, and the extraordinarily gifted person following the will of a higher power.
     
    I like to think of it as TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL meets ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. Or more affectionately, TOUCHED BY A LUNATIC.
     
    As you can tell, the thing I’ve learned about my own voice over the years (and have consciously tried to develop) is that I am best suited to writing drama with little touches of humor. I’m not a comedy writer. To do comedy well, you really have to be able to write great jokes, and that’s not me. My winning combination is a well-mixed cocktail of comedy and pathos, so I always try to inject humor wherever appropriate, and especially in places where the audience least expects it.
    Then there’s your cast of characters, which at this point is an absolutely essential piece of the puzzle because their motivations will determine where your story will lead. Your cast is your compass. If you truly know each and every one of these people well, you will never be lost; you will always have someone you can ask for directions along the way, which will definitely come in handy when that crisis moment inevitably hits. Here are the main characters in Scotty’s Travels:
     
    Characters :
    Dr. Jonathon Scott – Born and