tiernan420 asked: How many drafts of each episode do you and Matt make before coming up with the final outline?

ben-levin:

We go through at least two drafts of the outline. Matt and I each write half and then combine our parts and make some edits. Then Rebecca and our supervising directors, Joe Johnston and Kat Morris (and previously Ian Jones-Quartey), take a look and give notes. We’ll do a rewrite together and then send it to the network execs overseeing the show for approval. If the network has minor notes we’ll address them as we hand out the outline to the storyboard artists, but if they have substantial problems we might have to do a rewrite.

But before we even get to writing the 2-3 page outline, we write a “premise.” This is a single page summary of the episode that goes through the entire process explained above. So in a way that’s a whole other draft.

Now some outlines have had major major rewrites. Sometimes we’ll talk out a story and feel like we’ve got a solid skeleton and when we write the premise or first outline it just doesn’t feel right. Maybe not enough happens, maybe the story feels “muddy” or has too many elements competing for attention. Or it’s decided we should just approach it from a different angle.

The story that had the most drafts I can think of was probably “Marble Madness” which was originally called “Gem Droid”.

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