Ask a room of new writers where they want to work, and you'll hear "films" and "OTT". Almost nobody says television.

And yet, every single evening, millions of Indian homes sit down to a story that a writer finished only days earlier. Week after week. Sometimes for years.

Nobody talks about how that writing actually works. So let's.

Television is a daily craft

Here is the first thing to understand. Film is written once. Television is written every day.

Sneha Desai, who won the Screenwriters Association (SWA) award this year for her dialogue on Pushpa Impossible, put it simply: "Television is a daily affair. It needs an episode to be telecast every single day."

And the days have grown. Bhavna Vyas, who has written for Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai and Anupamaa, told Film Companion: "First it used to be five days a week, but now it is seven days a week."

Think about what that means for a writer. Aatish Kapadia has said that when you're doing Monday-to-Sunday programming, that's 25 to 30 episodes a month. No film writer works at that speed. You don't wait for inspiration in television. You learn to find it on a deadline.

Story, screenplay and dialogue are separate jobs

On a Hindi TV show, the writing is usually split. Harneet Singh, a screenplay writer whose credits include Bade Achhe Lagte Hain, described writing rooms where "someone doing the episodic story, someone doing screenplay and someone doing dialogues."

You can see this split in how the industry honours its writers. At the SWA Awards in May 2026, television had three separate writing awards:

• Best Story: Rajesh Joshi and Shabia Walia, Pushpa Impossible

• Best Screenplay: Harneet Singh, Itti Si Khushi

• Best Dialogue: Sneha Desai and Tushar Ishwer, Pushpa Impossible

Both shows air on Sony SAB. Pushpa Impossible has been running since June 2022, which gives you an idea of how long a TV story has to keep going.

For a new writer, this split is good news. You don't have to be brilliant at everything on day one. Some writers are natural story builders. Some can make a dialogue land in one line. Television has a place for each.

Keeping a story alive for years

A film has an ending you can see from the first page. A daily show often doesn't. The story has to keep going for as long as people keep watching.

Harneet Singh was honest about this: "When you have to sustain a show, you have to stretch it." And he added something every writer should hear: "Your ratings tell you where you are, and you have to listen to your audience."

This is the part of TV writing that film writers rarely learn. You write, the audience responds, and you adjust. It is storytelling as a conversation.

What TV writing teaches you, wherever you end up

Even if your dream is a feature film, a year of television writing will sharpen you in ways a film school can't:

1. You stop waiting for the perfect day. When an episode has to go out tomorrow, you write today. That discipline stays with you. (I wrote more about this habit in How to Write Every Day.)

2. You learn the end-of-episode hook. Every episode has to make the audience come back tomorrow. That is a skill OTT writers use too.

3. You learn to write for a family audience. Most TV is watched together, by three generations in one room. Writing something that works for all of them is harder than it looks.

Know your rights before you sign

One honest note. Television writing is hard work, and writers have had to fight for fair terms. The SWA is working on a Minimum Basic Contract for television writers, and its 2026 AGM report says it remains committed to the contractual, professional and creative rights of TV writers.

So before you take your first TV job, become an SWA member, read your contract carefully, and register your work. Your craft deserves protection.

Try this

Watch one episode of any daily show you'd normally skip. Don't judge it. Just study it like a writer:

1. How does the episode open? Where does it pick up from yesterday?

2. How many scenes are there, and what does each one change?

3. How does it end? What question makes you want to watch tomorrow?

Then write the next episode yourself, just the outline, in one page. You've just done the job of a TV story writer.

If you want to build this kind of discipline with feedback, this is what we work on in The Foundation of Storytelling, my live online course in Hindi and English.

Thinking about writing for TV? Message me on WhatsApp. I answer personally.

Related reading:

• How to Write for OTT in India

• How to Become a Screenwriter in India

• How to Write Dialogue That Sounds Real