The September/October issue of Creative Screenwriter has an article called Distilled Drama: Writing the Web Serial. Ironically, the article isn't available on the web -- you have to buy the magazine which is on the news stand now. The piece has a close up look at the writing of Gemini Division, a 50 episode series created by Brent Friedman, who also created Afterworld.
There's lot of great information in the article and the six page script of the first episode is reproduced. Unfortunately, Gemini Division is geo-blocked so it's hard to analyze the writing advicewithout the context of the finished product.
Friedman's strategy in developing Gemini Division was to create a much larger and more intricate world than he could explore in the series' 50 four minute episodes. They chose a smallish story within that world and told it from a single character's perspective. They worked out the full longer story and then broke it into webisode size story chunks that allow each episode "...to have just the faintest hint of a beginning, middle and an end." Each episode has an ending that raises the kinds of questions that bring viewers back for another.
Andy Black, a Gemini Division writer with TV credits like Crossing Jordan and Numbers is quoted:
Every line of action and dialog has specific meaning that really kind of pushes one scene into the next and into the next. It takes a couple of tries to get it right. And a lot of patience, I think, on Brent's side to play with it and say "You can still get these key emotional moments into the story, but do it like this."
For his part, Friedman talks about getting the TV writers to abandon old ways of doing things and to unlearn standard ways of writing, thinking and breaking story.
Gemini Division is produced by Electric Farm Entertainment. Here's the trailer, which isn't geo-blocked:
