Why annotate an unsold pilot
Reign of Blood is a gaslamp-fantasy spec pilot — a walled city-state, a vampire queen, a political marriage meant to end a century of war — written during COVID lockdown with no exec giving notes and no deadline forcing cuts. Jesse’s own introduction to it on the site calls it “a bit over-written” and more about building a world to escape into than a production-ready draft. That’s an honest description, and it’s also exactly why it works as a teaching example: nothing here has been smoothed by a script editor. The craft is doing its job in the raw, with the seams still visible.
Below are the pilot’s first three pages, unedited, with numbered notes tying specific lines to specific pages in this reference library.
FADE IN:
EXT. KORMOR CITY – AERIAL SHOT – NIGHT
Craggy mountains loom over a remote valley where a walled city sleeps. Kormor Kirak, built in the style of Dubrovnik and Nordlingen. Cobblestone streets lined with peaked roof buildings evoke old-world charm. A fairytale-like castle to rival Neuschwanstein dominates the city’s skyline.1
EXT. THEATER OF EVERLASTING PEACE – KORMOR CITY – NIGHT
Abandoned for the evening. Under construction and thirty percent complete. When it’s done, it’ll be three stories with in-the-round audience capacity for a few thousand. Wood is the material of choice.
A man in a rumpled uniform, brass buttons, epaulets enters the site with a crate of Molotov Cocktails.
His name is Feeney, thirties, hair mussed, panicked. Nobody is around to watch him light the wicks of the bottle bombs, and throw them one after another at the vulnerable structure.
Feeney watches wild-eyed as the flames spread. When it’s clear the site will burn to ash, he moves away with purpose.
Through clockwork eyes, a hooded figure watches him run. With a faint hydraulic hiss and grind of gears, this Automatic Assassin of steampunk technology pursues Feeney.2
INT. ALBION CONSULATE – KORMOR CITY – NIGHT
Feeney enters and SLAMS the DOOR, locks it with a crossbar. He moves to a part of the room where the plans for the Theater are pinned to a bulletin board. Various folders and files suggest this is where the construction job is managed.
Feeney sets the board ablaze, watches the plans catch fire, then races to the back of the room and an official-looking desk, behind which a complex vault door is set into the wall.
At the desk, Feeney types madly on the keys of an arcane coding machine, generating a paper strip of encrypted text.3
EXT. ALBION CONSULATE – KORMOR CITY – NIGHT
The Automatic Assassin arrives before the two-story building. A placard identifies the: ALBION CONSULATE. The seal of the Albion Empire features a magnificent Griffin wielding two swords as it stands guard above a euro-style capital city.
With a metal hand, the Assassin tries the door, locked.
INT. ALBION CONSULATE – KORMOR CITY – CONTINUOUS
Feeney glances at the RATTLING DOOR then hurries to finish his coded message when WHAM! The outer door is struck with enough inhuman force to bend the metal crossbar.
Feeney yanks the message from the machine and runs for a staircase to the upper floor as, WHAM! The crossbar snaps, and the outer door shatters inward.
As Feeney runs up the stairs, he sees the Automatic Assassin enter through the ruined door, raising a pneumatic crossbow. Feeney ducks as several bolts strike the wall and banister, one pierces his shoulder, but he keeps on running, desperate.4
EXT. ROOF DECK – ALBION CONSULATE – KORMOR CITY – NIGHT
Feeney bursts from the access door and makes haste for a Pigeon Coop. He enters, quickly sealing the coded message in the chest capsule of a Homing Pigeon.
As Feeney exits the coop to release the bird, the Assassin clatters through the access door, deadly crossbow in hand.
Feeney turns his back, taking two arrows meant for the bird. As he crumples to his knees, Feeney releases the entire pigeon flock from the coop, tossing his bird up to join them.5
We abandon Feeney to his fate and fly away with his Pigeon.
EXT. SKY – FLYING AWAY FROM KORMOR CITY – DAWN
The Homing Pigeon flaps, surrounded by the other birds, several arrows meant for it, find them instead. As those birds drop away, the flock rises above the walled city.
The construction site burns, illuminating nearby buildings and streets with a flickering glow. Peaked roof ridges cast jagged shadows that stretch toward that ominous castle.
The flock rises into a stormy sky, enveloped by dark clouds.
// Where the setup in note 3 pays off
PAGE 6 — four pages later“Barron finds a Messenger Boy running up to him, hand outstretched to deliver a familiar message capsule. Barron accepts, unlocking it with a signet ring, he withdraws the message. As his eyes scan the code, his mood darkens.”
PAGE 47 — forty-five pages laterKOSS: “You are not surprise?” BARRON: “Feeney sent me a message. Explaining what he’d done… He claimed the theater was to be exploited by the Lich Cult.”
- 1
Tone and genre stated in a single image, no dialogue required — a walled medieval city, a fairytale castle silhouette, a wood theater under construction. Gaslamp fantasy, established before anyone speaks.
First Five Pages - 2
Two characters introduced through pure behavior — an arsonist mid-crime, a clockwork assassin that hasn’t moved yet — with zero backstory paragraphs. What they’re doing tells you what they are.
First Five Pages - 3
Feeney’s WANT is two specific, opposed actions — burn the evidence, get the message out — not a vague “stop the villains.” Both are attempted on the page. This line is also the setup half of a Chekhov’s Gun: an encrypted message whose contents nobody explains yet.
WANT Framework Chekhov’s Gun - 4
Motivation, then reflex, then rational action, in that order: bolts strike the wall (motivation) → he ducks (reflex) → he keeps running, desperate (the decision). The feeling is never named — “desperate” does the work a paragraph of interiority would otherwise have to do.
Noun-Verb-Object / MRU - 5
Turning his back to take arrows meant for the bird, then releasing the whole flock as cover for the one that matters, is a specific decision with its own logic — not a spectacle beat. It’s the choice that ends the scene, not a punctuation mark after it.
Action as Decision
What this excerpt doesn’t show
Five pages can’t demonstrate a season-length arc or a structural act break. Reign of Blood has a clean Lie/Truth arc for its protagonist, a rolling-reveal sequence later in the pilot that outdoes this one, and a full series bible appended to the script itself — those are queued up as separate annotated excerpts rather than stretched thin here. This page does one thing: show five specific techniques doing real work in three real pages, back to back, in a single continuous piece of writing.
Read the whole thing
This excerpt is the opening of a 54-page pilot. The full logline, genre, and comps are on the original post — Spec TV Pilot: “Reign of Blood” →
Related pages
- How to Write the First Five Pages of a Screenplay — the checklist notes 1 and 2 are drawn from.
- The WANT Framework for Screenwriting — the four-question diagnostic behind note 3.
- What Is Chekhov’s Gun? — setup-and-payoff mechanics, with this excerpt’s payoff quoted in full.
- Noun-Verb-Object and the Motivation-Reaction Unit — the sentence-level mechanics behind note 4.
- How to Write Action Scenes: Decisions Under Pressure — the framework behind note 5.
About the author
Jesse Alexander is a screenwriter, showrunner, and narrative designer whose work spans film, television, games, and transmedia storytelling. Scribbler’s Toolbox collects practical frameworks developed from professional story development and production.