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Writing a feature film is easy. All you need is one gimmicky logline, as cheap and single-serving-disposable as a coffee pod from the complimentary hotel room K-Cup spinner. Once you stumble upon one of these so-called “high concept” ideas, the script practically writes, sells and produces itself. It’s creative work for stupid babies, as all filmmakers will surely agree–totally unlike, in other words, the act of conceptualizing an entire episodic series, a demonstration of storytelling virtuosity so complex and adult it straddles the border between ancient Euclidean geometry and New Age witchcraft.

Okay, so maybe that’s a little extreme. But for aspiring series creators and showrunners, structuring a workable, potentially long-running television concept requires imagination and problem-solving on both the micro- and macro- levels–a mastery of tone, plot and characterization across variable interlocking units of temporal storytelling: scenes, dramatic acts, full episodes, multi-episode arcs and complete seasons.

Exclusive: Film Independent has named the eight writers selected for the seventh edition of its Episodic Lab, designed to provide individualized story and career development for writers with original pilots for television. The participants and projects are Desdemona Chiang (Zhizha! (紙紮!)), Giovanni Maldonado Chinea & Myles Hawthorne (The Machetero), Robert Cohen & Ioana Uricaru (Overcast), Catherine Durickas (Beige Is Not Dead), Azza Malik and Robert ToTeras (Jourdain).

Cohen and Uricaru have been set to receive this year’s $20,000 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant, awarded to projects with science or technology themes and characters, to support the development of their pilot Overcast through the Lab. Dear Azza,‘s Malik, meanwhile, will receive a $10,000 grant from the Mpac Hollywood Bureau, an organization working to elevate stories by and about Muslims in entertainment.

This year’s two-week, in-person Lab will help to further the careers of Fellows by introducing them to industry veterans — including experienced showrunners,...