screenwriters, tv writers, talk in terms of "breaking a story," and I think about this, sans narrative, as being like breaking the spine of a book (yes, I'm a spine breaker, got to keep it open with my hands full!), the point where you really get inside your project and figure out how it lays out *completely* and the major ramifications of that

although breaking a story in film or tv is an early stage, for me, when my projects break, I'm usually part way in, but I may not have committed to working hard on a particular project because I haven't "broken it" yet

so I would say the stage of film & tv writing I'm at when I begin to write would translate to having an outline and a beat sheet of a screenplay; after it is broken, it is "all execution" -- just finishing it, revising it, finding a spot for it to be