Writing for television

We have a series at school that they call cinemateque that is screenings with discussions held about 6 times each semester. Everyone in the department is required to go to at least 2. I think I did 4 this term because they're really quite interesting most of the time. The last one of the semester was on Friday with a woman who writes for television. We screened episodes from 2 very different shows that she's written for and then had a great Q&A with her. One of my friends asked what she talked about and after I realized there's probably several friends who might find this interesting.

Ok, let's see, interesting things I learned: The show runner is the boss of all the writers and it's "their" show in terms of what stories get told and how. They are also high up on the Producer track as well. They produce the whole show. If you're in the middle level of the writing hierarchy you produce your episodes. If you're at the bottom you don't produce at all, you just write. And you write an episode and get credit for that, but you don't always do the rewrites and edits. 

In cable usually the notes (comments back from higher ups for rewrites) are usually fairly streamlined. In network you'll go through lots of rounds of notes. The show runner, or the show runner's second in command, then the executive producers, then the studio, then the network. So if you're a lower level of writer you might do the first round of notes but not the later ones or you might not get to do any of the revisions at all. She said the collaborative nature is often one of the hardest things to get used to because in school you never have to write with other people. 

She talked about ways writers can get jobs once they get to LA (someone asked during the Q&A) which was mostly the same advice we all get: network, and make friends, and help your friends when you can, work hard, be pleasant, get a reputation as a hard working pleasant person, and practice your craft a lot. Which echos what we were talking about in both Directing and Thesis Prep this week and is similar to what Rhodes said in the article. If you love something just do it and do it and do it. My teachers were comparing filmmaking to being a musician. There is a pretty well respected music school just down the street, but when those kids finish there they won't feel like they're done now, they will keep practicing all the time. They will play their instrument every day. Partly because it's what they love and partly because it's the only way to get better. In film school you graduate and you are a filmmaker and you try to get a job but that might take a while. And between jobs people are often not doing anything "because they haven't got a job". And so my teachers were like, don't ever be not making a film. Even if it's a crappy film. Even if you haven't got funding or resources for a big film or a good film, make practice films. I was doing that before I got here so I get what they're saying. My classmates are sometime saying, oh you've got so much experience. Well, it's just because I went out and did it even when it was just crappy little internet films with me and my dog. My directing teacher was saying don't be afraid to fail, that's where the best learning comes from. 

But I digress. So the show runner has the idea for the whole show and determines what the bigger arc of the season is going to be. Then they sit in the writer's room - which it sounds like is a big open office sort of area - and individual writers will pitch ideas for individual episodes until they've picked what each episode is going to be. Then they "break the script" where they sit as a group and figure out what all the beats are for the episode, a bit like writing an outline. Once that's done the writer who pitched it will get to go off and write it up. Then it starts up the food chain for review and revisions. As things trickle up to the network sometimes they'll get notes back that result in an entire episode getting scrapped. Then they have to scramble at the last minute to write a whole new episode and tweak any subsequent episodes if it impacts the larger story line. She said she was working on a 7 episode arc for a character whose mother and sister had breast cancer and who was trying to decide if she should get the genetic test done. The plan was she'd get the test about 2/3 through the season and it would come back positive and the last 1/3 of the season would be dealing with it. (This was the show about the therapist.) And then the studio came back and said, no we want her to test negative. She'll be healthy. Um... ok... so that changed all her thinking about it. And she did it, and she didn't seem mad about it, and she said she liked working on the show. I guess it's a mindset. You've been hired to tell a certain story, so you tell the story they want you to tell. None of these were "her" characters. When she got the job they were already in season 3 so the therapist was well established. And they said ok you're going to write the 7 episodes with the ageing actress, here's what we've already decided about her, go. So when we see network television and in the second half of the season there's an episode that doesn't make much sense or isn't as good as all the others that's probably why. Late in the game the episode that was supposed to go there got pulled and they quick threw something together.

She talked a little about the structure of writing for network. It's usually a teaser and 4 or 5 acts and you always have to "act out". All the little cliff hangers that lead into the commercial breaks. It's very rigid and very formulaic.