#television writing

[friendshiptothemax]

I was on a plane this weekend, and I was chatting with the woman sitting next to me about an upcoming writer’s strike. “Do you really think you’re mistreated?” she asked me.

That’s not the issue at stake here. Let me tell you a little something about “minirooms.”

Minirooms are a way of television writing that is becoming more common. Basically, the studio will hire a small group of writers, 3-6 or so, and employ them for just a few weeks. In those few weeks (six weeks seem to be common), they have to hurriedly figure out as much about the show as they can -- characters, plots, outlines for episodes. Then at the end of the six weeks, all the writers are fired except for the showrunner, who has to write the entire series themselves based on the outlines.

This is not a widespread practice, but it has become more common over the past couple of years. Studios like it because instead of paying for a full room for the full length of the show, they just pay a handful of writers for a fraction of the show. It’s not a huge problem now, but the WGA only gets the chance to make rules every three years -- if we let this go for another three years and it becomes the norm? That would be DEVASTATING for the tv writing profession.

Do I feel like I’m mistreated? No. I LOVE my job! But in a world of minirooms, there is no place for someone like me -- a mid-level writer who makes a decent living working on someone else’s show (I’d like to be a showrunner someday, but for now I feel like I still have a lot to learn, and my husband and I are trying to start a family so I like not being support rather than the leader for now). In a miniroom, there are only two levels -- the handful of glorified idea people who are already scrambling to find their next show because you can’t make a decent living off of one six-week job (and since there are fewer people per room, there are fewer jobs overall, even at the six-week amount), and the overworked, stressed as fuck showrunner who is going to have to write the entire thing themselves. Besides being bad for me making a living, I also just think it’s plain bad for television as an art form -- what I like about TV is how adaptable it is, how a whole group of people come together to tell a story better than what any of them could do on their own. Plus the showrunner can’t do their best work under all of that pressure, episode after episode, back to back. Minirooms just...fucking suck.

The WGA is proposing two things to fix this -- a rule that writers have to be employed for the entire show, and a rule tying the number of writers in the room to the number of episodes you have per season. I don’t think it’s unreasonable. It’s the way shows have run since the advent of television. It’s only in the last couple of years that this has become a new thing. It’s exploitative. It squeezes out everyone except showrunners and people who have the financial means to work only a few months a year. It makes television worse. And that is the issue in this strike that means everything to me, and that is why I voted yes on the strike authorization vote.

[queer-whatchamacallit]

When Carmy goes to that party with Claire in 2x05, Kyle “busted for having fun” J something comes up to the them, and his first words are “Carm? Kyle, KJ! We were on wrestling, bro!”

And holy shit of all the sports Carmy could have done in high school, wrestling is the perfect choice

I can definitely see Mike being into professional wrestling, so of course that would plant a seed in Carmy’s head

His family is pretty physical with each other, never seeming to pass by each other without a hand reaching out to pat on the back or shoulder, so I feel like he wouldn’t be too bothered by it being a contact sport

I actually think he’d really like that part. I’ve seen it described that contact sports feel a lot higher stakes, so it’s easier to switch your brain off and go into survival mode which is what Carmy always seems to strive for

I think he’s had food issues for a while, and I think fitting into weight classes would feel like, in his mind, a good reason to lean into his disordered eating habits. Before cooking, wrestling was his point of obsession, and he molded himself to fit it

Idk yeah, just a damn good writing decision that I can’t stop thinking about even though it was literally one throw away line

[matt0044]

While it is interesting to bemoan the lack of filler for a chance...

...I'm not sure if that makes for a good conversation about pacing.

See, I often want to just a show based less on what it could be if XYZ external factors were different like how many episode per season.

Can they convey the stories they wish to tell within 26 episodes per season or 13 episode per season? 10 can seem pretty tight and is becoming the norm.

There's also how some shows seem keen to, rightfully, assume that their show will be lucky to make two seasons. Thus there will likely be a sense that a plotline that could've been delegated for a future season but too many are aware of how companies are allergic to paying taxes like "peasents.

Even so.

While we can take Streaming to task for not giving show even the bare minimum of thirteen episodes, what I care about it how well the creative teams manage with the hand they are dealt with.

Can this "eight hour movie" pace itself well?

Can it feel like a chapter book where its it real page-turner?

Does it know what ideas are important to keep?

Can it give itself time for the characters to just be before the next big plot beat?

Can it juggle characterization with plot progression? A lot of stories are actually more about a character's decisions than just things that happen to them.

I get that good pacing is something terribly hard to judge when pacing itself is only noticeable when it's bad, when it jars you out of the immersion of storytelling. But I feel like if we want to appreciate storytelling better, I think we need to actively be more conscious about these sort of things.

[cancmbyn]

I think I’ve posted this before - but it bears repeating.

Scary stuff if you’re a CEO.

From Michael Levine on Twitter

Yesterday, I posted something that suggested studios would be better off replacing executives with AI rather than writers. Alex Winkler decided to consult an expert on this question: ChatGPT. Here is what our friendly neighborhood robot had to say.

[fansplaining]

Episode 207: Paul Cornell

In Episode 207, “Paul Cornell,” Flourish and Elizabeth talk to the eponymous writer (of a bazillion different things) (seriously, look at his Wikipedia) about his journey from fan to pro—and about continuing to be a deeply fannish pro. Topics discussed include how his Doctor Who fanfiction became both an official novel and a pair of episodes on the show, the enormous flurry of creative fandom activity in the 15 years Doctor Who wasn’t on TV, depicting fans in a loving way while writing on Elementary, and, among his many current projects, Con & On, a comic that chronicles the changes over the years at a totally 100% fictional large comic-book convention in Southern California. 

Click through to our site to listen or read a full transcript!

[omnivorouscinephilia]

I’m honestly shocked that The Idol (Sam Levinson, 2023-) is seen as so shocking considering how bland and tepid it is. It feels like someone wanted to remake Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1998) but got lost along the way and ended up with 50 Shades of Hannah Montana, in the same way, that not only are its touted sex/kink scenes shockingly chaste and bland but also feels as substantive as a gormless sitcom meant to sell you a soundtrack (the Weekend interjects has a few self-insert needle drops throughout). The show's most obnoxious sin, like a bad children’s show, is that it frequently has characters deliver exposition that in turn informs important characterization, often indicating that they should’ve been depicted as part of the narrative proper, or announcing what commentary they are attempting. Characters try to sell us on the depth of the material, and why we should care, often in a cynical way as to say “this is what you should be talking about,” like a rather crass evocation of Brittney Spears in the first episode. 

Like the paparazzi with Spears, there is a lecherous survey of Joss’ (Depp) body present in almost every sequence she is on screen, but only in as much as it is being sold to us as sexy or broken. When it is not a temple for heroin chic fetishism, there are some decent attempts to show the damage her endless physical labor does to her, as emphasized by a sequence where we see the bleeding callouses and bandages on her feet. Yet frequently, her body is meant to be a sight for erotic titillation, her personality vacuous beyond unironic “cool girl” talking points that there is little else to focus on according to the series but her physique. It is almost as comically puritanical as some of its most vocal detractors, as any real depiction of sex is off-screen or so tepid that you imagine these are the fantasies of men who only know sex from the pornos they watched when they were teens in the nineties. Campion, Lynch, Cronenberg, and the Wachowskis were doing wilder erotic depictions decades ago.

What The Idol appears to be most substantively about are petty grievances against those who have slighted Sam Levinson in the past, i.e. an intimacy coordinator and women with authority. In the much-touted intimacy coordinator scene, wherein they are seen as obstructing Joss’ bodily autonomy (it’s conservatively clever, you almost have to applaud it), they are locked up in a bathroom by her manager Chaim (Azaria). This unintentionally sets up a throughline in the series where Joss keeps going against prior legal agreements. In this case, the intimacy rider for what she does and does not want to do, which the coordinator even states that they can redo and begin work again the next day. This paints Joss as indecisive and unprofessional, which the show seems to agree with, but also believes that what she needs is strong (patriarchal) guidance after her mother’s death. Her older woman manager Nikki (Jane Adams) is seen as a cruel taskmaster who wants to drop her at the earliest opportunity, and several women with power over Joss are seen as temperamental and unprofessional (like the director at the music video shoot). Whenever Joss needs comforting she either finds it in the arms of a man (usually Chaim, sometimes Tedros (a charisma-leaching Weeknd) away from a woman who was stressing her out. When it is not a man, it is a black woman (Destiny (Randolph)) effectively acting as her mammy. 

Speaking of race, there are some off dynamics at work. A brief torture scene in the second episode feature Tedros electroshocking Izaak (Sumney) when he fails to perform to his liking. Izaak is surrounded by white women, watching him gyrating above them, as Tedros continually hurts him. In effect, it is a scene of a light-skinned black man brutalizing a dark-skinned black man, seemingly for his own amusement and that of the white women. Further demonstrating this colorism, shots with Izaak are frequently so underlit that they obscure his features. True the show’s look is that of a low-rent neo-noir pastiche, but certainly some creative lighting could have mitigated the problem while also giving the series a better visual identity than what it has.

The fact it is so dour while unintentionally hilarious makes the series perversely entertaining, but exclusively in terms of ironic aesthetic enjoyment, divorced from its repressible messaging and politics. The style is likewise nothing to write home about, functional without much expressiveness. It seems at points most of the more expressive stylistic techniques like quick cutting and panning shots are used to obscure poor dancing quality from Depp. Otherwise, the bare minimum in terms of composition and structure is just around barely subpar. 

Seeing as the series is intended as a limited run, I do not think it will overcome these hurdles in the long run. However, I do believe in at least seeing where the series goes from this point. Odder situations have happened than a series becoming good after the first third, so we shall see.

[writergeekrhw]

My favourite novel is Catch-22, and my favourite (non-DS9 show) is M*A*S*H.

Would love to hear your favourites, as you're hands-down one of my favourite tv writers.

Those are both on my lists. I have a lot of trouble picking just one thing as my favorite, but five things worth reading/watching off the top of my head:

READ:

"Red Harvest" - Dashell Hammett

"A Wizard of Earthsea" - Ursula K. LeGuin

"Heart of Darkness" - Joseph Conrad

"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" - Robert Heinlein

"A Canticle for Leibowitz" - Walter M. Miller, Jr.

WATCH:

"The Wire" (the series not the DS9 ep)

"The Rockford Files"

"Breaking Bad"

"The Good Place"

"Episodes"

HONORABLE MENTION - READ AND WATCH:

"Closely Watched Trains" - Bohumil Hrabal

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

As a follow-up to my let people use fanfiction as narrative therapy post I would also like to state for the record:

Ain’t nothing wrong with self insert fanfiction. Or Mary Sue OCs that are basically self inserts. Also nothing wrong with people writing ‘bad’ fanfiction that has nothing to do with the canon really. I don’t give a shit. People are making art and that’s awesome. I may not read stuff that isn’t to my personal tastes, but I am Glad people are making their art regardless. Especially young people. Especially people who are otherwise new to writing. Hell yeah, Make Art.

One thing I have noticed about fandom on tumblr is that in very large fandoms with mass appeal, there are often a lot of kids and youths and young folk watching or reading and thus wanting to create transformative art about it. This also means that a high concentration of fic may tend more towards having less to do with the actual canon of the thing and being more focused on whatever those kids really wanted to write or read about it. To discuss one specific example, the largest subsection of fandom that currently exists around the DC batman franchises on this site is the batfam fandom, a fandom comprised mostly of younger fans who are fans more of the platonic ideal of batman and his adopted kids and close associates that only really exists in their own works and also the webtoon**** For most of those people the appeal is the found family aspect, and that’s what they want to read and write about. Hell yeah. Good for them. At least they’re writing. At least they’re making art.

****I know there are a lot of people in the batman comics fandom that have serious issues with the webtoon and the way that dc comics publishing agendas have begun to reflect more what people on the internet are talking about and less coherent storytelling that makes sense based on past canon. And this is a very fair criticism.

But this is not a problem limited to dc. This is a problem of all major production companies who produce art for mass release. TV shows being written in response to what people say on reddit has been ruining creative endeavors in an obvious way at least since Game of Thrones was airing. Books being published based on what will be popular on tiktok derived from the popularity of some frankly terrible novels (yes I do mean acotar) leads to some absolute drivel on the best seller list. Of course the comics industry is also fucking things up the same way.

Your enemy there are not the young fans new to fandom who are just discovering writing fanfiction and doing so by writing about whatever interests them most. Please stop blaming kids and other people who aren’t writing fanfiction close enough to your concept of canon for this problem, it is far bigger than that.

Let people make their maybe bad art in peace. Everyone has to make bad art on the road to learning how to make better art. I am glad they are making their art regardless.

Also no shade meant to those fans this is just an observation and I wish you all well, but I do find it a little funny that the people who Are experts on the dc comics canon who I have seen criticize the existence of the batfam fandom on here are also usually like ‘this is my favorite character, I hate every single run this character has ever been in except this one from 30 years ago and five panels of this one run that got cancelled early.’ Like, you don’t really like most of the canon you wish other people would familiarize themselves with right? Give new fans a chance to want to learn more about it. Most of the fans in that circle are pretty young, they’re gonna have kinda bad taste sometimes and that’s fine and good actually. They’ll grow out of it and maybe some of them will come to know the comics canon more closely.

This is also why even though I am vocal about personally disliking the works of SJM (acotar my beloathed) and its impact on the publishing industry, I am honestly happy for anyone that read those books and enjoyed them. Same for every other book I don’t like. If you read it and get something out of it hell yeah good for you. I was unironically into twilight for many years as a teen I am not here to pass judgement on teens or anyone for that matter for what they enjoy.

Most big fandoms I have dipped my toes into have this same problem. If there are a lot of young people in that fandom, there’s gonna be a lot of fanfic that is written by people just learning to write, and that’s great, I love that actually, good for them. But those are always the fandoms where I see people being perhaps more vitriolic than necessary towards other fans for not being up to snuff. Let people make art that you don’t think is good, please. It’s fine actually. If you don’t like it you don’t have to read it. Just be glad someone is making art that makes them happy and move on.

[misterparadigm]

Emerging Tech: The Entropy of Human Expression

While chatting with my TA, whose major is Human-Computer Interaction, she introduced me to a term called the "dark trend." It refers to this:

"While building user interfaces, some designers come up with ways to make a task look easier and efficient, tricking people to choose it while hiding the fallbacks of it."

This conversation started when I mentioned issues regarding how emerging tech is allowing "professionals" to circumvent the fundamentals of craft in creating various forms of art. It's my estimation that we're in the middle of a long trend in many fields where hasty tech advancements are diluting genuine skill-building, and we're even seeing weak television writing due to the clone-of-a-clone effect where the writers are building characters not based on reality, but based on how characters in their favorite shows behave.

Sometimes it seems we're seeing the entropy of human expression.

[heliza24]

If you didn’t know, The Writers Guild of America, the union that represents every writer that works on every American television series that you love (and also all American movie screenwriters) is about to go on strike. It will start Monday at midnight unless a contract is reached, which seems unlikely. I think this article does a great job of summarizing how tenuous a career tv writing has become and how the shift to streaming, mini rooms, shortened contracts, etc have left many talented writers financially strapped.

It’s very possible that the next season of your fandom show is going to be delayed. Some shows might be cancelled. But it’s really important that we support the people who create the worlds that we love. I’m excited that this strike has the potential to make peoples lives a lot better, and you should be too.

[coruscantiscribbler]

Andor

I started a rewatch of Andor last night because it’s just that good. And what struck me as I watched the first episode was how brilliantly Tony Gilroy set up the world, the characters, and most importantly the themes.

Pilots are bitchingly difficult to write. (Trust me, I know). They have to do so much work -- introduce the characters, introduce the world, introduce the problem. Often they feel disconnected and jerky, but as I rewatched Kassa last night I realized that Gilroy sets up everything that is going to pay off throughout the entire season and particularly in that final, breathtaking finale.

This is an example of a terrific pilot episode, and if you want to watch another try the opening episode of Pitch. The show ultimately failed, but that was one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen.

[friendshiptothemax]

I'm thinking of going into writing for TV (after the strike of course) but I only have a humanities bachelor degree. Currently I work as a writing teacher and tutor. What steps should I take to break into the industry?

I go over some of this in my sticky post, so please check that out for more info and links. But in a nutshell?

— Learn the craft of TV writing. My favorite TV writing book is Pam Douglas’ “Writing the TV Drama Series.” There are also great podcasts like ones by John August and Craig Mazin. Watch episodes of your favorite show and take notes — I would write down the content of every scene, and then study the structure. Read their scripts and study those too. Work on your scripts, workshop then with your friends. When you’re ready, send them in to reputable contests and fellowships for feedback.

— Get on set however you can. Start making film friends. Move to LA or NYC (sorry, I know, I know, easier said than done, but it’s the truth) and begin building a network of friends and co-workers in the industry who support you and are supported by you. A grad school program can help kickstart this but is by no means necessary.

My bachelors is in English and Outdoor Leadership, and I worked as a writing tutor and education specialist so truly we have almost the same background haha :)

[mdsohag09]

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[larrywilmore]

Show don't tell!

Writer/producer David Hemingson & I agree...to bring authenticity, emotion & intimacy to characters & stories for television it's much better to show than tell. Resist that urge to tell more!

Listen to our full conversation on @Spotify

[easy2buy44]

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[writergeekrhw]

hi, i’m a huge fan of ds9! ive noticed that some ds9 episodes were originally pitched and/or written by people who were not on the ds9 writing staff. i believe bryan fuller’s first tv writing credit was for a ds9 episode he wrote. what was it like working on the scripts written by these “outsiders”? did you find that they sometimes had trouble grasping the voices of the characters? did these writers challenge you to think about the characters and situations in new ways?

We used a lot of freelancers back on DS9. That was the practice back then. Shows had small staffs, did a ton of episodes, and relied on freelance scripts to fill the gaps.

Working with freelancers was a somewhat mixed bag, to be honest. Many of the people we worked with were getting their very first script, and that means the scripts were often pretty raw and needed a lot of reworking by the staff. A lot of time, tone and voice were the issues there, but also lack of the experience needed to execute to our standards. This wasn't a huge issue for us, though, because we expected to have to clean up those scripts and built that into our work schedules.

That said, freelancers also sometimes delivered spectacularly (for example, Lisa Klink's great freelance script got her a spot on VOYAGER). And they often brought fresh and exciting ideas for episodes we never would have come up with on our own, like Toni Marberry & Jack Travino for "Little Green Men."

Overall, I liked having freelancers contribute, and I think the death of the freelance episode in TV is sad, even if it's understandable.