Category: Productivity

How Do TV Writers Develop Episode Plots?

The following is a more pragmatic take on the whole coming up with TV ideas thing. What do you think?

Kate Powers' coolest credit - writing RECTIFY
Kate Powers’ coolest credit – writing RECTIFY

by Kate Powers

It’s not uncommon for a writing staff to use a visual reference tool to track the breaking of one or more episodes. I’ve pretty much only worked in rooms where we favored 3-by-5 index cards on 3-by-4 cork boards, but many shows prefer white boards, or in some cases magnetized white boards and dry erase “tiles” that function like cork boards. A lot of the time, this is in addition to the near-constant note-taking of writers’ assistants.

It’s nearly impossible to hold all the ideas under discussion in your head for the week or two (or three) it takes to break an episode. When an idea lands, adding it to an external, physical list of known beats means that’s one less thing for writers to remember as they continue to discuss variation iterations. (Typically the most senior person—the showrunner, if she’s in the room, or her second in command if she’s not—decides if an idea has “landed,” but it’s usually pretty consensual. There’s a sense that the whole room likes that version and wants to see where it leads.) read article

Where Do Your Story Ideas Come From?

And now, a day devoted to continuing Peggy Bechko’s discusson of where ideas come from…cuz let’s face it, for most of us getting great ideas sounds a lot easier than it is.

stories.indiewireby Tambay A. Obenson

Recalling my recent interview with Ernest Dickerson, and the part of the conversation about black filmmakers dipping into a broader pool of stories as well as genres, taking risks, tackling material that’s off the beaten path, instead of following to the so-called path of least resistance when it comes to what Hollywood expects of black cinema (assuming Hollywood is your eventual goal)…

It all got me thinking about how we (black filmmakers) settle on the stories that we want to tell; what inspires them; where we look to find them, etc… read article

Can Creativity Be Taught?

Offhand, we’d say no. But the offhand way may not be appropriate…or creative. Hope somebody comes along to teach us a more fitting way. Kinda like this:

Teaching-CreativityTeaching Creativity: Born That Way or Waiting for the Muse?
by Josephine Scicluna

Recently one of my Masters students, a filmmaker from the Czech Republic, told me his friends back at home were completely baffled that he was in Australia studying creative writing. You were either creative or you were not, they told him. It wasn’t something you could be taught. Although not voiced in such an emphatic way by my undergraduate students, I’ve still encountered many who hold the suspicion that maybe it’s all just fluff.

What I’ve come to understand is that teaching creativity is not about dishing out a set of instructions how to do it, but much more about helping students to identify the kinds of situations or conditions they need for this receptiveness to occur. From there, they can learn to harness this creativity in exciting ways. But first I have to deal with the resistances. read article

LB: March TVWriter™ Advanced Workshop has One Opening

lbwriterbiggerMaybe.

Nothing’s certain in this world, not even the number of students who will be taking the TVWriter™ Advanced Workshop that starts March 26th, a week from today.

Which means that regardless of where we end up with the students who’ve already said they’re signing on, I’m looking for 1 more to round out the class, so if you’ve been in one of the 147 (or is it 148?) 4-week sessions we’ve already had over the past 15 years and want to come back, as so many have, or have been thinking about taking it but haven’t fully committed yet, now seems like a good time to ease on in. read article

Cartoon: THE SECRET

Cuz as far as we can see ferreting out this particular secret is the reason so many of us write:

thesecret-web

More Grant Snider Brilliance at Incidental Comics