Category: Resources

40 years worth of TV writing experience and info, yours for the taking.

Peggy Bechko’s 6 Reasons to Give Up Writing (?)

Pic found at soberrecovery.com for ironic reasons of our own

by Peggy Bechko

Here we are again, gang, and today I’m going to discuss the possibility with you that you just might want to stop writing, give it up, walk away, move on to other things. However you want to phrase it, maybe writing isn’t for you.

It’s too late for me, I’ve been published frequently, big houses, smaller houses, Indy publishing and scripts optioned. But, you might want to save yourself. It’s hard to make if you’ve invested a lot of yourself and your time into something that meant a lot to you but just didn’t pan out. read article

Top TV Drama Showrunners Ruminate on Life, Death, and Their Workloads

How do you spot a successful TV drama showrunner? Look for somebody “on the verge of bad health and insanity.” We’re guessing that isn’t what the folks who bring us “Writers on the Verge” mean. Or is it?

by Lacey Rose

A gathering of top showrunners can quickly devolve into a type of therapy session about dealing with audience pressures and network demands. But when this sextet — The Looming Tower’s Dan Futterman, 50; Power’s Courtney Kemp, 41; The Crown’s Peter Morgan, 55; The Handmaid‘s Tale’s Bruce Miller, 53; The Good Doctor’s David Shore, 58; and The Chi’sLena Waithe, 33 — gathered on a late-April morning for The Hollywood Reporter‘s annual Drama Showrunner Roundtable, it managed to avoid the usual subjects of writerly angst, save some musings from Morgan, who lamented a U.K. system that doesn’t nurture writers rooms as well as U.S. shows do. read article

More of ‘The Elements of Style’

A couple of days ago on TVWriter™ we mentioned the famous writing guide The Elements of Style in a perceptive article by Chuck Greenlee, a writer and student.

Today, for those who may think we didn’t emphasize the book enough, (yo, you know who you are and so do any intelligence agents reading our email) we bring you another perspective on Messers Strunk and White:

And if that still isn’t enough, here’s – well, here’s the wholemother-!@#ing book. And you don’t even have to read it: read article

Is This THE Most Common Rookie TV Writing Mistake?

Although TV and film comedy writer-producer/playwright/baseball announcer extraordinaire Ken Levine’s funny and perceptive blog posts often show up in TVWriter™’s Writing & Showbiz NewsFeed, we haven’t featured him on this site for awhile.

But this one is just too, too, too right on important to let slip by:

A Common Rookie Writing Mistake
by Ken Levine

EXT. HOUSE — DAY read article

TV Writer-Producer Nell Scovell Talks Career

…And the lady definitely is worth listening too (even if she does also – OMG! – direct). Here’s some straight talk from the creator of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and writer for The Simpsons, Late Night with David Letterman and many more :

Ms. Scovell’s memoir, Just the Funn Parts:…And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood boys’ Club is ready and waiting for you to buy it HERE