Category: Resources

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

Diana Black: Want to Capture & Hold TV Viewers? Write a Mystery!

by Diana Black

Have you played the ‘mystery’ board game “Clue” or the code breaking “Master Mind? What of the ‘super sleuth’ created by the novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes – now a franchise with movies, TV shows and video games. What about the plethora of other computer games and television programs all associated with… you guessed it – solving mysteries?

Focusing on ‘the little screen’ – television and more broadly, the web, which now ‘delivers’ across a diverse array of media platforms, writing in this genre ensures you’ll always have an audience eager for more IF your writing delivers an excruciatingly intense mystery and the screenplay itself, being a ‘page-turner’. read article

Charlie Kaufman’s Writing Advice

If you could follow the path and pick the brain of just one writer, who would it be? This TVWriter™ minion would go with Charlie Kaufman, writer of Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Adaptation over anybody else I can think of.

Here’s why:

Big gracias to BAFTA Guru for putting this on YouTube.

Did You Know that ‘Smilf’ Started as a Short Film?

Believe it or not, not only was an earlier version of this season’s latest breakthrough TV series a short film, it is far from the only show that started that way. Who says your short script has to be an end in itself?

ALTERNATE ROUTES: Using Short Films to Develop Your Stories
by Marty Lang

Every now and then, I’m lucky enough to find a movie or television show with a new storytelling voice that blows me away. I had a moment like that last week when I watched the pilot of the new Showtime series SMILF. The half-hour dramedy, written, directed and produced by lead actress Frankie Shaw (MR. ROBOT), is a hilarious, fearless story about a single mother in South Boston, and her struggles to balance motherhood, family, career and a fulfilling sex life. It really hit me as something with a singular vision.

After digging online, I was surprised to learn that SMILF started as a short film. Shaw also wrote, directed and starred in the short, which tells the story of a single mom trying to have sex with her boyfriend – while her baby sleeps next to them in the same bed. The film won the 2015 Short Film Jury Award at Sundance, which got Showtime’s attention, leading to the show. And it all came from Shaw taking matters into her own hands. read article

9 Series Bosses on the Challenges of Rebooting Beloved Properties

This is worthwhile reading, even if you’re one of those (erm, kind of like this TVWriter™ minion), who’s anti-reboot. Because in this business you just might encounter a situation where you can make a shit ton of $$$ by doing something you don’t like. (Gasp!?)

by Craig Tomashoff

There’s no clear consensus about the origins of the phrase ‘Everything old is new again.’ But whoever coined it must surely have been working as a television programming executive at the time. This season’s schedule — filled with a wide variety of reboots, sequels, and spinoffs that have taken previously popular shows and updated them for a 2017 audience — is all the proof you need. Producers, showrunners, and stars share the challenges and changes they faced when it came to getting these born-again series on the air. read article

S.W.A.T. Creator Shawn Ryan got started as a radio station ad man

Most of us here at TVWriter™ are beginning or aspiring writers, which means that we’re insatiably curious about how more established and successful writers got their start. This article from Adweek gives us the skinny on the not-so-secret origin of writer-producer Shawn Ryan. We hope it inspires you as much as it has us.

Is this what you thought Shawn Ryan (left) looked like?

by Jason Lynch

The Shield was one of the most groundbreaking series of the past two decades, putting FX on the map while proving that envelope-pushing dramas about antiheroes could thrive on cable outside of HBO. However, creator Shawn Ryan says the show, along with his many others, may have never existed without the skills he learned during his first job as a copywriter for a Vermont radio station.

Ryan, who is now the showrunner on CBS’ new reboot of S.W.A.T., graduated from Vermont’s Middlebury College before landing his first postschool gig, writing ads for a Top 40 radio station in Burlington, filling in for someone on maternity leave. read article