Category: Resources

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

Peggy Bechko’s Ideal Writing Space

All together now: "Awwww...."
All together now: “Awwww….”

 by Peggy Bechko

It’s near the holidays – I’m tired – kinda need a writing break so I decided I’ll talk a bit about my writing space. If you had the opportunity to visit my blog a couple of weeks back, you’d have taken my office tour http://bit.ly/1M2VdSO and seen where I hunker down to create novels, scripts, and now comics.

It’s comfortable and a great space, ever evolving. So let me tell you a little more about it. I’m fortunate in that my office is fairly large. Around 11 X 18 feet. About the time we built this house (may I add we did a lot of the work ourselves) I was ready for a real office and not a corner somewhere.

Amusingly our builder didn’t really need blueprints except for the necessary permits so he said, hey, if you let me expand the dimensions it won’t cost anything extra because you’ll save a lot in labor as we won’t have to cut every piece of wood to size. It was a bit more detailed than that, but that’s the gist. So it ended up being a bit bigger than I’d first planned which was just fine with me. read article

What It takes to Make a Hit TV Show

Believe it or not, CBS News is bringing us this article on what’s hot and what’s not on television today. We find it interesting and hope you will too, because even though CBS is generally clueless about things like this the writer seems to have the right stuff:

ready to hit

by Lauren Moraski

From “Better Call Saul” and “Orange Is the New Black” to the newly released “Master of None” on Netflix, there’s no shortage of critically-acclaimed hit shows. read article

WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP THIS IS

Curves on Hightway 1 Northern California

by Lew Ritter

The title above is a slightly altered borrowing from a tune called TRUCKIN, sung by a band popular in the 70’s called the GRATEFUL DEAD. I chose it because the best way I can think of describing my current screenwriting Odyssey is that it indeed has been long and strange.

Why have I continued to write after all these years? Years ago, I went to see the then brand new Melanie Griffith movie WORKING GIRL. My friends laughed when I told them that someday, I would write a movie script that everyone would want to see at the movies. They scoffed at the idea, but as the saying goes” revenge is a dish best served cold”. read article

Larry Brody on Characterization

Admit it. You used to love these guys, right?
Admit it. You used to love these guys, right?

The TV Writer on TV Writing
by Larry Brody

When writing for television, the key to creating a successful series is populating it with characters the audience wants to come back and see again and again. This means that the characters – especially the leads – have to be, at the least, interesting, as well as realistic. I say “at the least” because over the years I’ve found that words like “quirky” and “weird” have described some of TV’s most popular heroes.

In the ’60s, for example, we had Ironside, the wheelchair-bound detective, running a team that could help him solve any crime and capture any crook. In the ’70s there was Wonder Woman, a woman who dominated every scene of the show, and pretty much every man in it as well. The ’80s gave us the A Team and the guys on MIAMI VICE. The ’90s brought the buddies of FRIENDS and SEINFELD to the fore. And the 2000s – well, I don’t know where to begin. Every successful show for the last decade and a half has featured characters far different from your standard neighbors next door.

Notice that I haven’t said that your leads need to be likeable. Once upon a time, network executives demanded likability, but characters like ALL IN THE FAMILY’S Archie Bunker (way back in the ’70s) and NYPD BLUE’s Andy Sippowitz (a ’90s icon) cracked the mold. And more recently the casts of THE SOPRANOS, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, GAME OF THRONES, BREAKING BAD,and all the other cable network anti-heroes have totally shattered that misconception. read article

XANDER THE SLAYER: The Spec That Started Steven DeKnight’s Career

What would the Christmas season be without success stories? For that matter, what would showbiz be without them? Join us now as TVWriter™ presents the warm, uplifting tale of how Steven DeKnight went from wanna be to showrunner (of DAREDEVIL). Dude’s winnin’, y’know?

Buffycastby James Bean

If you want to work in TV, you have to prove that you can write for somebody else’s characters.This can be difficult, especially when the characters are as beloved as the ones found on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and especially when the name of your speculative episode is “Xander the Slayer.”

It’s actually a well-known rule that you shouldn’t spec a show that you want to work on for exactly this reason: Showrunners and writers know their own characters too well to judge a spec fairly. There will always be something that doesn’t sound quite right. A line of dialogue that doesn’t ring a hundred percent true. read article