Category: Resources

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

How MASTER OF NONE Co-Creator Alan Yang Breaks a Story

Well, he breaks it by fixing it, of course. Isn’t that what story-breaking is all about? Making the story work?

by Joe Berkowitz

The opening credits on most TV shows often come with a side order of lies. The main offender is the “written-by” credit. It’s a suspiciously narrow designation that suggests one or possibly two story-artisans painstakingly handcrafted every plot-point, every turn, and every string of sparkling banter that make up the episode all on their own. Barring some exceptions, what actually happens is an entire writers room full of interlocking personality types forms like a comedy Voltron to pitch and polish ideas until one or two writers have enough material to go off and write up a draft. It’s a process that’s known as breaking a story, and it is incredibly difficult to do.

One person who knows more about it than most, though, is Alan Yang. read article

Larry Brody on Scene Construction

ConstructionWorkers

The TV Writer on TV Writing
by Larry Brody

Scenes are more than signposts on your way to the end of the screenplay road. They’re more than just moments in which story or character points are thrown out at the viewer or reader. A good scene in a screen or teleplay — and by good I mean EFFECTIVE in terms of getting the response you want — is a mini-film in itself, with a beginning, middle, and end.

Scenes need to be structured so that their intensity grows and then climaxes, like microcosms of your script. (And, I think it’s clear, sex too – but we’re not going there right now.)

This doesn’t mean that a scene should go on and on. far from it. read article

How YOU’RE THE WORST Creator Stephen Falk Got Where He Is

…Instead of staying where he was, which, it turns out, was as a reality TV episode re-capper. Listen closely, future showrunners:

by Michelle Lanz & Elizabeth Nonemaker

Writer and producer Stephen Falk has probably never wanted for inspirational material. His career has run the gamut of Hollywood experiences, from writing episode recaps of reality TV shows, to working on a successful show like “Weeds,” to having the rug pulled under him midway through filming his debut series, “Next Caller.” read article

Peggy Bechko Reminds Us that It’s “Time to Write”

writing-time

by Peggy Bechko

Okay, the end of the year is coming. No doubt we’re all feeling a bit crunched for time. It’s just a seasonal thing.

Or is it?

Writers almost always are performing a juggling act, especially early on in their careers. You know, the day job. Unless you’re retired with lots of time to write or a millionaire with no money cares you probably have a day job right now or have perhaps recently had the good fortune and finally enough stability in your chosen field of writing to be able to put that behind you. read article

Mindy Newell: Are You Typing? Or Writing?

Here’s an extraordinary article by an extraordinary writer. And no, we aren’t talking about Ray Bradbury. We’re talking about Mindy Newell, who does, yeah, sorta mention the Ray Man:

Bradbury-Snoopyby Mindy Newell

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” • Dorothy Parker

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.” • George R. R. Martin read article