40 years worth of TV writing experience and info, yours for the taking.
Time now for a word from a young woman who has everything.
Goddammit all! Way to go, Rachel Bloom!
by Joe BerkowitzThere is nothing else on television quite like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the delightfully unstable show whose heroine regularly breaks into song. There almost wasn’t anything like it on television at all, though.
Your brain is really important, right? No brainer, so to speak. For writer’s that’s particularly true, just as it is for software developers or lawyers or any other ‘brain-oriented’ pursuit.
So, what’s the best way to coddle the brain, to give it what it needs to optimize work and creativity? And, let’s face it, we all get older, so how does that affect what we’re trying to accomplish? What’s going on as we age?
For starters, from what I’ve read and from personal experience the young brain is faster. But, and it’s a big BUT, it isn’t necessarily better. Despite the great pride may 20-somethings take in working 16 hour days and more, of pushing it to the limit, writing all night long, then crashing, sorry, that’s not the way to attain an optimal work and create flow. What’s that? Well, it’s an extended (key word extended) amount of time during which mind an body are in sync, engaged in high-thinking and wild imagining pursuits (yep, like writing that script or novel). You’re focused, your body is comfortable (no, you’re not sucking down caffeine), your attitude is positive and all this give rise to your imagination and creativity playing like the creative kid you used to/and still want to be.
Life is supposed to be a learning experience, yeah? And writers are supposed to learn as much as we can so we can pass our knowledge along to readers and viewers, right? Ever think about what TV writers are learning?
Although working on a show about dating and relationships doesn’t necessarily make writers experts, it certainly helps open their eyes to all sorts of scenarios and solutions. They are, after all, in a room with 10 other people talking about relationships every single day. So, we wanted to ask Undateable‘s three female writers, all of whom are in committed relationships, what they’ve learned from writing for the show.
Meet Allison Bosma, a married Wisconsin native, who actually had actors Brent Morin (Justin) and Rick Glassman (Burski) in her wedding! She originally moved to Los Angeles seven years ago to be an actress (and even auditioned for Undateable), before she discovered writing as a passion. Her writing partner on the show is her husband, Jon DeWalt.
Over my years running various TV series I’ve been amazed at how many professional writers don’t understand the basics of good storytelling. In a nutshell, the trick to working out your plot is to always remember that the scenes must flow from and to each other in a progression that takes into account three different elements of audience appeal. As in, the scene progression must be logical, surprising, and climactic.
What this means is that everything that happens must grow out of what happened before. On one level, given the personalities of the characters and the situation they are in, each plot point must be inevitable. And on another level, these inevitable twists and turns mut be such that the reader or viewer could never have predicted them.
Sound paradoxical? Crazy? Let’s take a true crime example. The kind of thing that happens all too often in real life.