This week’s collection of recent articles from other websites about TV, TV writing, etc., etc., etc. The plan here is for you to click on their headlines and visit the sites and read the posts in full…and is anybody asks, tell ’em TVWriter™ sentcha, okay?
Stories vs. Situations: How to Know Your Story Will Work
by Jeff Lyons
To appreciate the power of what I am about to describe, we must first begin with two obvious questions: what do I mean when I use the term ‘a story’ and if something is not a story, then what is that ‘something else?’
When I ask groups of writers (novelists or screenwriters) to define this most basic storytelling idea, ‘what is a story?’ I get as many definitions as there are people in the room. The responses are always generic and canned….
TV Writers Get Canceled
by Libby Coleman
While much of the world’s population might be worried about losing jobs to The Robots! in the next decade, television writers appear calm and collected. After all, who could replace their creativity, their humor and their know-how about three-act structure and establishing shots? But that doesn’t mean your TV writer of 20 years ago is like your TV writer of today….
Writer’s Career: From Beverly Hills 90210 To New LSD Play
by Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
After three decades of writing and producing television dramas, including “Beverly Hills 90210,” Larry Mollin was ready to do a different kind of writing. His first choice was his first love: theater.
That he’s been able to do that in the last several years, and on the island where he first pursued acting, still surprises him.
On Friday night, Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse will open its summer season with the world premiere of Mollin’s “High Time” – the final play in what has turned out to be a trilogy of “narrative non-fiction” based on little-known people or incidents from the 1960s. And all have some connection to drugs, particularly LSD….
Unicorns, Ogres, and Fart Jokes
by Jessica Gentile
…While there are millions of floundering young people scraping by in their parents’ basements, you wouldn’t know it from the depiction of twentysomethings on TV. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, in 2012, over a third of 18-31-year-olds were living with their parents. But on the small screen, even the title characters of Two Broke Girls get a chic-boho loft….