Larry Brody: Live! From Paradise! #65 – “A Few Words from the Not So Rich and Strange”

THE USUAL NOTE FROM LB: From the summer of 2002 to  the spring of 2010, Gwen the Beautiful and I were the proud and often exhausted owners of a beautiful Ozarks property we called Cloud Creek Ranch.

In many ways, the ranch was paradise. But it was a paradise with a price that started going up before we even knew it existed. Here’s another Monday musing about our adventure and the lessons we learned.

Oh, and if y’all detect any irony, please believe me when I say it comes straight from the universe and not your kindly Uncle Larry B. read article

The Death of the All-Male Writers Room & What It Means

LB’S NOTE: For the past few years, it has seemed to me that most of the changes in our culture have been negative ones. (Gee, where could I have gotten that idea?) But here’s a positive change that I’m sure will make the culture of storytelling the world over better than it’s been since, oh, let’s say the Renaissance.

by Radhika Seth

On 18 June, ITV made headlines when it announced it would no longer commission shows by all-male writers. Saskia Schuster, ITV’s head of comedy and founder of the gender equality initiative Comedy 50:50, hoped the move would create more opportunities for women in an industry and genre that has long been dominated by men. What she didn’t expect was a backlash: op-eds condemning box-ticking quotas, viewers applauding shows that wouldn’t exist without all-male writing teams (Peep Show, Dad’s Army, Blackadder) and critics on Twitter labelling her a militantly feminist member of the #GalQaeda.

“The focus was never on banning male teams,” Schuster tells Vogue. “The goal is inclusivity. The current number of female writers in comedy is woefully low and before I started Comedy 50:50, I was being pitched very few scripts by women.” Determined to change the culture, she rewrote her contracts, asking comedy shows to aim for equal representation and scripted commissions to demonstrate their best endeavours to include female voices. She also created a database of more than 500 women writers to help producers find new collaborators. read article

10 Most Viewed TVWriter™ Posts of the Week – Sept. 30, 2019

Happy Monday morning everybody!

Hope your weekend has been a great one. Time now for TVWriter™’s latest look at our most popular blog posts and resource pages during the week ending yesterday. They are, in order: read article

Stephanie Bourbon on How to Write a Strong Opening

In this installment of her web series writing tips, Stephanie Bourbon solves all our film, TV episode, novel, short story, and stage play writing problems–

Oops, not exactly all of them, but certainly one of the most important ones. As in how to write an opening that grips the reader or viewer and compels them to keep on reading or watching. read article

Forbidden Books From Around The World

Words have power, and those many people not-so-fondly-refer-to as “Our Overlords” know that.

Gather ’round your screens, TVWriter™ writer friends (and reader friends too!) and have a gander at the books various governments around the world have publicly declared themselves terrified by.

read article