Tag: Spec Scriptacular Contest

Dennis O’Neil on Alternate Earths

One of the top writer-editors in comics gives us some sound writing advice. And by us we mean that this is valid for TV writers working on just about every science fiction series on our tubes cuz sometimes it seems like none of them can wait to go parallel universing around and mess with viewers’ minds:

Supermanby Dennis O’Neil

Good news! The angel Fettucini has just delivered a Message From On High: from this moment on, all politicians must be free of greed and egotism and be motivated solely by the desire for good governance and love of heir fellow man.

The, uh, bad news is that the above is true only on Earth 4072, which, of course, exists only in an alternate universe. These things are relative. To the inhabitants of Earth 4072, the news is not bad. read article

Do You Really Want to Write?

Is success as a writer (in any medium) worth all you have to give up in order to get it? Here’s a thoughtful answer to just that concern:

by Rita Karnopp

So you’ve received a rejection letter – and you’re in the middle of writing yet another book. Suddenly you’re in the slumps and wonder if all this work and upset is worth it.  You stop writing – and now you just don’t feel like going back to your office and continue with your work in progress.

Hmmm . . . sound familiar?  It’s not an easy profession, is it?  We have our highs – and oh so many lows.  It’s not easy to receive a rejection letter on one of our books.  It’s deflating.  It’s frustrating.  It’s depressing.  Yet, after you cry, throw a tantrum, crumple the rejection letter and toss it in the trash – you take a deep breath – and ask yourself – “Should I keep writing – or quite?” read article

JOHN OSTRANDER: TV WEEK GEEK

Constantine-TV-showby John Ostrander

Once upon a time, when I was a boy, TV consisted of the three networks, one independent channel, and before long, one “education” channel. (“They actually had TV when you were a boy, Uncle John?” Yes. Quiet, you.) Every fall, each of the networks took a week to trot out their new and returning shows and they each took turns. And, if memory serves, that pretty much was it for the season.

If you were into superhero comics (and I was despite my mother), there were damn slim pickings. There was The Adventures of Superman, of course, and that was played pretty straight albeit it was considered a children’s show. Later on, there was the Batman series that was fun and interesting to me at start but got old real fast. Something along the superhero lines was Zorro. I loved that show. Guy Williams was my Zorro. Dressed all in black, masked, fighting injustice – yeah, I’d group him in with the superheroes.

But that was essentially it. read article

What’s It Like to be a TV Writer in the UK?

This profile from The Guardian does a good job of convincing some of us here at TVWriter™ that we ought to be in, oh, London, or Cardiff than the smouldering bowels of LA:

Jack Thorne
BAFTA winning writer Jack Thorne

Jack Thorne: the hardest-working writer in Britain?
by Mark Lawson

Despite having been up late last Monday night at a party marking the transmission of his latest TV drama, Jack Thorne was back next morning at the north London library where he writes seven days a week. He aims to work from 10am to 8pm, shifting to a coffee bar when the library closes early.

Thorne, 35, needs to put in those shifts because his scripts are in such demand, having achieved the rare double of winning two Bafta awards at the same ceremony (in 2012): best mini-series for Channel 4’s This is England ’88 (part of a longrunning recent-historical project with director Shane Meadows) and best drama series for BBC3’s supernatural show The Fades. read article

How I’m using my writing gig on TRANSPARENT to make sure the T in LGBT isn’t edited out of tv

TV series writers can have a huge effect on not only their shows but also our culture. But it takes courage. You’ve got to take a stand:

shot-from-transparent1

by Ali Liebegott

I was born in 1971, and came of age watching soap operas. This was pre-internet, before gay marriage was even a thought, when homosexuality was still a mental disorder in the DSM. When I remember back, the only images I can recall of LGBT people on TV involved people who were white and showed up only to hang themselves, or be runaway hustlers, or die slowly of AIDS, with their mothers crying at their bedside and their fathers brooding silently in hospital hallways.

I’ve been writing and publishing for over 25 years and many moons ago I bitterly “accepted” I’d never make a living solely as a writer. I hadn’t even made one-hundredth of my living as a writer, yet I trudged on with my little stories, all but sewing them into booklets in my bedroom a la Emily Dickinson. read article