If you want to get ahead, you have to speak the language. Impress your friends, relatives, rivals, and potential co-workers via this fascinating guide:
The Secret Lingo of the Best TV Writers Rooms
by Dan Reilly
A few weeks ago, Simpsons executive producer Matt Selman tweeted a list of the show’s writers room terminology, explaining how he and his colleagues use terms like “wacky stack” to describe “too much silliness at once”:
As a very meta example, current A.P. Bio writer and former Simpsons stafferDonick Cary shared “The Simpsons Did It.” “It’s what a lazy writer says when they don’t like a joke,” he explains. “We’ll get into a debate about what joke does or doesn’t go in, and that’s kind of the argument ender, that it was already done somewhere else. For 20 years, I’ve heard ‘The Simpsons did it,’ and I’m often like, ‘I was in the room when The Simpsons did that. It’s totally different.’ And then I still get argued down.”
Read on for many more examples of terms like this and behind-the-scenes stories from these producers and writers, such as what a “Summer Frankenstein” script is, why they try to avoid “refrigerator logic,” and why one writer threatened to stab her co-workers….