Ten Tips for Aspiring TV Writers

From someone who once had aspirations himself

Just because I am offering advice to younger, upcoming writers, I don’t want you to infer from this single data point that I am done with my own writing career and pivoting into a more full-time role as teacher and mentor. Add in the fact that I haven’t worked in two years and you may be on to something.

In any case, I think that even my most myopically generous supporters—they’re out there— would stipulate, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton’s husband, my career likely has reached the point where it has “more yesterdays than tomorrows.”

Recognizing that, I thought it would be fun to try passing on a little of the wisdom I have accrued writing on 21 television shows over the last 25 seasons. Those seasons also include 52 produced teleplays and being on staff for over 360 episodes of television—holy shit I’m old. No wonder I haven’t worked in two years. I’m lucky to be eating dinner without a straw.

So, before my residual good cheer atrophies and morphs into “get off my lawn” antipathy towards anyone young and positive, I thought I’d offer a few tips that I recall from breaking into sitcoms back in the 19th century. And even though “multicam TV” writer sounds as contemporary as “blacksmith” or “one-eyed telegraph operator,” I believe my tips are as germane to today’s new writers as they were when I ran them by President Garfield.

And, without 50 more paragraphs of preamble, here are Ten Tips for Aspiring TV Writers. (I’ll likely change the number if I can’t think of 10. Though I can’t promise it.)

1.Write, write, write…. oh and finish.

Every guidebook devoted to breaking into show business will stress that the one essential to a writing career is writing. By this they also mean constant rewriting. They mean don’t expect your first script to be your magnum opus that opens all studio doors. And they mean that you should always be refining your craft.

A snarky tidbit they should have added for my benefit: No one will discover you if you don’t eventually finish something and turn it in. I spent 7 years and 4 partnerships trying to create a serviceable sample script. It became both my Moby Dick and my “Moby Dick.” And all the while I was petulantly bellyaching that Hollywood hadn’t discovered my greatness, even though I was too petrified to finish a spec for them to read. So always keep writing. And occasionally consider yourself finished enough to turn something in.

Because it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be done.

2. Because you never know when your moment will arrive

As a result, much of my advice is oriented around making sure you are prepared when your number is called.

As I previously lamented, it took me seven years to finish my first sitcom spec- in this case a sample episode of “Newsradio” that I could use to get an agent and hopefully my first job.

Well, after seven years of mental torture and believing that getting on a show was an inconceivable dream, I got staffed on “Ned & Stacey” two months after turning in my first script.

I was an overnight success.

After 7 years, 4 partnerships, and innumerable unfinished samples of Seinfeld, Frasier, Anything But Love, and Love and War. Even I am having difficulty recalling the specifics of Love and War, but I clearly enjoyed it enough to not finish a failed episode of it.

All of this is a convoluted way of saying, “Your big break can come anytime. Be ready for it.”

Because I definitely wasn’t.

3. Demystify the Writers’ Room (by any means necessary)

I became a writer because I was shy.

I became a comedy writer because I was broken.

I assumed a writing job meant that you sat in a room and, you know, wrote.

Wrong!!

What nobody told me beforehand is that being a sitcom writer means that 99% of your job is sitting in a room with other people, talking, joking, performing. It’s the exact traits I had hoped to assiduously avoid by becoming a WRITER.

Instead, I learned, the job is essentially comedy jury duty. And you better get good at it quickly.

I was not good at it. But I got good at it quickly. By studying how others did it. By making extensive, Rain Man style notebooks of recurring joke areas that always came up. By studying those during the hiatus before my second job, I was able to rapidly improve my speed of thought.

Writers’ rooms move at warp speed. And I felt like Kobe as a rookie. I had raw talent jumping from high school to the Association. But I had to get used to the speed of the game.

There are two ways you can prepare for this short of becoming a professional writer.

4. Go to school for screenwriting.

It’s not crucial. Not everyone can afford it. Many people have left school in the rear view mirror and are trying a lateral career move.

But if it is an option, more and more schools are teaching, not just the mechanics of story construction, but are attempting to replicate the dynamics of the “room” in the classroom.

5. Take any job you can get on a TV show. Any.

Even if it isn’t as a full time writer. So many writers I know made their bones as PAs or Writing Assistants or Script Supervisors. Many of them currently run shows of their own and could hire me. They don’t. But they could!

First, these are incredibly likely, well-worn paths to advancement in a show hierarchy. If a show succeeds and begins to accumulate seasons, it’s very common for assistants to get scripts of their own or ultimately get promoted to staff writer.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, you get accustomed to the rhythms and mores of the room. Whether or not, you are actually pitching jokes from behind the keyboard, you are hearing what is pitched and what is selected. You are privy to what drives a showrunner bonkers. This proximity to how it’s done is a gift whose value can’t be overestimated.

Basically, all writing jobs are based on how well you do around people. Be nice and you’ll work forever. Be a jerk, and good luck on your realtor’s license.

6. Get out of your own head.

This also applies to the mental gymnastics of writing a script, but I’m largely referring to behavior within the writers’ room.

There is a tendency as a newbie TV writer to assume that everyone is watching you, judging you, and keeping score of your performance on an imaginary tally sheet.

Now, I won’t lie. It can be a brutal, competitive industry. But for the most part, and I wish I knew this, nobody gives a shit about you. People are lost in their own mishigas. They are thinking of their next joke or story fix. Not perseverating on why the new staff writer hasn’t spoken in 17 minutes and you know it’s that long because you assume everybody is counting. They are not. Nobody cares.

7. Another trick I use to defeat my own fear and doubt- I write as quickly as possible.

I know lots of writers tend to be hugely methodical and labor over every word. And end up writing nothing. So I’ve learned to let my unconscious fly, not be so precious, you can always change it later. And here’s the trick, by not stressing, when I do go back, I rarely change much because taking the pressure out of writing tends to make my writing significantly better.

8. Write samples funnier than the shows themselves

This will be a controversial point, assuming anyone has read rbis far. First of all, it assumes that people still write samples of existing shows.

The physical means of how someone breaks in seems kind of cyclical. When I was in the nascent stages of my career, everybody wrote spec episodes of existing series. Now the pendulum has swung back to original material/ your own pilots etc.

So my previous advice is mostly moot. But… if you are writing a sample, you’re being tasked with walking a delicate balance. You want your script to look and sound like it could be a perfectly episode of the show you are writing.

But… remember you are not writing it to be staffed on that particular show. You don’t necessarily want it to be so specific to that show, that it doesn’t showcase your comic talents to a larger reading audience.

And hence my previous point: make it even a little funnier than the show itself. That doesn’t mean, write jokes that are finally disconnected from the material. It just means that this script might be the only piece that a possible showrunner might ever read. Like the Head & Shoulders campaign has taught us, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Make sure your sample is as funny as you are.

9. Write in your own voice, so…you can mimic somebody else’s

Wait? What’s this? Hollywood is inconsistent and based on a paradox? Yer darn tootin’.

In short, everyone is writing pilots to demonstrate their own unique voice, story style and comic point of view. And the specificity and originality of your voice is what will likely get you hired.

But once you’re on a TV show, an incredibly collaborative process, you will be tasked with essentially mimicking the voice of your boss.

In short, you are hired because you are an auteur. And now, much of your career will be spent as a high-priced mimic.

10. If you can do any other career, and I do mean anything, do it.

But if you find yourself unable to shake the yearning to write, to express yourself, to find your own voice, then I hate to break it to you — you are a writer.

These tips are by no means the only ones, but they are the ones I could think of before they kick me out of the mall food court for not ordering anything.

The business is hard enough to break into without creating any self-inflicted landmines. And even more important than breaking in, is getting that second and third job, hopefully on the way to a long, creatively fruitful career.

Happy writing!