Inside the Room

by Linda Venis

  The Attorney

  Television writers who have attorneys are usually working above scale and have projects that require complex negotiations when they sell. When you are selling your original material (a pilot), you will need an attorney to structure your deal. These are great problems to have. Attorneys commission at 5 percent. It’s not to your advantage, while still working for scale, to have an attorney. However, if you find yourself in need of legal advice, you can secure an attorney who can negotiate for you on your specific project or deal only. Though the best scenario could be to hire an entertainment lawyer on an hourly rate, those attorneys can be hard to find. Recommendations from your agent and other writers will point you in the right direction.

  Managing Your Team

  Now that you have your team in place, do you sit and wait for the phone to ring? Unfortunately, there are many writers who have done just that. The key word in this equation is partnership. Your agent and/or your manager are your partners and your job is to be as proactive as they are. The brand they are selling is you, and it’s your job to work on that brand as hard as they do.

  When you meet, talk strategy. Find out how they plan to position you in the market and be clear about the efforts you are going to be making. Before you write a spec, for example, check in with your team. The network submission desks might be flooded with Glee scripts right now, so it might be in your best interest to write a Revenge episode instead. Take their advice and their notes on your material. They have a vested interest in your career.

  And be respectful of their time. I usually touch base with my team once or twice a week. If I’m working, I let them know how it’s going. If I am looking for work, I e-mail them updates on my writing and the people I have met. Keep your interactions brief and to the point. If they aren’t returning your phone calls or e-mails, then it’s up to you to fix it. Address the issue directly with them. If you find you are not satisfied with the results, then consider finding other representation. Remember, this is your career, and it’s up to you to manage it.

  Doing Your Job Well

  Let’s assume you’ve secured that staff writing job on a show and you’ve got a great management team in place. What next? The first thing: Do your job well. Writing a series is a complex process and you will gain so much experience by working in the writers’ room. There’s a lot to be learned there about story construction, launching ideas in collaboration, and finding creativity in the room. You will have already done this on your own when writing your specs. Now you get the chance to be creative within a group. Take the time to learn from the more experienced writers. Discover how to be collaborative. If your idea doesn’t fly, don’t defend it like the Alamo. Learn to move on to the next idea and watch how bad ideas can sometimes generate good ones. Knowing how to be an effective member of a writing staff is critical to your success as a writer in television.

  Writers’ rooms are like boyfriends—no two are the same. I have worked in rooms that are toxic and ego-driven, and some where creative generosity abounds. You will need to do your job well in both. Social skills are crucial. Brush up on them. Be collaborative. To write on staff requires being a team player. As one television writer put it, personality is the key to longevity. Mediocre writers sometimes have great careers, and great writers have lousy ones if they have difficult personalities. Showrunners would rather staff the room with solid writers who get along with others than with prima donnas who disrupt the flow. Big heads and petty egos abound in the entertainment business—don’t be one. No one will want to work with you.

  On a related note, a piece of advice from a junior writer I interviewed: Don’t think every silence in the room means it’s time for you to speak up and shine. He’s right. If it’s a great idea, by all means say it out loud, but don’t forget one of your primary jobs is to support your showrunner and the other writers. I’ve watched several writers’ careers go south because they always had to be the smartest kid in the room. Working in the writers’ room for months at a time is a lot like going to summer camp. You want to be the person people want to spend time with.

  Another important aspect of sustaining a career in television is to meet your deadlines. Schedules can get very tight once the series goes into production. You actually can’t take that extra day to polish up your dialogue. Thousands of dollars can ride on whether or not you hand in your script on time. If you want to keep your job, don’t be late. Writing for series television often means writing fast. Take this time to hone the skill. It will serve you later.

  Know What You Are Good At

  Are you the guy who always has a good fix to a failing story? Do ideas come to you in the room and they’re actually good? Or are you a rewrite gal who can polish up a script like nobody’s business? Does your dialogue jump off the page? Are you funny? Or do you make your readers cry? As you continue your career in television, you will quickly discover your strengths. Be aware of them and put them into play whenever you can, because your skills are very much needed in a writers’ room, whose primary purpose is to produce scripts on time, on budget, and in a way that both satisfies the demands of the show and gives the audience something new and exciting.

  Writing on staff is a team effort, and the more you can do to support your staff, the more you will be appreciated and respected. Your goal is to be asked back on the show, and if you are seen as a collaborative, talented writer with strengths that enhance the writers’ room, you will be a writer in demand.

  As we all know, no one is perfect, and for all the strengths we bring to the table as writers, we also have weaknesses. It behooves you as a professional to be aware of your shortcomings and work to improve them. Does story structure challenge you? Then read and reread the scripts already produced. Most writers’ rooms keep detailed story notes on a daily basis. Review them each day before you go into that room. Make notes on new ideas when you aren’t in session with other writers.

  A lot of the magic happens outside of the room. Is your structure impeccable but your dialogue stiff as a board? Tape conversations. Write them up and work on the lines until they flow. It’s important for you to be able to do an honest assessment of your skills and be constantly working to improve them. Yes, some of your writing talent is God-given; the rest comes through hard work and discipline. I have seen many writers hone and improve their skills over the course of their careers. And those who don’t? Well, they now have day jobs.

  Live Within Your Means

  Okay, you’ve been hired back for a second season. You’ve maybe even had a bump-up to story editor. The promise of making big bucks in television is very real. When TV writers are working, we make good money. The Writers Guild works hard to ensure that even writers working for scale make good coin. When we work, we thrive. You might work for two solid years to get staffed on a show, and when you do, your first impulse could be to splurge. Go ahead, vacation in Hawaii—after you’ve paid off your credit cards, that is. But don’t get carried away and buy a house in Maui. Even though you might suddenly be making more money than you’re used to, save it. This year could be a great year. Next year may not.

  If you want to stay viable for years to come, you’ll need to manage your money well. If you live beyond your means while you are working, then what happens when you’re not? Be prudent and average your income over a three-to-five-year span, and you’ll see more realistically how much you are earning over time. If you can, have money tucked away to support yourself for at least a year. When you are not on staff, you need to be spending time writing new specs and managing your relationships with meetings and lunches. You don’t want to be spending your precious creative time looking for a day job to pay for a mortgage you can’t afford. Get the drift?

  In Conclusion

  I hope this chapter has given you a deeper understanding of what a career in television looks like. If you were to put this book down and never pick it up again, there is one thought I would like to leave with you: Above all else, love what you do. A career
as a television writer requires hard work and sacrifice. After six months on the job, trust me, the glamour will be stripped away. Know what you love. Is it the endorphin rush that occurs when you’re writing that action sequence? Do you find you secretly love your characters more than even your significant other? Do you live for the thrill of the chase when a deal is in negotiation? Make sure you know what you love about working as a television writer and stay close to that, always.

  CHAPTER 10

  The TV Year

  by Richard Hatem

  Week Fifty: The Answer, Wednesday, May 17, 1:21 P.M.

  Your cell phone rings. You check the screen. It’s the network. Okay. It’s the network. Okay. Deep breath. Calm down. After all, you’re not surprised, right? You’ve been expecting this call. After fifty weeks, and thousands of phone calls (no joke), and hundreds of pages of rewrites (also no joke), and dozens of meetings with studios and networks and directors and actors and writers, and a handful of really bad nights, it all comes down to this one phone call.

  This has been the longest, hardest, scariest year of your life. Also the best. You’ve done things you’d never done before, faced new challenges, and survived. You’ve met people who will be your friends for the rest of your life. In a lot of ways, you’re a totally different person than you were a year ago, and they can’t take that away from you.

  Your phone is still ringing. Your fate has been decided. You want to answer it. You do not want to answer it. And in the split second before you press the little button and learn your fate, you ask yourself—How in the name of God did I get here?

  Week One: The POD Pitch, Thursday, June 2, 10:36 A.M.

  It’s the first week of June. The TV year has officially begun. While the studio and network executives recover from upfronts (the annual meeting of advertisers in New York, where they gather to see what shows each network is offering up), producers and writers all over town are meeting to prepare pitches that they’ll try to set up—somewhere.

  You have an idea for a show, but you have no produced credits yet. You managed to get a junior agent at a midsize agency to “back pocket” you, based on an original pilot spec you wrote last fall. Back pocket means it’s an unofficial relationship, a handshake deal. They’ll set a couple meetings and if something happens, great. And if nothing happens, everyone goes their separate ways.

  Today is the first of those meetings. You have an eleven o’clock with Ethan M— of Drumbeat Entertainment. He’s put a couple reality series on the air, and this season, he wants to branch out into scripted drama development. He’s open to hearing anything, which means he’s open to hearing you. True, you’ve never done a pitch, much less sold one, but in TV, it doesn’t matter. A good idea can come from anywhere. And companies like Drumbeat—and about five hundred others just like it—survive by scrounging ideas, wherever they can find them. Drumbeat is a POD.

  “What the hell is a POD?” Your friend Paula, who works at another POD, 100th Monkey, explained it to you: POD is an acronym for “Producer with Overall Deal.” An overall deal means a producer (like Ethan M—) strikes a deal with a studio (like ABC Studios) that basically pays him to bring ideas for TV shows. According to the deal, the studio has first shot at any of the material Ethan M— brings in. In return, the studio provides Ethan M— with office space and a yearly “salary”—usually just enough to cover one employee (like Paula) and some random office supplies. For this, Ethan M— is expected to bring in quality pitches and scripts. If he doesn’t, after a year, maybe two, said deal can end.

  The TV business is starting to make sense. In your mind, you picture it like a giant orange tree. The PODs are the roots, stretching far and wide underground, searching for ideas anywhere they can find them and then channeling them upward, like water and nutrients, to the studios—the trunk of the tree—where they are then fed ever upward to the branches: the networks. A select few of those many, many ideas will ultimately blossom, having successfully gone through all the stages of growth, from pitch to script to pilot. These are the oranges. But even then, only a few will be picked to become television shows. The rest will die on the vine.

  Last year, over four hundred one-hour drama pitches to the five major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and the CW) turned into two hundred fifty pilot scripts, which turned into forty pilots, which turned into fifteen new shows. The odds are stacked against you.

  But none of that matters right now. You walk into the small offices of Drumbeat Entertainment, tucked away in the old Animation Building on the Disney lot in Burbank. Ethan M—’s assistant (bizarrely also named Ethan) offers you water. You know, by now, that being offered water by an assistant is the one constant in this completely unpredictable business. It’s the one thing you can hang on to. You accept the small plastic bottle of water. But you are careful to drink it in tiny sips. You don’t want to struggle through your pitch, desperate to use the bathroom.

  Ten minutes later, at exactly 11:08 A.M., Ethan M— swings his door open, smiling. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Did you get some water?” You did. “Come on in.”

  Something strange happens while you’re pitching. Or maybe not so strange, because it always happens: You start getting into it. Every time you do it, through all the fear and nerves and worry, you find yourself slowly beginning to enjoy the telling. You’re scared to death, but you’re also having a blast. It’s like skiing—one wrong move and you’re facedown in the snow, but if you just stay in the flow and don’t overthink it, you’re gonna be just fine….

  Later that afternoon, your agent calls. “Are you sitting down? Ethan loves it.” This is amazing. You figured you’d have to pitch this idea a dozen times to a dozen PODs. But here you are, first pitch of the year, and boom. Maybe this TV game isn’t so tough after all….

  Week Five: The Studio Pitch, Friday, July 8, 4:16 P.M. (ABC Studios—Frank G. Wells Building—Disney Lot)

  You’ve spent the last four weeks working with Ethan, refining your pitch, filling in details, focusing the conflict, honing the main character’s motivation…. Turns out, Ethan is a very smart guy. (Plus he always pays for lunch.) And just what is this idea, anyway?

  Ellie Jamison (30s) has just been promoted to homicide detective at the NYPD. But when her father suddenly dies, she goes back home to Dark Springs, Oregon, where she unexpectedly finds herself stepping into his job as sheriff, investigating not only his death—which may not have been just a simple boating accident—but other, darker mysteries in this strange small town….

  Your show is called, obviously enough, Dark Springs. It’s a good title, mysterious yet hopeful. And yes, it sounds like bits and pieces of a dozen other shows. But you’ve been at this just long enough to know that familiarity is the lifeblood of television. There’s a reason that lawyer, doctor, and cop shows keep cropping up on the network schedules, year after year after year. Television is about comfort first and novelty second. There are a hundred Law and Orders for every Lost. A pitch for a crime show with a female lead is something every network will take seriously. You have that in your favor, and you know it.

  Your meeting today is with Kevin F— and Tamara S—, VPs of drama development at ABC Studios. And you know that they have been listening to pitches from writers like yourself all day, all week, all month—and will continue to listen to them all summer and into the fall. Their decision to partner with you—or not—will be based on many factors, the top two being: 1) Will our network [in this case, ABC] be interested in developing this show? and 2) Are there other networks who will be interested in developing this show? Their first responsibility is to ABC.

  And if Kevin and Tamara are any good at their job—and they are—they know exactly the sort of thing ABC is interested in developing. They know because every year, every network develops internal memos detailing in broad strokes the network’s development goals for the new TV year. Some of the things ABC is looking for this year include “sexy medical franchises featuring ‘five minutes from now’ techn
ology; must have unique character hook” and “serialized family dramas (not New York or Los Angeles), with either legal or crime franchise” and “supernatural dramas of any kind.” These memos aren’t publicly distributed, but they get out, and you’ve seen it, and you know your story might fit their “serialized family drama” needs quite well. Plus, it’s a cop show. You’re in good shape.

  The assistant leads you and Ethan down the hall and into a large, comfortable office. Kevin and Tamara are there; handshakes all around. “Did you guys get water?” Yes, you got water. Everyone settles into soft chairs and couches surrounding a cluttered coffee table. Ethan M— gives you a glowing introduction, talks about your brilliant spec script that first brought you to his attention, and explains how this new idea you’re about to pitch is the perfect project—not just for you as a writer, the ultimate marriage of material and artist, but perfect for the network. But you’re barely listening. You’re looking out the window through gray haze at the hills of Griffith Park across the 134 freeway, trying to center yourself and remember why you ever thought this idea was so great. And now, as eyes turn to you, you begin to speak….

  Week Nine: The Network Pitch, Thursday, August 4, 3:30 P.M. (ABC Administrative Offices—Burbank, California)

  This is the one that matters. You nail this, you have a deal. You will be paid the Writers Guild minimum (at the very least), around $85,000, to write a network pilot script. True, if the network doesn’t like it, ABC Studios—your new partners as of that last meeting two weeks ago—has the option of bringing it to other networks. But then the odds of a deal drop significantly. Besides, this is an ABC idea, developed for ABC by ABC Studios. This is the place. This is the day. This is the meeting. It all comes down to this….