TV Writing by

lew6i — 2025-09-10 16:35:29 UTC

"The age of writers and show runners being anonymous is over."

-Steven S. DeKnight

lew6i — 2025-09-10 16:36:42 UTC

There are so many responsibilities for show runners, including writing, producing, managing, deadline meeter and acting as a budget manager.

lew6i — 2025-09-10 16:37:37 UTC

A new script needs to be completed for every seven days, and the average television season has 22 episodes. This requires much planning for the show runner.

lew6i — 2025-09-10 16:41:53 UTC

"Writing is the heart of a TV show."

lew6i — 2025-09-10 16:43:19 UTC

If you have remember only one thing, it's four words: Quality scripts on time."

lew6i — 2025-09-10 16:45:58 UTC

Your ambition every time you're making an episode is for it to be the best episode you've ever made. But, the reality of the situation is we're writing a script every ten days. And, you know, we begin to realize like every episode is not going to be a home run."

-Damon Lindelof

Family of Writers

lew6i — 2025-09-10 16:50:06 UTC

A "family of writers who are all contributing" can be important when writing a tv show.

Steps

lew6i — 2025-09-10 16:57:03 UTC

The steps one can take to becoming a show runner is as follows:

Assistant
Staff Writer
Story Editor
Executive Story Editor
Co-producer
Supervising Producer
Co-executive Producer
Executive Producer
Showrunner

SPEC

lew6i — 2025-09-10 16:59:29 UTC

A SPEC is "an unsolicited script written to display the writer's abilities."

Life as a Writer

lew6i — 2025-09-11 16:10:53 UTC

"Your life does in fact inform the kind of writing that you do."

"Compromised" writing

lew6i — 2025-09-11 16:15:01 UTC

Matthew Carnahan told us that his experience on writing "Dirt" was challenging because his original vision of the script was "compromised" because he added another character that the studio wanted. While I appreciate the studio wanting to include a female character in the script, I understand the frustration of the writer because Courtney's character was not in his original vision.

Meetings

lew6i — 2025-09-11 16:21:58 UTC

Ali LeRoi tells us that "what takes a single episode of network television so long to get produced is the meetings. There's lots of meetings."

Procedural vs. Cable Programs

lew6i — 2025-09-11 17:06:15 UTC

Shawn Ryan tells us that it is a "myth that artists have complete freedom" when working on a network television program. A network television show usually consists of twenty two episodes, and, in turn, can allow writers to make more money. While cable television usually offers less money for the writer, it gives them more freedom for creative ideas when not being overseen by a network.

Schedule

lew6i — 2025-09-11 17:10:02 UTC

One thing that stood out to me was the intense schedule for show runners. For a forty five minute show, show runners average having six days of production a week and start writing in June for shows airing in September and wrap up writing in April of the following year.

Fringe Photo (13 Dec 2012)

lew6i — 2025-09-11 17:16:20 UTC

It is amazing how many people are behind the scenes in the making of a show. There is a lot of responsibility by the show runner to be able to communicate with all these people on a creative project.

(I was trying to add the photo included in the documentary, but I couldn't find it online and was unable to take a screenshot of it on my computer).

Television Writing

lew6i — 2025-09-11 17:19:18 UTC

In television writing, you may end up writing a script and seeing it on tv within a month.

lew6i — 2025-09-11 17:22:12 UTC

"The hard thing about Hollywood is that good things can fail too." There are just some elements in creating television shows, such as viewership, that you can't control. (Shawn Ryan)

English Major

lew6i — 2025-09-11 17:29:23 UTC

The show runner for Bones said that he was initially "supposed to be an English professor in Canada," and this definitely is powerful to me as an English major. While I am interested in teaching like he was, I am also interested in creating, and I appreciated how he displayed options for himself (such as writing a book or working on another show) even though a door was closing with Bones finishing its run.

Multiple Shows at Once??

lew6i — 2025-09-11 17:32:24 UTC

Joss Whedon was able to balance three shows at once for a time, and I thought this was crazy considering how much work goes into writing for television.

Learning From My Peers: Erin Baden and Garrett Newton

lew6i — 2025-09-11 18:06:12 UTC