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To staff or not to staff. A thread.
There& #39;s been some talk in my feed today about aspiring TV writers who want to skip over staffing and go straight to selling their own shows. I am not sure who needs to hear this but i thought i would throw out some unsolicited advice: 1/
There& #39;s been some talk in my feed today about aspiring TV writers who want to skip over staffing and go straight to selling their own shows. I am not sure who needs to hear this but i thought i would throw out some unsolicited advice: 1/
If u want to have yr own show on TV, u should staff.
1st of all, being on staff of a TV show is literally the training ground for writing TV. Rare is the person who knows how 2 write a good pilot who hasn& #39;t been in the room for a few years 2 learn what makes a TV show work. 2/
1st of all, being on staff of a TV show is literally the training ground for writing TV. Rare is the person who knows how 2 write a good pilot who hasn& #39;t been in the room for a few years 2 learn what makes a TV show work. 2/
On staff u learn how to break stories, how 2 write good scenes, u r exposed over & over again 2 scripts being rewritten so u can see how they improve. U learn how 2 produce. You learn how to get and give notes. You learn how to break character arcs over the course of a season. 3/
If u work for a good showrunner, u learn what works. If you work for a bad one you learn what doesn& #39;t. Can u sell a show without staffing and without being an already successful feature writer? Maybe. But it& #39;s rare. 4/
Staffing gives you the credibility and connections to get in the room where the sale happens. Or to get your spec pilot read in the first place. And even if you have the jaw dropping, once in a lifetime experience of selling a spec pilot (it is RARE, trust me)... 5/
... you are not going to be allowed to run it. You are going to be assigned a showrunner who will run it, technically with you but in reality for you. It will not be your creative vision on the screen. You will NOT be in charge.
TRUST ME. Why? 6/
TRUST ME. Why? 6/
Because the studio will have no reason to believe that you can actually do the job. Because showrunning includes managing a crew of 150+ people and a budget of $3-5 million an episode. They are not going to hand you that much money and tell you to have fun spending it. 7/
Because if you have not been in a writers& #39; room for years, you will fuck it up. Trust me on that too. You will not know how a TV show is made. And how it is not made. 8/
If your agent is telling u that it is harder to staff than to sell a spec, YOU HAVE A BAD AGENT. Yes, it is hard to staff. But do u have any idea how hard it is for an established experienced TV writer to sell a show and get it made?? It is exponentially harder for a novice. 9/
If your agent is telling you to put your head down and write specs to sell and not to staff s/he is doing you a disservice. They are not playing long ball and setting you up to succeed. They are looking for a quick buck. 10/
If u don& #39;t want to staff b/c u want to be an entrepreneur and you don& #39;t like working for others, you might b in the wrong business. Because that& #39;s what this job is: You will be working for a studio and a network. 11/
Please trust me on this. You literally do not know how to write when you are first starting out. You think you do. But you don& #39;t. You may write a great pilot but you will not write a great SHOW. Being on staff teaches you. End of rant/
