Pretty wild that people I went to acting school with are now auditioning for my iCarly episode. What is life??

So iCarly the first scripted show I’ve written on, most of my experience before this has been in late night & sketch. 4 months in & I’ve already learned SO MUCH. a mini thread

“Pitch the fix” this is an idea I’ve heard elsewhere but never described so succinctly. If you don’t like a joke or story element, pitching a way to fix it is the best way to get folks on board rather than just shooting down an idea with no solution.

Sometimes a bunch of great jokes will be pitched for a line so they get saved as “alts” for the actors to try set. This happened a lot on Superstore but still blows me away. To get 2 or 3 alts day of and flawlessly pull them off?? The talent!!

Now that we’re in production the week starts with a table read over zoom. This is the first time we get to hear the actor’s interpretation of the script, so it’s really helpful to print out a copy for yourself to take notes in. What worked? Where did actors stumble or improvise?

Writing is rewriting! This isn’t specific to tv but has become super evident for me. It’s important to not be married to an idea & be willing to compromise. Jokes & stories will go through lots of revisions, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good idea/joke it’s just part of the process

Improv is an invaluable room skill. It’s so fun to embody a character to work through the scene & figure out what is/isn’t working. My writing partner & I did this a lot when writing the pilot we sold to FOX but it also works solo! A lot of my writing is me talking to myself lol

Good jokes don’t really die! Sometimes we’ll cut a joke & it becomes an alt OR we’ll find a way to put it in another episode. I’ve since started a Google doc for jokes that get cut so I can find other places to use them. Sometimes the solution is giving them to another character

Good characters drive story. A producer once told me “if I dropped $5 in front of your characters they should each pick it up differently” writing is hard but if you know who your characters are (wants, fears, flaws) their personalities will tell you what happens next.