
The End of the TV Writers’ Room? - JustSomeNobody
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/08/the-end-of-the-tv-writers-room-as-we-know-it-mini-rooms
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jdietrich
It sounds like American networks are flirting with the British way of writing
TV.

The British version of The Office only ran for 14 episodes and was wholly
written by two people, versus 201 episodes and 40 credited writers for the
American version. The original House of Cards only ran for four episodes. Even
long-running series tend to be produced in much smaller quantities, because
the norm is six episodes per season rather than 22. You can try out a much
wider range of ideas if you just make less of each thing. It isn't as
immediately profitable, but some of those ideas will become export hits. Not
every programme needs to be mass produced.

~~~
jon-wood
I find the British model of 6-8 episode series, with a low possibility of
renewal, leads to much better TV in my opinion. If you have to produce 20+
episodes of a series then your core story ends up being dragged out in 5
minute doses across all those episodes, and you inevitably end up with slow
episodes where nothing much happens.

Compare for example Line of Duty with The Shield. Both on the surface dramas
about corrupt police officers, but Line of Duty is relentless in its plot
development - there’s barely a sentence that doesn’t lead somewhere, whereas
The Shield has whole episodes with nothing much of consequence.

~~~
walshemj
Id disagree with the British model having a small number of writers or just
one can lead to some very poor scripts getting made - where a collective
writers room would have either fixed or killed and bad script.

Also concentrating power in that way can lead to bullying eg why Christopher
Ecclestone left Dr who or Russel Davis suiciding torch wood.

~~~
renjimen
>> small number of writers or just one can lead to some very poor scripts
getting made

You're right, but on the flip side it allows for new ideas, which are what the
best TV shows have. I'll take a wide distribution of quality over everything
clumped around the mean.

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walshemj
Having a writers room doesn't stop new ideas getting made in the UK inertia
and prejudice against "genre" fiction pay a bigger part.

~~~
renjimen
I still expect to see better, more original scripts from individuals compared
with collaborative efforts. That's my experience from science fiction at
least, where many good authors have paired up to write a book and it is nearly
never as good their individual works.

You could be right about prejudices holding back the UK TV industry. I don't
know much about that.

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henrikschroder
Good riddance.

Some of the absolute best television shows I have ever seen have all been
planned and executed by a single script writer with a vision and an idea for a
single story spanning over X seasons.

And the absolute best tv series I have ever seen didn't even bother with
standard length episodes, they vary between 15 and 45 minutes depending on the
content that needs to go into the episode that week. Turns out that if you get
rid of filler B-plots or C-plots, the entire series becomes much better.

~~~
hluska
Would you mind naming the 'absolute best tv series'? I'm not a big fan of
television, but that sounds interesting.

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pilif
Babylon 5 for example. It’s still some of the best Sci-Fi and I regularly
rewatch it every few years.

~~~
mrec
I'm a big B5 fan, but you have to admit there's an awful lot of filler in
there.

(Also, it definitely wasn't what GP was referring to, since B5 didn't vary its
runtime appreciably.)

~~~
henrikschroder
B5 was definitely in the first larger group I was thinking about, because it
had a single writer with a vision. I agree that there's an awful lot of filler
in there. Imagine what B5 would have been like without the stifling fixed-
length episodes and need for filler B-plot and C-plot?

One show I was also thinking about was of course Game of Thrones. It has
varying length episodes though, but they're all still pretty close at the one-
hour mark.

It's interesting that no other show on Netflix or HBO, that wouldn't need to
be bound by fixed-length, still isn't. There should be room to experiment more
there.

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mrec
I'm not sure there _was_ a need for filler B-plot and C-plot. There's no
particular reason it needed to be planned as 5 seasons if there wasn't enough
A-plot to fill 5 seasons.

Hell, _Severed Dreams_ felt like a season's worth of plot all on its own, and
all the better for it.

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lsmarigo
I'm weary of anything that enhances studios ability to exploit talent - this
seems like a great way to get writers by the balls the way they have they've
got the VFX industry. The company that did the CGI for Life of Pi (won best
visual effects) promptly went out of business and that's typical for VFX firms
on major projects because studios hold all the cards. They'll find a
new/desperate shop that will agree to an absurd contract with infinite
revisions. Writers have a strong guild though so hopefully they make sure this
doesn't turn into a race to the bottom from writing talent.

~~~
DaveWalk
The writers have a union which should be able to help with this scenario, yes?

Does the VFX industry have a similar thing in Hollywood?

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lylecubed
Technically it's a guild, not a union. It's good for things like providing
health coverage and making sure writers get paid and get credit. From what I
understand, it has not been great at ensuring sane working conditions.

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JohnnyConatus
I met up with a pro TV writer I know and he said he was so happy the season
was over because he could finally go to a mattress store and buy a new
mattress. He said he didn't have time to do it for the last X months.

Basically being a TV writer is like working in video games; there's another
person right behind you who would love to have your job because of the
perceived glamor so terrible conditions persist.

~~~
labster
Hollywood writers are glamorous? Hilarious. I've lived most of my life in
SoCal and that's not really the general perception. Even movies about writers
like Saving Mr. Banks don't depict it as a glamorous life, though Their Finest
does a little bit.

Ultimately what drives screenwriters is their need to create. For those of us
who do creative writing, be it for screen, dead tree, or compiler, there's
this internal need for the work to make itself manifest. We're just the
conduit for the story. That's why people put up with the conditions in the
writers room, it's all for the story.

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peterwwillis
Whether you're producing content or buying it, those involved literally don't
know how to make shows any better, given the constraints they have (get
millions of viewers per show, make lots of money). They've found a way to
optimize producing the shows that will make money: squeeze efficiency where
you can.

And that will continue as long as people contribute to their business model,
which is the most money and the most eyeballs. You will never get a reliable
stream of quality, unpopular, arty, amazing shows, because they aren't the
business model. How do we change this?

Fund different business models. Fund a whole new content development platform
that distributes funds to productions that won't make much money or get many
eyeballs, but will create more diverse content. As those become more popular,
do deals with content distributors to help fund it.

I don't think there's enough people interested in quality content for this to
work without serious budget-pinching, so I don't think it'll happen. You could
try to create the platform and just hope the viewers/funders will come. But
unless someone disrupts content creation, everyone will continue to be
beholden to whomever can pay for content.

Another alternative is we stop paying millions to stars of hit shows, or some
other production change, but that seems even less likely...

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jon-wood
I don’t know how viable this is for TV vs books, but crowdfunding seems like a
good model to get more niche stuff funded, maybe even an episode or two at a
time.

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mjburgess
> “You’re budgeting and trying to imagine, ‘What are we going to need for the
> last episode of this season that hasn’t been written yet?’ ” he says.
> “Eventually, it comes and smacks you in the face.”

> Working out the story arc in advance gives a much better sense of what the
> show requires in terms of sets, locations, cast, and all the other expensive
> variables that go into creating a fictional world.

Its absolutely crazy US TV is developed in this way: make a pilot knowing
nothing about any story arcs, and just hope you can budget and bluff your way
to a finale?

It's blindly obvious it has been done this way. Hopefully this change will
improve plots.

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clintonb
Flashes of design sprint[1] came to mind as I read this.

The idea of planning a season, or more, before filming makes sense to me,
especially as more shows become serialized. "Westworld" would not have worked
if the writers did not have at least the first two seasons planned out. The
same goes for "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul", although I'm not sure to
what extent Vince Gilligan planned out the five seasons of BB or has planned
the five seasons of BCS (a prequel to BB, by the way).

[1] [http://www.gv.com/sprint/](http://www.gv.com/sprint/)

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CM30
It's funny that there are US production teams considering the British way of
writing TV episodes given that over here in the UK, there's talk of a few
shows like Doctor Who moving to the US model instead:

[https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-05-03/doctor-who-
consid...](https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-05-03/doctor-who-considering-
us-style-writers-room-under-chris-chibnall/)

Would be kind of amusing if over time, the British way of writing episodes
became the American one and vice versa.

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btown
> Zlotnik compares his team to “venture capitalists in a creative medium,
> where the businesses are the shows. The [writers’] room is part of a system
> of staged investment that manages the risk.”

It’s interesting that the article makes this analogy, then compares mini-rooms
to the gig economy. Are startup accelerators promoting lean methodology not
exactly the same concept?

The difference between getting into YCombinator and being “accepted” as an
Uber driver is that the former has significant upside potential. Is this true
of a scriptwriter in a mini-room? Very possibly, from a career progression
perspective. But there also may be some exploitation - is your writing credit
for Show That Hit It Big worth less in a world where new scripts are churned
out by other mini-rooms daily?

Makes you wonder what shows would be like if scriptwriters were given equity
packages. But that wasn’t ever on the table. With or without this system, it’s
tough breaking into screenwriting. This doesn’t change that - it’s just an
optimization by the studio itself on how to use its human resources.

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sonofblah
JokeBot 2000 writez all.

~~~
stephengillie
That AI Winter can't come soon enough.

