How Much Can I Make? — Real Jobs. Real Stories. Career Insights

Inside the Sitcom Writer’s Room: Career Lessons from Dawn DeKeyser

• Mirav Ozeri - a career-curious jornalist • Season 1 • Episode 44

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Sitcom Writer

Join us to explore career tips from sitcom writer Dawn DeKeyser, who shares insights and job advice for the aspiring writes,

What does it really take to make people laugh for a living? That’s the job of Dawn DeKeyser, a veteran comedy writer for hit shows like Ugly Betty and News Radio. She pulls back the curtain on the world of television writing career.

Dawn describes the collaborative chaos of a writer's room - a place she calls "a full contact sport" where writers physically act out jokes and jump on tables to sell their ideas. She reveals the structured approach to crafting an episodes, while sharing her personal battle with writer's block and her solution via "the swill draft."

Whether you're curious about television-writing, fascinated by the creative process, or simply want to understand how your favorite shows come together, Dawn's story offers both entertainment and inspiration.

Dawn's IMBD page - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0215245/

Dawn's website - https://www.dawndekeyser.com/

Visit our website at HowMuchCaniMake.info to suggest jobs you'd like us to cover, and don't forget to follow us and share with friends who are  curious about their next career move.

Want us to cover a specific job? Shoot us an email!

Visit howmuchcanimake.info

Music credit: Kate Pierson & Monica Nation

Speaker 1

We poach from our family and friends. Watch what you say. Around a screenwriter, I would carry a notepad where I had my joke file. I had conversation snippets. If I was eavesdropping on the subway, I would take all of that.

Speaker 2

Hi, welcome back to how Much Can I Make, the podcast where we pull back the curtains on career you've always wondered about. I'm your host, mara Vozzeri, and today we're diving into the world of punchlines, rewrites and writer's rooms with none other than Don DeCaser, a seasoned sitcom and comedy writer whose credit includes hit shows like Ugly, betty, news Radio and many others. In the show notes I put a link to Dawn's IMBD page and you can see the huge amount of shows she wrote for. So let's dive right in and find out what it takes to write funny for a living. First, dawn, I would like to thank you for your time. I know you're really busy and I really appreciate it that you're willing to sit with us. My pleasure, that's great. I have a lot of questions, but let's start with. What made you become a writer? Was it a moment in time or did you always know?

Finding Inspiration in Real Life

Speaker 1

So I did not always know, and I would say that when I was growing up it was Carol Burnett at first and Lucille Ball it was these comedic women that had their own shows that just kind of opened my world up. I didn't know that that existed. I lived overseas. I lived in Europe, we were a military family, so when we came to America I was just blown away by funny women who seemed to have their lives in order and I didn't know that you could be a writer for TV. I didn't even know that was an option. I had in the back of my mind that I wanted to be an artist or a novelist, but I was from a very middle class background and those were not options.

Speaker 2

So, but you always loved writing yes.

Speaker 1

Okay, yes.

Speaker 1

So you didn't know, it was an option and and so I studied international business when I was in college in Texas and I went over to Europe and lived in Belgium for a while. I thought I don't know, I don't want to know business. I came back and I stumbled into the television and radio department on the University of Texas campus and within that they had an advertising program and I discovered art direction and copywriting and that was the closest I could even get my head around being in a creative field, Like OK, well, that's kind of you can still earn a living that way. It was all about how do I pay my bills when I become an adult?

Speaker 2

So did you start as a copywriter?

Speaker 1

I started as a copywriter. I started in Austin, then Dallas, then moved to New York and became a copywriter and then a creative director.

Speaker 2

So how do you get from copywriter to comedy writer?

Breaking Into Television Writing

Speaker 1

Well, that was a big leap. I was living and working in New York. A friend of mine moved out to LA and was discovered as an actor and he said you know, you write 30 second segments and 60 second commercials. Have you ever thought of writing 30 minute TV shows? I love sitcoms more than anything. By then I was like in my 20s and I was watching all of these great 80s, like sitcoms from 70s, 80s and 90s and I just loved them. I thought I don't know if I can do that. So he sent me some scripts from the shows that he was working on and I began to study them, and then I took writing classes.

Speaker 2

Oh, specifically for sitcom writing. Yes, oh, wow and fell in love with that.

Speaker 1

And I fell in love with that. I also took improv classes in New York and film writing classes and just sort of did a deep dive to educate myself.

Speaker 2

All right. So what was the first show you wrote for?

Speaker 1

The first one was it was kind of a cult classic called News Radio and it starred Phil Hartman and Dave Foley, more Tierney. It was just like a little NBC sitcom that gained this following. It was really well written, I have to say it was like a real feather in my cap, but it was one of the most difficult shows I've ever worked on.

Speaker 2

Why.

Speaker 1

I was the only woman and every guy on staff was from the Harvard Lampoon. They all knew each other. They were privileged, they were white dudes and they were vicious. They were vicious and competitive with each other, but that was a game for them. For me it just it was really a hostile work environment. So I loved the actors. They kind of adopted me and they try to get their storylines to me to take to the writer's room and, you know, be heard that way. It was difficult.

Speaker 2

Interesting. You know, I interviewed a camera, a TV camera woman, and she said that the guys were sabotaging her work. At the beginning they didn't want to see a woman there.

Speaker 1

I can believe that.

Speaker 2

Wow.

Speaker 1

They took my work away from me. They didn't allow me into some meetings. We would write all night in order to get the scripts down to the actors. In the morning they would shut me out but then take all of my work and use it on the air.

Speaker 2

Without giving you credit for it.

Speaker 1

Sometimes I'd get credit, but a lot of times no. But that wasn't even the part that concerned me. We all share credit. Sometimes we get our names on the scripts, sometimes not, but it is a very collaborative process. It was just the way they treated a woman.

Dawn's First show

Speaker 2

Wow. So, but from the writing point of view was it nerve-wracking to the first show that you did.

Speaker 1

It was very nerve-wracking and when you start out as a young writer, you want to perform really well. You put this inordinate amount of pressure on yourself, but you're really not usually required to perform that well because you are learning, you're apprenticing, if anything. That was a particularly difficult work environment, so I was very disciplined and I wrote night and day and kept turning in work and then ducking.

Speaker 2

So it's basically the comedy. You chose it, but it's actually also chose you. You had the break. That's always it's all about luck, yeah well the luck part.

Speaker 1

I moved out to LA with, I think, maybe $3,000 to my name, which is, I mean, you know, in the 90s. You can get by on that. I temped, I got odd jobs and then I was able to get into the Disney Writers Fellowship. So they picked five out of a few thousand people and they that is where I was able to start getting my scripts together to start submitting to shows. So so how does it work?

Speaker 2

you have, you write like a spec script, right, and then submit it. How?

Speaker 1

do you know about spec scripts?

Speaker 2

I have been in that business a little bit.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you write, you put your spec work together and you start making connections on your own and I was able to make connections through the fellowship and through the Disney executives. That didn't get me my first job. It got me time on one of their shows and a chance to get my scripts together.

Speaker 2

You mentioned before that you write. You wrote with other people, they all wrote and you all got credit. How do you write with a number of people.

Speaker 1

So in a writer's room we spend weeks before called pre-production, before we ever go into production and the actors get there just talking about what the season's going to look like. If on network shows we had 22 episodes to write, we would talk about what are our first four episodes going to cover? Who has ideas? We'd come in with All sorts of story ideas for A stories, b, c, joke runners it's just like a big mixing pot and then we would start mapping out where we wanted our characters to go. And we would do a lot of all of this, this initial work, together. And then we would start portioning out the scripts, like who wants to write this first one? Who's got a really strong take on this? Who pitched this episode three? Do you want to write that? And there's a lot of steps before you get to the first draft.

Speaker 2

So when you said that you were sitting in the room and deciding, only the writers or the network tells you listen, the show has to be about so-and-so. How does it work?

Speaker 1

Only the writers. We'll have meetings with the network saying this is what we're looking for in this show. They already know. They kind of know that already, because they picked it up. They've bought the show.

Speaker 2

So that's after a pilot.

Speaker 1

After pilot they get an idea of you know who the writers are, what kind of work they do and where the show is going to go, and they do give us notes. They would give us notes weekly on each script but it wasn't suffocating at all. You know, everyone wants the show to work. The smarter network executives would hand that over to the writers because they know what you know. We knew what we were doing.

A show Runner

Speaker 2

So I know that in television writers end up being showrunner. That's like the head writer for a show.

Speaker 1

It is the showrunner runs the show. Usually you're the executive producer, they're the head writer, and running the show means they run the writer's room or they use proxies. Like your executive, your co-EP, your producers, we all have producing titles, but we're all writers in the writer's room and it just means that as you move up the ladder you get to do more producing, like going down to the sets, talking to the actors, going into the editing bays and a showrunner has had time on other people's shows.

Speaker 2

She knows the process of getting a week's worth of work together I like how you said she is it mostly women that are showrunners?

Speaker 1

no, no, but that's been. That's been changing for the last 10 years in such a great way, but not when I was starting out. No, but like one of the first showrunners, not one of the first, like Diane English, there was Susan Harris, there were a lot of, really, uh.

Speaker 2

Diane English is known.

Speaker 1

Yeah, she created Murphy Brown.

Speaker 2

Right right.

Speaker 1

When I saw that show I was in my 20s and I remember going to work at an ad agency and asking anyone did you see this new show, Murphy Brown? It's incredible and no one had seen it and I thought it's also run by a woman and this, again, like it, fed into my. I want to be a Carol Burnett, I want to work with a Tracy Ullman, I want to know this Diane English. And the showrunner just has this overview and is suddenly running a multimillion dollar empire. It's difficult because you come up from a creative standpoint as a writer.

Speaker 1

And suddenly you're given these-. Like a producer A producer very administrative role, right. Do you have a dream of becoming a showrunner? I did for a while. I've run rooms plenty. I've been a co-EP, which is next to the exec producer. I have sold pilots. I've sold series that, had they gone forward, I would have been the showrunner on.

Wiring For Uggly Betty

Speaker 1

Okay series that had they gone, had they gone forward, I would have been the showrunner on okay, as I was reaching that part in my career. The tv industry was changing so rapidly and a lot of people were taking a hit like this. You know just our strikes and everything going to streaming, digital residuals, all these things were just totally changing the landmark the landscape of it.

Speaker 2

So you worked on a lot of shows, like Ugly Betty. I know Jenna Davis these are the names that I remember. What was your favorite show to work on, and why?

The Writer's Room

Speaker 1

It was Ugly Betty. I made my leap from being purely in the comedy writing room to dramedy, so it was a big writer's room, 12 to 14 people. Sometimes people would come and go as consultants and it was half drama writers and half comedy. It was women, gay men, couples. It was the most egalitarian room I'd ever walked into and it was a joy. It was so much fun and it was more about when you're in a comedy writing room I call it a full contact sport. And it was more about when you're in a comedy writing room I call it a full contact sport. These people jump. You jump on the table to sell your idea. You act out your jokes. You're always trying to hit your mark. With drama, it's much more writerly. Let's talk about how we're going to shift this act into act two how do we end this scene? And I loved that because I had not been around that. It was much more performative where I was coming from.

Speaker 2

Do you sit in the reading when the actors actually read it? Do you give them some directions also?

Speaker 1

Yeah, that is called the weekly table read.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Speaker 1

So when you're about to go to the stage with a new script, all the network and studio executives, the actors and the writers, everybody comes in, sits around a table and they read, cold, from the scripts that they'd gotten the night before. And the network says okay, we heard the whole episode. We're going to talk to you guys, the writers, here's our notes Studio may have notes and then we go back to the writer's room and we figure out what worked, what fell flat, what kind of rewrite we need to do that day.

Speaker 2

Do you tape it or do you just listen? As it happens, you listen, you listen yeah. And you can tell and you don't miss Right. So okay, so when you write something characters especially where is your inspiration from? Where do you take the details? Family, friends, your life, imagination, what?

Speaker 1

We poach from our family and friends. Watch what you say. Around a screenwriter, I would carry a notepad where I had my joke file. I had conversation snippets. If I was eavesdropping on the subway, I would take all of that. And when you're pitching to other writers in the room you want to have, you want it to be grounded with you know what? I was just on the bus and I heard these two people talking about this. It makes it more immediate and real. I mean because it is real. That's just sort of a good rule of thumb. When you're pitching your idea, you want to make it accessible so people can go. Oh, I can totally see that scene. I can see where it plays out.

Speaker 2

So we pull from everything right, yeah, so you, you, you write the episode. Do you watch it when it airs?

Speaker 1

we do. I mean, we have viewing parties. A lot of times I I don't watch my shows from 10 and 20 years ago. It's a weird thing to do that, because it takes me right back to the time we'd have on the set and all of the politics going on with the network. It's very, it's very jarring for me. But you know, especially when you're on a hit show, you can't wait for it to air. You go over to everyone's house or the actors' houses and you watch it debut. It's great.

Speaker 2

Does it happen to you when you watch and say, oh shoot, I should have written it this way. And does it happen?

Speaker 1

Oh, yeah, yeah. And also in editing you can lose entire parts of the script and sometimes the script can end up not making a lot of sense. Right yeah you lose a lot in the process.

Residuals and The Changing World of TV

Speaker 2

So you mentioned residuals. I know that on Broadway they get royalties. The creative people Do you get royalties? I mean on reruns and all of that.

Speaker 1

We do get residuals and it's one of the things that I think in the 1980s the Writers Guild, which I'm a member of it's our type of union. They fought for residuals, pension and health coverage, and without that I don't know how I'd be getting by. I relied on residuals and with the prime time shows that I worked on abc, cbs, nbc those paid really well. I think the minimum guild was, say, twenty thousand dollars for a script for an episode for an episode.

Speaker 1

Sorry for an episode. Okay, when it runs, you get half of that, ten thousand wow I know, and then every time it would run. After that it would go down by half half, half. All of that changed when it started going to cable into streaming what do you mean?

Speaker 1

Well, there was a different kind of negotiations that happened. So we went on strike in 2007, 2008, because we didn't even know that was on the very beginning. There was a verge of everything going streaming, so we didn't even know how to argue for digital residuals, where something can be pumped out in 50 different iterations on different platforms. So residuals really took a hit. Writers that were reliant on that kind of stream of income were taken a hit. I still get tiny checks from my network days and very small checks from my digital streaming days.

Speaker 2

And if the show was shown overseas? I mean, some shows go international. Do you get residuals from that?

Speaker 1

Yeah, and it's not a lot, but you'll get a chunk of. They'll aggregate a lot of your smaller payments for international usage and you'll get that in a lump sum.

Speaker 1

It could be anywhere from $ dollars to thousands yeah it's, it's I just don't even know what they base it on, but so it's always just it's christmas. Well, every quarter for me I get oh, like the other day I got a check for 87 cents. For what for it was? Um, it was for a nickelodeon show that I wrote that I'd totally forgotten about and I thought the 87 cents that they sent me in a paper check that had to then go through all these guilds and paycheck companies and then being mailed to me was a loss.

Speaker 2

Of course, just the stamp is 75 cents now.

Speaker 1

Are they? Yeah, oh my God.

Comedy Writing

Speaker 2

That is crazy. Okay, so comedy, we know, is very subjective. How do you know when you write a line, that it's really funny?

Speaker 1

That is a difficult question to answer. I gosh, where do I start? I did not consider myself a funny person until I met someone in my later 20s who said you're really funny. And that again was like these opportunities that I eventually got were not even on my radar when I was young. So I started exploring, I started doing improv and just sort of stretching that doing, doing improv, performing or writing.

Speaker 1

Performing and I was terrible and I will only be behind a camera. I was just so terrible. But it taught me, like, how do you think in the moment, what would a character really really say in those instances? The comedy part of it is I knew that I wanted to be around really funny people and I imagined that Lucy and Desi had a beautiful house in Hollywood and poolside it was all of the great comedians and I thought I wonder if they still do that in this time and age. And come to find out they do. When you break in as a comedy writer, you go to parties where it's the funniest, most amazing. As a comedy writer, you go to parties where it's the funniest, most amazing talented people in the world. And so I got my dream to be around funny people and you just keep up.

Speaker 2

So what? They just run lines around the pool.

Speaker 1

Well, I mean, they're just funny, naturally, and you want to not be crushed in a conversation, so you step up your game.

Speaker 2

Interesting. So how long does it typically take to write an episode?

Speaker 1

When you're on staff, you're usually given two weeks, and that's from the time that. Hey, what are we doing with this episode that's going to be filmed next month? So you talk about the story, you talk about the smaller stories within it, you write an outline and then, as the one writer, you'll be handed that as an assignment. Take that episode, go home. You've got a week and a half to write it, and then you come back and then it's workshopped by the other writers. So you've got people cycling in and out of the writer's room depending on where they are in the writing of their episode.

Beating Writer's Block and AI Challenges

Speaker 2

So did it happen to you that you had a writer's block?

Speaker 1

Oh yes.

Speaker 2

What happens then? What do you do?

Speaker 1

I really succumbed to that. I think it's a luxury that a lot of people don't have, Especially when you're working like there would be times when we were called to turn a script around in two days.

Speaker 2

Right.

Speaker 1

So we would just all jump on it together. If I was given a week and a half to write a script, I would freeze for the first seven days.

Speaker 2

What.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's my process, apparently, and I would just wring my hands and stare at the sky and think I can never do this. I'm going to write my way out of my career and then I would scare myself into writing and I would sit down and do two or three all-nighters, but that was. I don't recommend that. I don't recommend it. It was exhausting physically and emotionally and it was terrible on my loved ones and anyone who watched my process. So I don't recommend that. But I'm constantly still. I come from a place of fear. I want to write what's great, and in order to write great, you have to write really shittily. Really. Yeah, I do, and I tell writers these days write poorly. I would write what I call the swill draft. It's nothing but pure swill, horrible, unreadable. But at least I got on the paper so then I can go in and start writing from there. But the blank page is something that just takes the wind out of me.

Speaker 2

That leads me to the question about AI Also. I know the last strike was about AI. Yeah, how can you help that? Don't you think studios will just write through AI? They are, they already are.

Speaker 1

There are studios, I think it's Sony Through AI they are, they already are.

Speaker 2

Really.

Speaker 1

There are studios I think it's Sony that has said that they are going to use their own AI. Let's call it a machine. It's a plagiarizing machine. They're saying they're going to take all the Sony intellectual properties and funnel it into their own AI system and then they're going to pull from that. So it's not really poaching, it's not stealing if you're stealing from yourself. I mean what we're heading towards is you can take any existing pilot or pre-existing pilot, run all of the episodes that are ever written for it into AI and say write me a new season of 10 episodes. It's not going to be very good, but it's always. You know the writing of it's getting better. So when we went on strike in 2022, we didn't even it was not that long ago we didn't even know what AI was going to be doing other than it was going to be a threat. It is. It's unregulated. I think that my peers and I were not for no AI. That would be foolish. It's like saying no internet.

Speaker 2

Right.

Speaker 1

But there's no regulation I can tell when someone writes with AI.

Speaker 2

Really.

Speaker 1

Yeah, there are so many tells.

Speaker 2

Really.

Speaker 1

Yes, and even when you ask it to write in a more human voice, it's not there yet. It has a lot to do with the prompts that you feed it. I'll do research using AI and some of it's really in-depth and amazing. Some of it's incorrect.

Speaker 2

Yes, I saw that a lot, yeah, but what stops you as a writer? You have a week to write, or a week and a half. Seven days, you are paralyzed, basically.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

What stops you from just feeding all the characters and stuff into ai and spewing something?

Speaker 1

because it takes you out of your brain and your talent. It extracts that and then you're a, you're passive, and any writing that I've done using ai which is more for administrative, or I do tables and spreadsheets I am just watching it give me answers. As a writer, you have to go deep, you have to go emotional, otherwise what you're writing is just words on a page. You'll never find your voice, and that's one of the things that you get to do as a. As a writer, throughout your career, your voice deepens. You find a way to say something that no one else can say in a way that no one else can say it, and all of that would be erased with AI. So I caution young writers.

Speaker 2

What show you wish you had worked on.

Speaker 1

The Tracy Ullman Show which is sketch comedy. I know it was sketch comedy and that's where the Simpsons got its start. I was up for King of the Hill. It is an animated show and I just loved it so much I thought I was perfect for it and I didn't get the job.

Speaker 2

There was major depression right.

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, that one hurt. There was a lot of things that I didn't get. Oh, I turned down shows that became juggernauts.

Speaker 2

Oh, why Don't tell me you turned down Friends?

Speaker 1

I didn't turn down Friends, I turned down Sex and the City because I thought it was going nowhere. I watched the pilot and they said, Dawn, you can move back to New York where so many of your friends are. And I was like, yeah, I've watched the pilot. I said no, I don't see it happening.

Speaker 2

I hated this show.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I mean I ended up loving the show. The first season was bizarre and bad and then it kind of found its stride. All of my close friends worked on it, made a career of it, bought homes.

Speaker 2

Did you kick yourself oh?

Speaker 1

my God, yes, my daughter's. Like we all love Sex and the City. They're all in their 20s. And I said, you know? And she goes, mom, don't tell the story about you. Turn that show down. You can't watch it without being bitter. I was like, no, I'm bitter. I am so bitter, my God. And there were many shows that I should have gone with that stayed around for years and years, and I was like, no, I don't see it. There was a time that I was 100% wrong on every call that I made with my career. It cost me everything.

Speaker 2

Oh well, and your?

Speaker 1

agent didn't push you to accept it. They did, they did. My agent called me at like late night. I found this show for you. You've got to get on Sex and the City. Oh yeah, yeah, oh well.

Speaker 2

It is what it is. Everybody has a missed story. I know Any industry that they are. Yes, if you would have the possibility of producing or writing any project, what would that be?

Speaker 1

I do have a project that I want to do and it's a post-Civil War feminist screed. But funny, oh, oh yeah, I just. There's a woman outlaw that existed that I want to write about, and in order to get that done, first I have to write about it and stop talking about it.

Speaker 2

As a film or as a TV show as a TV show. Okay.

Speaker 1

And in order to get that made and realized, I would reach out to producers that I've worked with. I would reach out to actors that I've reached out to one and he said I think it's a great idea and I'd be a part of that. I'd have to do the producing and pulling it together myself, and it's just really a matter of can I? You know, if I can get past my own self.

Ways To Break In

Speaker 2

For someone without connections to producers or network executives? What's the best way for them to break into the business?

Speaker 1

I talked to a lot of university students in the film and TV programs and I said first off, you've got YouTube. I think it's an amazing force. You've got TikTok, you've got Instagram. You have ways of getting your work as a comedian, especially as a musician. There are formats that we didn't have at our fingertips right. That it requires you to self-produce.

Speaker 2

So when you apply for the job, they look how many followers you have. They do now. They do huh.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's a big part of it. Even for actors now, it's not where we wanted things to go and you've got writers who are camera shy.

Speaker 2

And you're very solitary usually.

Speaker 1

Very solitary. Yeah, we're introverts by and large and there's a lot of us being called to get our names, our brands, as ourselves out there. I did that a lot last year. It worked. I didn't enjoy it, but I've got to do it again if I want to get some heat behind my name so that people will read me.

Speaker 2

Wow, I looked up your history a little bit and I see that you went into producing and into coaching other writers. That's why you started that.

Speaker 1

It is, and also there's the notes giving process to scripts that I always really loved. I was always in writers groups. I feel like I'm in a really good position to mentor and help other people, so I shifted after 2020, because we all shifted, we all pivoted where we lived, how we lived and you mean after the pandemic.

Speaker 1

After the pandemic Right, yeah, we did it. We had a lot of time for soul searching and I did not want the hustle of getting my next project up. But I did want the hustle of what if I can create a company that people can come to as a writing community and they can form their own writers groups and I can coach and I can do one on one script consultation. So I've been doing that for the last couple of years and I love it.

Speaker 2

What's the best advice you got as a writer in your career?

Writing as a Muscle and Career Advice

Speaker 1

I think it was simple Get out of your own way. Get out of your own way. When you're writing, we tend to like get precious about oh, I want to tell, oh, that was a really good line, oh, this is not great. Like it's the all theediting that will slow up your writing and really put a kink in the works. Let the writing happen, follow it. You don't have to be so stressed about it like you're hanging on too tight. Let it go see where it goes.

Speaker 2

And that to me was like a free fall on your website, I saw something that really perked my interest. You said that everybody can write, that writing is a muscle, right? Please talk about it, because I don't believe it, but maybe so tell me what you don't believe about.

Speaker 1

Writing is a muscle.

Speaker 2

I think a lot of it has to do with talent, with how articulate you are, how observing you are, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that you have to have. I think that I jumped over all of that. You have to have talent, but talent can be brought out. You do have to have a point of view, and that's something that comes with maturity.

Speaker 2

Right.

Speaker 1

And then the muscle part of it is what has kept me working in an industry that likes to disappear people after 40. What's kept me working is my habits and rituals and my habit of writing every morning, and that's the morning pages, the Julia Cameron artist way stuff Very corny. I resisted it for 20 years and then, at a very particular time in my life in 2018, my marriage was failing. We were losing everything it. It was very I'd lost my voice and my ability to write and I, out of desperation, turned to morning pages and I would sit there with my cup of coffee and go I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this.

Speaker 1

And weeks into months, I started coming back to myself, just stream of consciousness, writing. Stream of consciousness because when you first wake up, it's that diffuse thinking, your analytical brain is not kicked in yet and that was the muscle of just getting my thoughts out of my cranium and onto a page and then going on with my day and what I found out. It cleared out my day to get to my other writing, which is the. That's the professional writing. But I couldn't do the professional writing because I was so lost and it was those morning pages. That got me back on track. So when I talk about, it's like the muscle that you have to develop, it does mean writing each day. I think talent can be brought out by that.

Speaker 2

Interesting. That's good to know for all the audience out there that are dreaming to become writers. Yeah, what is the biggest challenge for a screenplay writer? I?

Speaker 1

would say that they think it's breaking in. I think it is learning the format and how to tell a great story they need to know I mean, let's just talk about film writers To write a screenplay you've got to have the outline, the treatment, the breaking, the story. You've got to know all the beats to hit. And if you're trying to be really creative and artistic and work outside of that, then good luck. But you're not going to be a screenwriter unless you can go make it yourself. I think that's the hardest hurdle is reining in your talent and putting it into the format that will get you read and made.

Writing Format

Speaker 2

When you say format, let's take film, for example. I know they have like oh, by seven minutes. You have to have your first plot point and then another 21 minutes, you have to have another plot point, you have to have three acts. So do you follow that formula?

Speaker 1

Absolutely. I follow it to the T, to the page number, and here's why. That's what helped me break in. And I studied the beats to a sitcom. I watched Frasier episodes, I watched anything that was on and I wrote it down in a notepad and I thought, oh, in this one minute, this is the information they conveyed. How they conveyed it? Which character conveyed it? When you're writing a screenplay, by page three, you want to know what the genre is Like. Am I reading a horror? Am I reading a romantic comedy? You've got to pick your lane. I think a lot of other writers would disagree with me, but this is what worked for me. I stuck to the format and the structure and it mattered.

Speaker 2

Interesting. Yeah, they always talk about the format. Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah, what advice would you have given yourself when you were just starting out, when you were 20, you said you started to write. Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is don't take it personally.

Speaker 1

What do you mean to write? Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is don't take it personally, but I think that's what do you mean by that? Don't take it personally, well, like when you get Rejected. Rejected, and when you get notes and when you're told you'll never make it in this business, all these things. Even I was told that in advertising you got to be ayear-old guys.

Speaker 2

Right, so we talked about the challenge. What's the biggest reward?

Speaker 1

It's the people that I have gotten to work with and have become close to the funniest, brightest, sharpest people on the planet, and I didn't, you know, I had that when I was talking about that, poolside with Lucy and Desi. That's kind of what I wanted. That's kind of what I wanted my life to look like, and my life is that.

Speaker 2

Do you have a dream of writing a novel? Like when you were back in wherever Germany, you said In England. In England.

Speaker 1

Yes.

Speaker 2

You do.

Speaker 1

Yes, I have various outlines and titles and ideas. All right, yeah.

Speaker 2

We're going to look forward to it. Thank you so much for your time. That was a real good lesson in TV behind the scenes Cool my pleasure. That's a wrap for today. If you have a comment or question or would like us to cover a certain job, please let us know. Visit our website at howmuchcanimakeinfo. We would love to hear from you. And, on your way out, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode with anyone who is curious about their next job. See you next time.

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Mirav Ozeri

Host