Resources for TV Writers

Over the years students have approached me from inside and outside the School of Fine Arts with requests for an independent study in film. There is no film school at UCONN and although we have classes in Drama and Art and Art History, students often want to pursue their own projects such as live action, animated or stop motion short films. More recently because of my interest in television writing, conversations have started to revolve around TV.

We all know that we are living in a golden age of television and so it is a creative and lucrative time for writers. With more and more new companies producing quality original programming, the market place is changing, the creative landscape is expanding and audiences are becoming more discerning. Traditional networks will have to adjust or face obsolescence.

Today I wanted to suggest a book and a podcast for budding TV writers. I have found them to be very useful resources as I have developed my own original television series idea.

The TV Showrunner’s Roadmap by Neil Landau (Focal Press) is subtitled 21 Navigational Tips for Screenwriters to Create and Sustain a Hit TV Series. Through interviews with showrunners from Breaking Bad to The Good Wife to Parenthood, he takes us through the all-consuming process of creating and running a series. How do you prepare the perfect pitch? How do you fuel your story engine and mine the mystery? How do you unify your storylines and get your set ups to pay off? It is a clear, up to date and detailed lesson in what makes a writer’s room and long running television series work. Landau is a professor at UCLA, movie and TV scriptwriter as well as a former Sony executive. I have found it extremely helpful.

The podcast is Scriptnotes with writers John August (Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and Craig Mazin (Identity Theft, The Hangover part 2) and tackles everything from screenwriting tips to interviews with television and movie writers, actors, directors and producers. It is a humorous and informative insider’s view on the (male dominated) Hollywood studio system. I hope you find these resources useful too. Happy writing!