o you ever wonder how it happens? Do you try to imagine the setting and circumstances in which the words appear on the page, the first step on the journey to the screen?
I found it fascinating to learn that, for example, Rod Serling's words were rarely typed. He dictated his Twilight Zone scripts, an act at a time, while sitting by the pool at his home in Malibu, or in his office at what was then the MGM studio lot (now Sony's Culver City facility, in case you happen to be in the neighborhood).
Most sci-fi scripts weren't written that way, of course. Well into the 1980s, if my experience is any guide, drama scripts were still composed just like a novel or a short story: a writer would sit in her office and type. There would be creative meetings, of course. (This was television, after all.) A writer would pitch a concept, then write an outline. The writer would get notes, then write a first draft. Etc.
But, by and large, this was all solitary work—private composition. The writer alone with page or screen.
No longer. For the last decade, a lot of sci-fi has been written by teams of four, five or six writers working at the same time.
I speak, of course, about the Writer's Room.
The Writer's Room has a noble history in mainstream television ... specifically, television comedy. The classic Sid Caesar variety series Your Show of Shows was written this way; check out the films My Favorite Year (1982) or Laughter on the 23rd Floor (2001). The latter was written by Neil Simon, who was one of the denizens of the Caesar operation—along with Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, Mel Brooks and others. More recently, Saturday Night Live has continued the tradition.
So have most three-camera sitcoms since the early 1970s, and the days of the MTM comedies like The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The Simpsons, according to Mike Jean, the current show runner, has two writer's rooms—each with 10 writers—running all the time. (Well, not around the clock—at least I hope not. ... one hears stories about the long hours logged by writers on The Simpsons).
Chairmen of the whiteboard
The particulars of the process vary, but the basics are these: the show runner sets the agenda, whether the goal of the day is to come up with a concept for an episode or to "break" a storyline into "beats" or scenes. And there the writers sit, for a morning or an afternoon, or all day.
One of the staff might take notes. A writer's assistant can do this job. Some shows even record the writer's room chatter.
The necessary tools are few. A conference room. Comfortable chairs. Snacks and beverages. (Not too many of those, please!) A cork wall to hold index cards.
And the most important tool of all ... the whiteboard. This erasable surface is where the work appears—the optimistic first line ("Teaser") ... the one or two early beats we know we have to have.
Some writer's rooms use a single color on the board. Others go multicolored—and those that do often have rules about the colors. (Kirk's scenes in green, Spock's in blue?)
Do we number the beats? Sometimes, though there are show runners who feel that it's a mistake to number beats too early. You get locked into a sequence.
Do we try to fit an act in a single column? Here opinions get heated, with some show runners claiming that an act ought to fit in a single column on the whiteboard; if it's too long, the act break might be in the wrong place.
And so it goes ... day after day. You learn certain things from the process. For example, it takes two sessions to "break" an hour-long episode. Also ... about two hours into the first session, somebody will be so frustrated by the process that he will ask, "Why are we doing this story?"
A writer's room can be fun. It can also be exhausting. It is exactly like a writer's workshop—only for real. That is, there's money on the line, not to mention reputations. There are also 75 production personnel standing by to film what emerges ...
Ultimately a document emerges—a list of beats, snatches of dialogue, other notes—which one of the staff will then "flesh out."
(Yes, most dialogue will still be created by a writer or a pair of writers at a computer—but those of us who have gone though prep on an episode, or a table reading, or who have stood on a set, know just how temporary dialogue can be.)
Committees can't build federations
You may be asking yourself if this is the best way to write a sci-fi series. I do, too.
One of the glories of sci-fi or fantasy is that it allows a writer to imagine a whole world. Middle-earth. The Dune World, Arrakis. The Federation.
Endless debates about the sometimes-fragile and unexamined impulses that lead to a future world can be destructive. Imagine the writer's room at work on Isaac Asimov's Foundation: "Isaac, the idea of one man using science and math to predict the larger moves of human history over a millenium—wow!
"But can't we do something about this planet, Trantor? I don't buy the idea that a whole planet can be paved over.
"And this star travel you have here ... come on, it's about as complicated as catching an uptown subway!"
And so on.
It's not just that the core idea—the thing that makes a show SF—is vulnerable. It's that the war over ancillary or secondary assumptions can bleed the life out of a story.
I worry about that when I enter a writer's room.
Then I see the blank whiteboard, and for a moment I'm glad I'm not alone.
A veteran of 14 different series' staffs, Michael Cassutt has logged hundreds of hours in writer's rooms, where he has won praise for his use of color on the white board, and for his penmanship. His most recent script is for The Dead Zone; his new novel, Tango Midnight, will be published by Forge in November.
