From the first question, Variety’s “Night in the Writer’s Room,” which brought together five drama showrunners, was a lively affair as the writers compared notes and reflected on how much television has changed in a short period of time.
But nothing inspired the session, moderated by Variety’s senior TV editor Emily Longeretta, more than a discussion of how each showrunner likes to work and what it actually takes to get the job done.
For Jenny Snyder Urman, showrunner and executive producer of CBS’s “Matlock,” getting creative requires being freed from her desk. The other panelists were amazed at how much effort she put into getting her job done.
“My writing process is tied to walking,” Urman said during a panel discussion at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. “I do this every day. I take my script with me for a walk. My husband calls me and says, ‘I saw your wife in Tarzana, sweating and holding papers and we’re talking, and he’s like, ‘She’s at work.'” When you’re moving, you can think a lot. ”
R. Scott Gemmill, showrunner and executive producer of HBO Max’s “The Pit,” said he completely rejects the idea that the writers’ room has to run all night.
“I’m pretty lazy when it comes to the writers’ room. I only work with writers from about 11am to 2pm. I feel like small, quick meetings are much more effective,” Gemmill said. “I encourage them to step away from their lives so they can bring the story into the room. I don’t believe in being in a room for eight hours. I’ll be sound asleep. They have to wake me up like four times.”
Starlin Harjo, creator and showrunner of FX’s “The Lowdown,” agreed about his preferred schedule: “I’ll do it from 10 to 4.”
Gemmill added that there is another important consideration for a Los Angeles-based show. “When we get to work, we’re like, let’s get it done, rush out of here to avoid the traffic, and do it again tomorrow.”
Brad Ingelsby, creator and showrunner of HBO’s “Tusk,” brought a completely different perspective. He’s a one-man band in his series starring Mark Ruffalo.
“It’s just me in my home office. I sit in my chair every day. I wake up early every day and write until the kids get home. That’s my trick,” Ingelsby said. At this, Jamil asked, “I’d like to come and sit with you for a while, but do you just have some friends?”
Ingelsby takes this joke to heart, adding, “When people ask me for writing advice, I say the only valuable information I can give them is to sit in a chair every day. And I do that every day. Just sit in a chair.”
Then Harjo took up the thread.
“I have a lot of respect for that because that’s what I want to do. What I want to do is be a disciplined writer,” Harjo said. “And I try. I’ll do certain things, but usually I’ll drive to a coffee shop, go to the office, go to my house, go to a coffee shop, walk to a destination, and then I won’t write at all.”
Harjo’s frankness probably led Ingelsby to confess that he never wrote a screenplay based on an outline. This gave rise to multiple perspectives.
“I don’t even know how to outline a story. That’s probably why I sit in the office for so long every day. My brain doesn’t work that way,” Ingelsby said.
“Do you just write freely?” Ullman asked.
“What I love about writing is discovery, and if you write an outline that’s too rigid, you get too attached to the outline and you lose that discovery,” Ingelsby explained.
“One of the reasons I love writing is that the more time I spend with my characters, the better they write, and the more complex and layered they become. So if I stick too tightly to the beat sheet, I feel like there’s nothing left to discover. I’m just filling in these beats along the way. I kind of know where it’s going emotionally. I think I know where the characters are going, but I can’t really outline it that well. I know some of the executives don’t understand it, but that’s the only way I know. ”
Jenny Han, creator and showrunner of Amazon’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, offered her perspective as a writer adapting her own YA novel trilogy into animation. When asked by Longeretta about the process of pacing episodes over multiple seasons, Han admitted that the roadmap for the television series changed over time.
“My vision was always to do just three seasons and three books,” Han said. “And then, I think it was during Season 2, or maybe it was the beginning of Season 3, we requested another episode and they were like, ‘Great.’ So we went from 10 to 7, the first season we had 7. The second season we had eight people, and the third season we had 10 people. And we thought, ‘I think we need one more.’ So, I actually think we need a movie. ” And luckily, Prime Video was happy to oblige. ”
(Photo: R. Scott Gemmill, Jenny Han, Starlin Harjo, Brad Ingelsby, Jenny Snyder Urman)
