Being unsure if you're a success story or a cautionary tale?

 "I'm never sure if I'm supposed to be the success story or the cautionary tale."

From time to time, I'm asked to speak to students or recent graduates from my alma mater, Denison University, and this is typically how I begin the conversation. I like to make sure everyone understand that "Yes, I'm a TV writer with four produced episode credits to his name and two seasons on staff... but it also took me 18 years to get there. Are you prepared to spend 18 years getting to where you want to be?"

I moved out to L.A. on November 1, 2002. My WGA card arrived in the mail on October 31, 2020. So when I say it was eighteen years of work to get to that moment, I mean it was 18 years exactly. I wasn't the only one of my friends to come out here soon after graduation in pursuit of similar dreams. But I can tell you this - of probably about a dozen classmates from my year or the year after, I'm the only one left. Some lasted almost 15 years, others five. There were a couple that were gone in as short as six months. The ones I'm in touch with all are happy with their lives now. They all hit a point where they decided they couldn't keep chasing that dream and get what else they wanted out of life.

To be sure, there were a great many wins along the way to that achievement - both personal and professional. My wife and I have been together 18 years and I'm certain one of the biggest reasons any career lows didn't send me either spiraling or running entirely from this business is the fact that I had her. I don't think you're built to sustain both a demoralizing work life AND a demoralizing social life. Because of this, another piece of advice I open with is to pursue fulfilment outside your career.

This has been on my mind a lot lately as I've seen the business go through one of the worst dry patches in remembered history. That's not just me saying that. I've had many a conversation with people whose professional credits go back to the 90s and they say it's never been this bad before. I again point at those 18 years and remind you it has never been easy. Is it even responsible to give any kind of hope for people who are still trying to break in at this point?

My story is just that, one story. A guy who graduated from Denison two years ahead of me, Robert Levine, ended up on the same path but got there much faster than me. Three years after he graduated, he was an office PA on JUDGING AMY. About a year later, he moved up to Showrunner's Assistant and during that season, he got his first writing credit - just in time for the show to be cancelled. But his boss, Carol Barbee, moved on to JERICHO a year later and put him on staff. He's worked pretty steadily ever since, with his credits including co-creating and co-showrunning BLACK SAILS and THE OLD MAN.

The assistant-to-staff-writer path used to be a pretty reliable path. I took a modified version of that, now for me, I didn't get that first Writer PA job until 2015. It wasn't a wasted decade-plus for me. Six months after I moved out here I was working for Lakeshore Entertainment as an Office PA and let me tell you, going to work every day on the Paramount Lot is a great way to convince yourself you're on your way to making it in LA. That pretty quickly led to me becoming a Development Assistant and in time the pivot to being a script reader for several companies.

For six years.

It wasn't a totally wasted sideline. Those years gave me the material that led to me starting this blog and my Twitter feed and you can draw a straight line from my Twitter networking to ever TV job I've ever had:

- I met Jeff Lieber in part through Twitter and two and a half years later he hired me on NCIS: NEW ORLEANS.

- I got to know Matt Federman for something like three years over Twitter before he hired me as the Writers' Assistant on BLOOD & TREASURE.

- Twitter connected me with Greg Berlanti and a year after a general meeting with him, I got hired on SUPERMAN & LOIS.

When I tell this story to people who ask me how they can become a TV writer, I underline two details of that path:

1) Networking rarely shows immediate results. You've gotta be patient and that also means you can't see anyone as just a means to an end. You're building a relationship and some of those contacts aren't gonna lead anywhere. If they do, it could be years - so don't think you're one meeting away from that staff job you want.

2) You might have figured out that my specific hacks to break in - blogs, Twitter - won't work in the same way today. You've gotta figure out your own version of that. The good news? When I started trying to break in, that path didn't exist as a proven one either!

If you're a recent graduate, the specific way you will break in probably hasn't been invented yet.

Is that alone reason enough to discourage people from pursuing dreams of being a screenwriter or TV writer? No, but let's look at the numbers.

According to the most recent WGA Writer Employment Snapshot, there were 1,819 television writing jobs during the 2023-24 television season. That represented a 42% drop from the season before.

You want me to make that number scarier? In the entire NFL, there are 1,696 players. In 2023-24, it was about as hard to get a job in TV writing as it was to get into the NFL. 

Now I'm gonna make it even more bleak -- because even if you just limit your competition to people who were employed for the 2022-23 season, that means there are 1,319 writers with more experience than you ALSO fighting for those 1800+ slots next season.

There are almost as many recently experienced pros out of work as there are working. Almost TWO union TV writers for every job available!

I don't have hard data for this next claim, but plenty of anecdotal experience. There is about a decade's worth of the assistant class that have been trapped at the support staff levels much longer than they used to. Smaller rooms, shorter seasons, longer gaps between seasons and fewer shows being renewed all have conspired to make it very difficult for support staff to get their chances to move up. This is especially true with streaming shows.

I would bet there is a not-insignificant number of career support staffers who in another life would be upper level writers.

You can't underestimate the impact the loss of the CW also has on this. There were 10-12 one hour shows, most of which ran 22 eps a season. Writers stayed on through production, they got to produce their episodes and gain skills they'd need as the next generation of showrunners. Assistants got scripts, could afford to stick with the same show for enough seasons until a slot opened up to staff them. People built entire careers at the CW and the loss of that network is devastating to the future of TV writing.

So, not a great time for TV writing in general. To recap:

- This job is as rare as playing for the NFL.

- There is almost an entire NFL's worth of career writers ready to replace the employed TV writers at a moment's notice.

- You're also competing with an assistant class that hasn't gotten out of the way yet.

And you're at the very bottom of the ladder.

I again repeat -- EIGHTEEN YEARS.

If you start counting from my first job in TV in 2015 to my WGA card, that's only five years. But even putting aside how I got the job, was the guy I was in 2003 as likely to be as ready to move up as the guy in 2015 was? Probably not.

And again, this is where the decade's worth of assistant careers standing still becomes relevant.

To return to the topic of the hypothetical recent graduates, I don't know what to tell them about breaking in because right now, I can't imagine what "breaking in" looks like -- aside from a lot of sweat, a lot of waiting, a lot of career uncertainty and more than a lot of competition.

Reader questions: What should I study in college and how do you struggle afterwards?

You might have noticed that posts have gotten scarcer the last few weeks. I've been working on a new spec and have been trying to put together a short film, so my free time for this site has plummeted.  However, I am still getting all your emails and I'll respond to them as time and severity warrant.

As luck would have it, two recent emails seem to relate to each other in an interesting way so I thought I'd knock them both out here.  First up is Cecilia:


Hi, I realize you may be busy with other priorities and such and this may seem like a silly email but I really don't know who to ask. I ideally would like to go into a career in film (like directing or screenwriting most likely), but my parents will never let me study anything like that in college. Should I just write and do what I can on my own and then try to send in scripts? I truly love film so I don't want to waste my time and half ass something but I also don't want to be broke and have an unsympathetic family. Do you have any advice?

I do. Believe me, I can understand why parents would push their children to study something more stable than writing or directing.  My parents were very supportive of my choice to pursue such a path, but I entered college at the tail end of the Clinton Administration, back when we had a stable economy, no budget deficit and much lower unemployment. The economic picture is very different today and because of that, I would definitely recommend you study something that can pay the bills. Do what you can to make yourself employable down the line because it's a harsh job market out there.

That doesn't mean you can't take film classes as electives, though. Nor does it mean you can't make friends among the film majors and make movies with them in your spare time.  When I was in college, it was just before the boom where seemingly every student had their own digital video camera. Today, you probably won't have to go far to find someone with a copy of Final Cut Pro and it's a relatively cheap program to purchase.  I learned more about filmmaking from actually doing it than I did from just listening to lectures in a classroom, so there's no reason you can't pursue it as a hobby and build up your portfolio on your own.

Post-graduation you can always move out to L.A.  No one's going to care what's on your diploma.  Even though I was a Film major, I could have gotten the exact same jobs I netted out here even if I majored in Econ or English.  Heck, at least two successful screenwriters I know didn't even GO to college!

And now an email from Chris:

I know writing to you is a long shot. That's okay, for me, every day is a long shot. 23 years old, I moved to LA five months ago, after getting my B.A. I have been living on savings while simultaneously working four internships (one of which involves periodic script reading). 

I thought that by now I'd have the credits for a lowly PA/secretary job but that's not the case. I might've done something wrong, or am just unlucky. I don't want you to tell me it's all going to be okay. Or that if I keep working on my writing "it'll all pay off". I just want to know if you've ever been in my position before and, if so, what you did that helped you sleep at night. 

Cecilia - this is your future.

Chris - what you're experiencing is relatively normal for a 23 year-old in his first year in L.A. When I moved out to L.A. It took me almost seven months to get a real job that paid and until that time I did internships and worked on my writing on my own.

Some of the best advice I got was from a visiting alum who came to my school after becoming a rather big name in the industry.  She cautioned, "Your early twenties will suck." Yes, they will.

My first year in L.A. wasn't great. I knew maybe two people before I came to town, I was living off of the generosity of my parents, it felt like I was never going to be hired and I was 3,000 miles from everything I'd ever known.  I have definitely been in your position, Chris.

This is a hard place to make a living and even people who've been here for a while still struggle.  I've been on unemployment a few times myself. I'm fortunate in that my wife has been pretty consistently employed in the business and that she's extremely good and rather successful at what she does.  Over the years, my writing career has taken some steps forward and thanks to this blog and twitter, I've formed a lot of useful relationships with people in the business.

But the struggle never really ends, and especially now it's even worse because where in an economy where employers can't afford to take on many employees and they underpay the ones they do have.  It's a horrible way to treat people who've worked hard, but what can they do? Quit? HA! Then someone else will do the job for the meager pay.

Getting that first paying job in the industry will take time. I knew a guy who went almost a full year without landing his first job.  It won't be easy and I can't promise that it even will happen.  All I can tell you is that you're not alone.

Webshow: Total Outsider Screenwriting Success Stories

After my interview with F. Scott Frazier, one viewer wrote in to request that I do an interview with a writer who broke in after being a complete outsider to the industry.  Specifically, they wanted to hear from a guy who had a 9-5 job completely outside the industry and no connections within the industry.  In this video, I explain why finding people like that is incredibly rare.

Walk before you run

Hina asks:

"Say you come up with a highly stylized world that has genuine merchandising capacity, is highly commercial and possesses multiplatform potential, but feature script-wise you're a total newbie, would you wait until you've completed your other projects and hopefully get those commissioned so you have a sufficient standing in the industry to then launch the multiplatform project you have written? Or would you just pitch it, guns-a-blazing?"

My advice, I'd go with the former. For more than one reason.

Look at the people writing and directing the big blockbusters.  Odds are they cut their teeth on smaller-scale projects before working their way up to tentpoles.

- Before he was huge in movies and TV, J.J. Abrams first script sales were the smaller movies Taking Care of Business, Regarding Henry and Dying Young.

- Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci spent years in TV making a name for themselves before they started selling big movies.

- The Dark Knight Rises' co-writer Jonathan Nolan had a huge boost by having a brother in the business, and his first work was the short story that became Memento.

- The other TDRK co-writer, David S. Goyer, got his first writing credit on a 1990 Van Damme movie, Death Warrant.

Prometheus's Damon Lindelof's early credits include MTV's Undressed and CBS's Nash Bridges.

And those are just the works that sold!  They still had to develop their craft and break into the business before that.  What do you think the odds are that the first scripts they wrote are the ones that opened the doors for them?

You have to walk before you can run.  George Lucas didn't jump right to doing Star Wars.  He did many short films, the low-budget THX-1138, and American Graffiti first.  Also, if you've ever seen the early drafts of Star Wars, you'd know that it bore little resemblance to anything that ended up on screen and that George spent years rewriting it and refining his ideas before it was in any state to be shot.

If you have an idea that's that unique and that marketable, experience can only make it better.  Develop your craft on more managable ideas first.  Not only will it be easier for you to break in on something that isn't in the tentpole catagory, but you'll grow as a writer so that when you do finally work on that golden idea, it'll be better as a result of what you've learned.

Jumping straight to writing blockbusters is like saying, "I like the piano.  I want to have my first recital in Carnegie Hall."

Lesson: When pushing your work, think outside the box

It's probably not any secret that when it comes to breaking in, writing a great script is often only part of the equation.  Your brilliant writing still needs to get noticed by people who can do something with it.  The problem - everyone in town is trying to get noticed to.  Anyone who's reading scripts already has more scripts than they can deal with - so getting someone to agree your writing is a major favor.

Nobody owes you a read.  And a young writer just starting out, if they're lucky enough to get representation, is likely to find themselves a low priority for that agent.  I came across this article about how Boardwalk Empire creator Terry Winter executed some unusual tactics to get his script into the right hands.  After getting his hands on a list of agents who accepted unsolicited submissions, he recognized the name of a guy he went to school with.  Problem: when he called up this guy, he found out the guy had become a real-estate attorney and didn't really know anything about being an agent.

Most writers probably would have said, "Crap" and bemoaned the lousy luck of their networking.  Winter instead had a great idea.

So we made a deal where I would create basically a phony agency with his name. I did this out of the Mail Boxes Etc. on Santa Monica Boulevard, and I got a voice-mail system and letterhead printed up. I said I’m gonna submit my work under your name, and if I get anything, I’ll give you ten percent like a real agent. 

I took a day off from work and hit like every sitcom office in L.A., which at the time, there were like 26 sitcoms on the air. And I just walked in wearing a baseball cap and said, Yeah, hi, I’m the messenger from this agency and here are the scripts you wanted. And I thought, all right, at least my scripts are in the building where people theoretically could hire me. 

A couple of weeks went by and I got a call on a Friday from Winifred Hervey Stallworth, who at the time was the showrunner for “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” and she was calling for Doug, who was my agent. And she said, Yeah, Doug, it’s Win Hervey from “Fresh Prince.” I read Terry Winter’s scripts and really think they’re great. We’d love to maybe talk to you about having him come in to pitch. 

So I called Doug in New York. At this point it was like 4 in the afternoon in L.A. and 7 in New York, and he was already gone for the weekend. So I thought, Oh, God, I’ve gotta wait until Monday now. And then it occurred to me that Doug didn’t really know anything about being an agent, so I thought, you know what, I can just call and say I’m Doug and it’ll be easier to cut out the middleman. 

I called her and she said, Oh, great, Doug. Oh, you know, “Fresh Prince” is sort of a teenage-oriented show. Does he have like one more teenage kind of script? And I said, Yeah, he just finished a “Wonder Years” spec that’s really terrific -- which was a lie. I didn’t have anything else at that point; she had everything I wrote. 

I said, Terry’s out of town for the weekend, but I could probably get this to you by Tuesday. And she said, Yeah great, Tuesday’s fine. I hung up the phone, and from Friday night until Tuesday afternoon, I cranked out a “Wonder Years” script, and then I threw the baseball hat back on, went as a messenger again and showed up at the office, flung it in the door, made sure nobody saw me, because at this point I was like the messenger, the agent, the client …

So there you have it.  You've got to be your own biggest advocate.  You can read the rest of Winter's story here.

Here's what I like about this story - Winter used his resouces in a way that took advantage of the system, but wasn't arrogant or obnoxious about it.  Too many aspirings think that being their own biggest cheerleader means they have to be obnoxiously arrogant and overconfident.  I get emails now and then that read something like, "I am the greatest writer who ever lived!  I know this is the best script you'll ever read and if you turn it down, years from now you'll be sorry that you weren't the one who found me!"

Confidence is good.  Overconfidence is off-putting.  Sending me multiple emails also isn't a good idea to get my attention.  And a good way to REALLY piss me off is send me an arrogant email, then write by in a few days getting angry that I haven't replied one way or another.

Let me put it this way: have you seen those auditioners on The X-Factor who come in saying they're the next Mariah, Whitney, or whoever?  How often do those guys really blow you away when they sing?  More often than not they sound worse than a drunk Linda McCartney on karaoke night.  Then, when told they aren't making the cut - notice how many of them become combative.  Notice how many of them invite Simon to have sex with himself and then rant to the cameras how the competition sucks anyway and the show is full of people who don't know what they're doing - or they had to get rid of this person because they were just too damn good.

The screenwriting world is full of those types too, people who mistake their own arrogance as a virtue.  Don't be the guy who tells Simon to fuck himself.  Be the guy who walks his script into the office, takes the call that follows up and then leverages that into another submission.