When you write for a show that's not yours, your job is to hear the voices of the characters and write as best you can for those voices.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When you're writing for a show, you're writing part of the script. You have to tell the story.
When I'm writing, I'm writing for a particular actor. When a lot of writers are writing, they're writing an idea. So they're not really writing in a specific voice.
I haven't done a lot of voice work, but I know that a lot of shows will just bring in the actors individually, and they will just do what is on the paper. You miss out on that connection of having everyone there.
Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.
Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.
As a writer, it's fun to create. And once you get into a long-running show with very established characters and a very established tone and format, after a while it's a really great job, but that's what it is - a job.
When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.
Anything I write that I consider stage-quality work, I won't give my TV show. I put it in my live show.
The only successful way to write, and the only one I have found, is to be the character. Give up on trying to control them. Writers always talk about hearing voices. That's what they mean.
I don't have a writer's room. I write all the shows myself. Ninety-one episodes a season, I'm sitting there at the computer writing and writing and writing because I want the voice to be authentic so that the audience is hearing from me and not other writers.