070: Rough Drafts vs. The Writers Room

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Don't compare your insides to someone else's outsides. Don't compare your behind the scenes to someone else's highlight reel. I'm sure you've heard these sayings a million times by now, as have I. This is the common self soothing note that we probably say to ourselves. Those of you who go on social media, this has to be a constant reminder. Especially now with people using filters and facetune and all kinds of shenanigans to look like different versions of themselves. Well, this same sentiment holds true in writing as well. Don't compare your rough draft to the final product from an entire writer's room. Here's what I mean by that. I've been really enjoying how HBO is releasing entirely new podcasts to go with series that they have. So for succession, there's an official succession podcast. And just like that series formerly known as Sex and the City, now rebooted and pivoted, there's a podcast called the Writer's Room. That's the official behind the scenes. And for the Gilded Age, there's even a podcast on that one talking about the history of the Gilded Age in New York City. I've been thinking a lot as the more I learn about how writers rooms work and the more I listen to these behind the scenes shows about these TV series that I love, it really struck me that to compare our own writing and thinking and and rough drafts to finished products that we see anywhere out in the world, whether in a book or in a TV show, is really a misnomer. You've probably heard standups like Jerry Seinfeld talk about carrying a notepad everywhere and working on one joke a day, or refining jokes multiple times a week in front of live audiences. This is something that I admire so much about standups in general, is how committed they are to their craft and to improving their jokes, and that they're willing to go out on stage and absolutely bomb and bomb and bomb again until they can tweak the jokes enough to be funny. So it's very rare that they're going to write a joke that is immediately hilarious right out the gate. And instead it's this continual process of revisions. I am an absolute fanatic for Sex and the City. I started watching when I was in high school, and yes, it inspired so much of my move to New York City. It's been really fun. I just constantly rewatch episodes and it's interesting how as my life changes and evolves, I relate to the storylines in different ways and I catch new things that I might not have caught before. Or I've had new experiences that connect me to jokes that were in that show. Watching the new and just like that series, as disappointing as I found it, I really found it lackluster compared to the original series. Not that same tight, cohesive arc around a theme. That's what the first Sex and the City or SATC series was. So good at. Just picking a theme. And then each of the four characters had exposition along the lines of that theme. And it was always funny and so tightly written. And I loved Carrie's voiceover narration. I reread a book called Sex and the City and Us that came out in 2018. I'll put it in the show notes celebrating the 20th anniversary of the show. Between reading that book and then listening to the new the Writers Room podcast about and just like that, it struck me how much effort goes into every single line of dialogue for shows that we watch and love on tv. I was trying desperately to find scripts from the original series. I wanted to see the writing written out. I wanted to see what they looked like. I only had success finding one. It's the opener to season two, called Take Me out to the Ball Game. I'm going to link to it in the show notes because it took me a lot of random Internet digging to find it. As I read it, I was just thinking how Crisp the writing, every line is punchy and concise and delivers something humorous or moves the story of that episode forward. And I remember being so impressed. How is this writing so tight and so crisp? And then as I read these books and listen to the writer's room, I realize, oh, it goes through so many revisions, and there is no single person who is producing this script or line of dialogue. So I want to use Sex and the City as an example of how many people are involved in a project. And the same thing could be true for free time or pivot life after college. Any of the books or big projects that I've worked on. Authors often say in the acknowledgments, it takes a village. And it's true. It takes a village. So I hope in sharing some of what I've learned about this process, you can also feel less self conscious when you see your own rough draft, and it just doesn't live up to the taste that you have in your mind. I talked about this in a previous episode, the difference between taste and talent that Ira Glass talks about, that we often have a higher taste than our talent because we're such avid consumers of media. So I'll link to that in the show notes as well. Let's talk about the life of a script. And I'm gonna do this through the lens of Sex and the City, because that's the only one that I've read all this background on. I'm sure every show is different. Every writer's room is different. And what do I know? I'm not even a TV writer. I should interview one for this podcast. Let's start from the very beginning that this show that so many of us loved was based on source material. Candace Bushnell, the creator of Sex and the City, wrote a series of columns for the New York observer, and she then turned those columns into a book. So right there, we have a writer writing columns. She no doubt has an editor at the newspaper. She probably has copy editors. She has friends that she's bouncing ideas off of. So we get these finished columns that then get compiled into a book. That book had developmental editors, copy editors, proofreaders, and so on. And I did go see Candace Bushnell's one Woman show in New York with my friend Dori Clark. It was so fun. Even the book itself did not have four cohesive characters. Yes, it had Carrie Bradshaw. That was a pseudonym for Candice Bushnell, kind of her alter ego. So she could write about her adventures in the city without her parents directly connecting it to her. But Even her book and the columns did not have four characters whose personalities developed in these rich, interwoven ways the way that they did for the TV series. So that was the genius of Darren Starr, who had created shows like Nano 210 and Melrose Place. He took the source material of the Sex in the City book, which was a bunch of disparate columns, and he said, we really need four main characters who are going to grow and evolve together. He also had the genius to put Carrie front and center and say, we're going to have one main character and one main theme of every episode. Then the three other characters are going to highlight aspects of that main character, or they're going to show different threads and different themes along the overarching theme at the top of the episode. So for any of you who watch the show, you know these themes like the chicken dance when Miranda hires an interior decorator for her house. Then she has a guy coming to stay with her from out of town, and the decorator and the guy fall in love. And one of the weird frog end tables that the decorator picked out, Miranda ends up giving it to them at their wedding. There's an episode called Evolution, exploring how each person evolves or doesn't. Can men change? Can women change? What if you only want slight alterations? It's just so interesting, the conversations, the cast system about class and dating and society. I loved seeing how each character, the jokes, the puns, that's like one of my favorite parts of the show are the puns. Just love seeing how they all weave together in this beautiful tapestry. So Darren Starr and the showrunner, as they're called, might help come up with a big theme. But what I find so interesting is that in the writer's room, people actually have to pitch their ideas before anybody sits down to write a first draft of the script they all collaborate on what is the big theme? What are the little story nuggets that we want to tell? How do we want each character to grow and evolve? And this is such a collaborative process among this group of people in the writers room. So it's not even somebody by themselves tapping away at the computer, having no clue, I guess, unless you're the one pitching a pilot script for the first time to a network. But once the show is picked up is a super collaborative process.

We'll be right back just after this.

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There's an image that I love from the book Sex and the City and Us. I'm going to try to decipher it, but it's very fuzzy and I can't make out all the words. It's of the whiteboard in the writer's room. It's so compelling to look at because they have the numbers 1 through 10 across the top of the whiteboard and I have a feeling that's meant to be the arc of the entire season. Then under each episode number there's a theme. So then we get the theme for each episode and then in different color marker there is what each character is going to go in that episode. And I'm pretty sure, although I can't totally make it out. Under the theme they write the central question that Carrie's exploring. As you know, the signature couldn't help but wonder. And just like that, you know all these little quips. So it's cool. They map out the entire series, the theme for every episode of the series, the central organizing question, and then in different color marker, what each character's journey is going to be within each episode and then across this grid of the entire season. So imagine if you had a whole team of people and a whole whiteboard mapping out your project to be this clear before you ever sat down to start writing or thinking it would be such a different experience. Then only after in the writer's room, only after they've all brainstormed together and put up on a whiteboard all their ideas, Then the script for that next episode gets assigned. So that's something I found really interesting, is that you have this huge collaborative Process, understanding the bones of a story, the scaffolding of it. Then the script gets assigned. From there, there's a first draft of the script that gets discussed, debated toward, picked apart. They make revisions. They take in the feedback and the notes from who knows, the other writers, the showrunner, producers, the network. They revise the script. I'm guessing it goes through one or two more revisions and then there's a table read. So before the scripts go out in the field to be shot, they're sitting at the table read with the actors reading the lines. And if the actors read line that are supposed to be funny and nobody laughs, they work on those lines, they refine them even further. Then they go on location and they're shooting. And I would imagine that even then they probably try to reduce any changes at that point. Some shows, like Curb youb Enthusiasm, are much more open and encourage ad living and improv. And then I've heard there are other shows like Succession, where they want it to be absolutely to the T what is in the script. And I'm pretty sure I heard that Billions is like that as well. But I'm guessing that some shows, when they're actually filming on set, maybe they do still tweak a line here or there, or the actor just has a certain way that they feel it needs to be said instead. Then after filming on video, the director or the showrunner, or both. Again, I don't know the intricacies of who's looking at the tape. Make the final cuts before the show is aired live. So what we see on our TVs that we think is so smart and funny and brilliant has gone through a tremendous amount of collaboration, hashing things through revisions, cuts and refinements to get to the point that we see it and we love it as we watch. If you're interested in all of this as much as I am, again, I'll put links to everything in the show notes. Check out. Shonda Rhimes did a masterclass on writing for tv, and she even has an episode on the writers room. What does it mean to show up and be a good contributor in the writer's room? She said, if you don't have any ideas, get up and hold the pen at the whiteboard. But what she talked about is that one of her team members came onto the show and they would watch for every single episode. They would look at the rough draft of the script that had come out of the writer's room. They would read the production script, the final draft of that script, and they would Watch the final cut that made it onto tv. She said that that person got ramped up the fastest out of anyone that's ever joined her teams because they were able to see the transformation from rough draft, producer's cut, final draft, and final cut. I think that's so interesting to study the journey of a manuscript. Same thing with free Time. There's the original idea, running it by my friends and family. There was the brand strategy. So the overarching strategy and direction, vision and values for free time, that happened with the brand team, that was its own huge collaborative process. Then I did write a book proposal. So I shaped the book proposal with my agent and her assistant and we went through several rounds before we showed it to anybody. Then we had a meeting with Portfolio, my former publisher, who had first write a refusal for this idea. At that time it was called delightfully tiny teams. But I said, oh, what I'm debating. We could also call it free time. So we had a half an hour meeting to talk about the idea. Where does it fit? How would we market it? How does it connect to pivot? What's the story here? And then I think after that meeting, we both realized it probably wasn't a fit. It wasn't the right book for them for Portfolio. And I also wanted a more agile, different experience. I wanted to put it out in faster timing and with more creative control. So then I met with Rohit, the head of Idea Press, and he weighed in with his own thoughts on the overall big picture direction. He loved the idea of calling it free Time so that it was consistent with the new podcast that I had already started and the big brand idea. And as soon as he said it, I resonated with that so much as well. Because free time is what you get after reading. You know, it's the destination, it's the value that the book will give you is free time. So that's something that was really exciting to me. I just needed that external feedback. Then I typed away at a terrible, terrible rough draft. And the first draft goes to a developmental editor. So shout out to Herb Scheffner. His company is Big Fish Media. The developmental editor has to read a really scrappy first draft. I didn't have all my stories filled in. It was just the high level structure. And they provide feedback on the big ideas. The structure. What supporting stories do you need? This developmental edit is not at all about where do the commas go or how can you make this more concise? That editor is not actually editing the text itself. They're editing the ideas and the shape and the overall structure. So I went through two rounds of the developmental edit. In addition to reading it myself and thinking about what I wanted to do differently, I had friends reading certain parts of it. Then as you get further in the process, it goes to a copy editor. I had two copy editors, so three, including me. Then as it travels further along the path, it goes to a proofreader. I had two proofreaders and I proofread myself. So that's a total of three. Then it goes into typesetting. And I had a really collaborative process with Jessica, the typesetter, of making it look great on the page. But from the original idea to what you're going to hold in your hands is such a journey and there are so many people involved. So if you're sitting there writing something and wondering why it doesn't look and sound like the books that you're reading or the media that you're consuming, even a podcast episode like this one, it is very likely that it has gone through many people's hands to become the product that it is that you're experiencing. So I share this here with you, just to remind you that in addition to the visual images that we see on social media, and then we remind ourselves, don't compare your inside to someone else's outside. Or even you don't know. No matter what someone looks like in a photo, you don't know what's happening in their life that day. The same thing holds true for creative projects. Do not compare your rough ruff, rough first draft with someone else's writer's room, with someone else's finished product that 20 people have already weighed in on and shaped and that has been road tested and read aloud and all the things, it can be intimidating to realize how many steps there are in getting something from rough, rough draft to final finished product. But you gotta just take it one step at a time. As one of my earliest yoga teachers once said to me. I remember telling her how overwhelmed I was working on life after college. And she said, just take the one next step. You've always known what to do after that. And I don't know how she would have known that about me, or if that's just something that we can all say to each other. It's true. If you just take the one next step, you can trust that you always will know what to do from that one next step. And that's it. That's all you can do. So if you're working on a big, long, complex creative project like a book or heck, writing for tv? I don't know. The best thing we can do is just take the one next step and look for all the moments that we can get feedback and input from others along the way. Because nothing is truly done in isolation, at least not for super big projects like the ones I'm talking about here.

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