[CharlieDontSurf]

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So then I guess the writers of the Sopranos were bad writers up until they started writing for The Sopranos

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If everything they did before sucked (I'm not saying it did)? Yes.

If you are a writer, and you write [censored] for the next 10 years, and then in 2018 you write something amazing, in the end you're judged based on your whole body of work (what else could there be to judge you on?? There's no better measure, not even close, and the one you suggested, how many Americans are worse, is stupid).

Now, let's say in an alternate reality, you get hit by a car and die in 2017. Unlucky as it is, because you died having written nothing but [censored], when people look back on your life (which they wouldn't, but let's pretend), and ask 'was he a good writer?', the answer is no.

Anything else is an argument akin to:
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Im sure there are lots of amazing novelists who will never break in because they don't want to go through the hassle of writing a novel.

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Which someone else posted in the thread and I think you agreed with me was a stupid thing to say.

As for my supposed ego in saying I decide what's good tv and what's not, you're the one who has been listing shows as either good writing or bad writing, not me. The only value judgment I've made of TV writing in this thread is that the best of it is brilliant but most of it is crap; and I think that's not a controversial statement in the slightest, in fact I would guess most people would agree and of those who don't the majority would think the statement is too generous to TV writers, not too harsh.

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Yeah my list was more going off a general view of both people in the industry and the critics who review its product..so its not my personal opinion about what is good or bad.

And no KneeCo I'd argue your wrong. The writers who worked for those crappy shows were good writers who wanted to pay the bills etc and since that was the job they got stuck with they kept with it until they got something better. While they sloggd away on those crappy shows they were working on their own more personal [censored] on the side...short stories, novels, spec screenplays, TV pilots, poetry, articles for newspapers or magazines, and other spec TV shows. They would have never been hired to Sopranos if they were bad writers.

I worked briefly for a writer who I thought was a total hack because the scripts of his that got turned into movies were awful and went straight to DVD. While working for him I ended up reading all these short stories he had written which were [censored] amazing. He didn't ever try to publish them or anything he just did it because he enjoyed it and the format wasn't so restraining compared to screenwriting. So one could assume based on his crappy couple of movies that he was a terrible writer, but that assumption would be wrong. TV & Film is a strange medium compared to other forms of writing given it will often take a amazing work of writing and make it worse and worse and worse until the end product is [censored].