Official WGA Writers Strike thread.

[CharlieDontSurf]

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KneeCo,

You dismiss most of the writing produced for the most popular medium ever as being trite, "familiar," accessible," etc, and denounce it as unskilled labor. At the very least, you seem to think that just about anyone could reproduce that work.

And that's the biggest hole in your argument. You say that, "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." While all that may be true, it doesn't affect in one bit the fact that the vast majority of people couldn't write one of those shows if they had a gun to their head, those shows make a lot of money, and not getting a share of that money is the reason for the strike.

At heart, I think a good writer is not too far from a great propagandist. A good writer can evoke specific feelings from his audience. Whether that feeling is unexpected humor or familiar laughs isn't as important as the ability to have a goal and achieve it through the written word. Saying otherwise is like saying Stephen King isn't a good writer because he evokes only horror, or Shyamalan isn't a good director because he only makes movies with ridiculous twists. You can make nitty arguments about their artistic merits, but in the end they are both hugely successful in fields where virtually nobody succeeds, and arguing otherwise is a fool's errand.

Your main argument seems to be that, since most TV writers end up credited for something that fails, or isn't high art, they aren't truly skilled. I would argue that even being able to pen something like an episode of the most cliched sitcom ever is somewhat of an art, especially considering that's rarely the only thing on a writer's resume.

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Basically what I was aiming for but you did a far better job than I did with just one post.

and i just realized that AG is probably picketing unless for some reason his strike captain didn't require him to.

[MikeyPatriot]

TV writers are skilled labor, not everyone can write a TV script.

Most TV shows are unimaginative, cliche, lowest common denominator type stuff.

TV writers are comparable to top 40 music songwriters.

Can you all agree to this and stop hijacking this thread?

[KneeCo]

No, I haven't said any of those things, not have I said anything to the effect that tv writing is easy or that I could do, actually I said the opposite:

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Even cheesy sitcoms aren't easy to write.

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this I agree with.
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But there is also a lot more to getting a job as a TV scribe than simply being a good writer.

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This couldn't be more wrong.
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I'll concede that there's a craft to writing for television, and honing that skill is difficult, requires a lot of work, and is something most people, or writers outside the system, don't have or even understand.
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Again, they may have a particular skill for their field and have jobs which are not easy, but that doesn't make them good writers, not even close.

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But keep putting words in my mouth, it makes you sound so smart.

[CharlieDontSurf]

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No, I haven't said any of those things, not have I said anything to the effect that tv writing is easy or that I could do, actually I said the opposite:

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Even cheesy sitcoms aren't easy to write.

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this I agree with.
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But there is also a lot more to getting a job as a TV scribe than simply being a good writer.

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This couldn't be more wrong.
*
I'll concede that there's a craft to writing for television, and honing that skill is difficult, requires a lot of work, and is something most people, or writers outside the system, don't have or even understand.
[...]
Again, they may have a particular skill for their field and have jobs which are not easy, but that doesn't make them good writers, not even close. Note: I have a silly view on what constitutes good writing. I'm also clueless about screenwriting in general and how the television and film business works. So I probably don't even have a clue what I'm talking about.

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But if you ever want to know if someone is a good or bad writer...you should PM me cuz I'm much better at determining that than anyone else.

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FYP


but I'll promise to not continue this discussion so we can get the thread back on track.

[Badger]

I liken KneeCo's point to that of an NFL fan. Any player in the NFL possesses a skill that very few Americans do, and is undoubtedly in the elite. However that doesn't mean that as viewers we can't scream at our team's quarterback for not being able to play like Payton Manning every week, or if our favorite QB happens to be Manning that we can't yell that he sucks when he has a bad game.

Either way you're not going to settle this and I think you both understand that now.

[swingdoc]

Wait, strikes have captains? This sounds awesome. Are there any higher ranking officers with cool names? I would gladly volunteer to be strike kaiser or strike brigadier general. Maybe I could start at strike lance corporal and work my way up?

[golfnutt]

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TV writers are skilled labor, not everyone can write a TV script.

Most TV shows are unimaginative, cliche, lowest common denominator type stuff.

TV writers are comparable to top 40 music songwriters.

Can you all agree to this and stop hijacking this thread?

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[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

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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].

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So he is like a great artist who spends the majority of his times doing cartoon portraits of tourists? That is sad, but I guess he gots to be paid.

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

I understand that just because a screenplay or a TV show sucks, it doesn't mean the guy who wrote it sucks, it just means that he gets paid to write stuff that sells.

But then you seem to insist that this is in fact good writing. Your definition of good writing is writing that gets you paid. KneeCo's definition of good writing is writing that doesn't suck.

[CharlieDontSurf]

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I understand that just because a screenplay or a TV show sucks, it doesn't mean the guy who wrote it sucks, it just means that he gets paid to write stuff that sells.

But then you seem to insist that this is in fact good writing. Your definition of good writing is writing that gets you paid. KneeCo's definition of good writing is writing that doesn't suck.

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no I was saying the majority of TV isn't crap. Most shows are fairly well written, and most of the people on writing staffs are good writers. Also writing for TV involves a lot more than just being a solid writer unlike writing for film. And u can 't judge the overall skill of a writer based of a movie or tv show--mainly due to the fact that the development process either made it worse or improved it...usually the former.

TV by nature is formulaic medium given u watch a show every week/day etc. The idea that most TV writers are bad writers because KneeCo thinks TV is lame is dumb. The other funny thing is how sure of himself KneeCo was in his conviction that because he thinks TV sucks that he can rightly assume that all those writers suck.