Comedy Showrunner Jordana Arkin's 2 keys to being a paid professional TV staff writer (and 1 hard truth)
Jordana has spent 18 years on staff, at all different levels. Today she talks about how to get there and what she has learned.
Everyone wants to know the key to being a paid, professional writer.
From what I’ve seen and experienced over my decades as one, there are two things:
#1: Having a great (not good, but great) writing sample.
#2: Relentless persistence.
Wanting it more than anything in the world and not letting all the rejections, lack of access to people, or the negative voices in your head stop you.
That’s pretty much it.
Great script and believing: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you believe in yourself and have a script that is so great, people will want to pass it around for you. It may not even be the script you think is your best, but others do.
That’s all that matters.
People read it, get excited, want to meet you, and like your personality. That is the beginning of your career, and it will turn into a job eventually. I’ve seen it over and over again. If this happens for you, congratulations!
But if you’re someone who desperately wants to be a writer and struggles with the struggle, you might find yourself super anxious, frustrated, and sick and tired of trying to break in. You might believe that if you can just get on staff, your whole life will become better.
I’m here to tell you the truth:
Once you get on staff, you have what is called a “job.”
And, like any job in any industry, you can have typical good days and really bad days.
Those good days are light, fun and pretty much trouble-free. However, those occasional bad days can be really tough when you don’t know what to do to get through them. You could be on a show where you’re trapped together in a room for 8-12 hours a day, on insane deadlines, with stressed-out people who are making a ton of money and fear losing their very hard-to-get jobs.
Maybe you fit in just fine with the staff, or perhaps you feel like you’re the target of their stress for that day or for the whole season! Sounds a little like high school? Well, it can be that way.
You can end up in a room where there are cliques:
The Bullies
The Floaters
The Boss’s pets
The Class clowns
The Loners
Another way I like to describe it is like the show Survivor.
You get on the island, and at first, all people seem pretty normal and friendly.
And on staff, that’s the first week or two. Then, when the first piece of writing material comes in—an outline or a script—that’s when the whispering starts and the alliances immediately start forming (“Did you read So-and-So’s script? It was so bad! We’re going to be here all night rewriting it!”)
If it really is bad, that is true.
By not giving it your best shot and turning in a solid script, you might’ve given the whole staff a week of late nights (and they will let you know that they don’t appreciate that.) Sometimes, it’s not your fault that the script doesn’t work. Maybe the story was problematic from the start. If so, and most of the staff already likes you, they might be super supportive anyway.
And if the script is good, they might be thrilled to read a really strong script or be worried about themselves and what people will think of their script when they turn it in. So, they might not be supportive of you and your good script at all!
Taking it back to high school, does The Bully want to compliment you to make you feel good about yourself or want their buddies to compliment you?
Nope!
Not exactly what you imagined? That’s because most people that want to be television writers forget that it’s still a job. The fantasy of a perfectly copasetic world on a show is like believing that all paper companies have staffs like in “The Office.” I don’t have to work at a paper company to know that’s probably not what it’s like at all.
In any corporate job, there are great, wonderful, hard-working, dedicated, trust-worthy people who are like you and you hang out with after work and stay friends for life. But there are also the ones who don’t like that your office is bigger than theirs or your parking spot is closer or just that you’re a generally happy person.
I know peers who actually pretended to be miserable in their personal life in order to fit in with the staff on a show. But I believe, from my own experience, the key is not to let them change who you are and find ways of working with them while staying true to yourself. Then move on!
With 18 years on various staffs, I have experienced almost every complicated, behind-the-scenes, scenario possible.
I learned how to appreciate the good ones so I would get rehired by the same executives over and over again, and how to survive unbearable sabotaging situations while I’m in them until my contract is up. I would love to help guide writers through their own complex situations so they can handle it with much less stress and anticipate situations before they even become problems.
I can’t promise a Showrunner will pick up your option for the next season, or even like you, but if you have a foot in the door, or you’re just about to and want to be prepared, I can definitely help you navigate the TV writing room dynamics and decipher the business so that you can make those big TV bucks and have a long lasting career.