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Psst. Gather ’round. I have insider info for all of you, Gentle Readers. I’ve received a letter from Jack Gilbert, who is in charge of the reading of the submissions to the Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop, and he has information about the changes to the program that go into effect this year.

He writes:

Even though the program has had a lot of success in the past (both of last year’s writing Emmy winners – Greg Garcia and Terrence Winter were Workshop alums), the changing TV landscape called for a new chapter of the Workshop.

Now everyone (not just the sitcom folks) will come out with a completed new spec. The mix of the smaller class (something like 7 drama and 3 sitcom writers) is an experiment, but will not only allow for a better writers’ room simulation, but will permit Chris and the other execs overseeing the program to concentrate on placing this select number of participants.

Ooh. Interesting. It sounds like the program has become more accessible monetarily, but more selective creatively. Obviously the smaller class size makes it a harder “get,” but the resulting improvement in the amount of attention and likelihood of being placed on a staff makes it much more likely to actually launch your writing career. I think it’s a positive change. You know you’re good, right? You wouldn’t be pursuing this if you didn’t. Therefore, anything that rewards you for being good is exactly what you want.

I’m interested to learn that Jack is in charge of the reading of submissions. I’d love to hear his reaction to what he’s seeing — namely, what are the big mistakes that he’s seeing over and over. I’m going to write back to Jack and ask, and I will report the results back to you, Gentle Readers. Due to the reduction in size, the target for this program has gotten smaller. The only response is to improve our aim.

Lunch: Miceli’s restaurant near Universal. I had the 1/2 spaghetti, 1/2 ravioli. Nice meets lovely.

So, you’ve got your ABC/Disney and Warner Brother’s applications all submitted, maybe something for Slamdance, too, and now you feel like you’re in limbo. What should you do now?

Write! You don’t have another deadline breathing down your neck right now for which you have to spec an existing show. So this is the perfect time to write original material. Write a couple spec pilots — a comedy and a drama, perhaps. Write some one-act plays and submit them to play-writing contests. Write a short film script. Write a feature. Write short stories and send them to magazines and journals. Write a comic book. Write a novel if you’ve got the patience/time/confidence.

Read books about writing and apply what you learn. Read film and television scripts and notice how they work. Outline your favorite episodes of television as you’re watching them. Fill notebooks with creative ideas that you can go back to years from now when you’ve got a looming pitch meeting and you need something fast!

Make friends with writers. Take writing classes, join writing networks, chat with other writers on the net. Heck, start a writing discussion group if you can’t find one in your area.

You might feel as though you should be doing something more active — landing that writers’ assistant job, for example — but if there isn’t progress in that direction at the moment, take it as an opportunity to write write write. Because when someone finally says, “hey, send me something so I can see your stuff,” you really, really want to be ready. You want to say: “I have an original pilot, a humorous short film script and a feature script for an action movie; which would you like to see?” You don’t want to say, “Sure, I have something I just need to polish and then I’ll send it along,” because that tells the person you only have one script and it’s not even done! Think about it. If someone said that to you today, what answer would you give?

Lunch: cold stuffed tortellini from the salad bar

On Friday night, Gentle Readers, I got a chance to sit down and chat with the current crop of ABC/Disney Fellows along with some of their execs and other Fellowship alums. Great people, great fun, and very interesting.

I can report that eight of the ten current television fellows have been placed onto writing staffs. That’s enormous, particularly given the current trend toward smaller writings staffs. I’m extremely impressed at the job the people running the fellowship are doing, not just in training the Fellows, but also in acting as effective liaisons between the Fellows and the shows.

I can also report that a surprisingly large number of Fellows are comedy writers and have been placed onto comedy shows. Hmm. Maybe that pendulum is finally swinging.

Finally, I have a suggestion for those of you who submitted scripts to the program, hoping to be part of the next batch of Fellows. Be ready with a second script, Gentle Readers, in case they call and ask you for one. This happened to me when I got into the program. I was borderline, and they asked for another script. Apparently, this is still part of the procedure. So dig out your second-string scripts, everybody, and start getting them in shape!

Lunch: A “Cuban sandwich” and what I expected to be a piece of rum-soaked custard filled cake but which turned out to be a whole entire cake. Plus, I don’t really like cake. It was ill-advised.

There’s another good option in town, Gentle Readers! I’m hearing good things, from several sources, about the new configuration of the
Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop. I used to hesitate to recommend this program since it charged money from its participants, but check out the details now – the only cost seems to be the application fee. Well, that just became much more appealing, didn’t it? The deadline is coming up: August 15, so you’ve got a little time to scrape together an application and I recommend that you do so.

They require at least one spec script “based on a primetime network or cable comedy [or drama] series that aired new episodes during the 2006 – 2007 television season”. They also allow you to submit multiple samples and to submit both comedies and dramas. Nice. (By the way, note that, according to that description, a show like The Sopranos, which was ineligible for ABC/Disney, is still kosher for WB.)

The obvious question has already been asked of me, by the way. Amanda in Ithaca wants to know if she can submit the same script to Warner Bros. that she already submitted to ABC/Disney. Well, I hate to go on the record with this in case I’m wrong, but I don’t see anything in the rules of either program to disallow this or that would make a submission or an acceptance to either program a disqualifying factor for the other program. If it was me, I would probably use the same script — whatever I feel is my strongest sample.

The Warner Bros. program is, clearly, more limited than the ABC/Disney Fellowship. It’s shorter in duration, in intensity, and it doesn’t provide a stipend. But it still can provide experience, contacts and bragging rights.

So get to work! Even if you’re going to regift your ABC script, that extra time should be used to polish, tinker and tweak! The nice thing about perfection is that you never quite get there.

Lunch: left over Chicken Piccata from Maria’s

Adam in West Hollywood has a good question for the blog. He wants to know if his portfolio of sample scripts should be designed to show focus, or diversity. In other words, should you write a bunch of the thing you’re most drawn to, or should you spread the love around with a comedy script, a drama script, an action script, etc?

Well, I’m a huge fan of infinite diversity in all its infinite combinations. My personal recommendation would be to write everything, and then let an agent or manager provide input on how they can best market you — if they know of a demand for action writers, they’ll be able to steer you in that direction.

Flexibility is a plus. For example, you might really feel you were born to write multi-camera comedy. But there’s so little of that right now that you’d find your options pretty limited if you only wrote that. So try new things. You might just discover new talents, too. I was startled to find I could write scenes that were interesting despite being jokeless. If I hadn’t been pushed to try something new, I might never have known.

However, remember that passion for what you’re writing is part of what makes it good. If you hate romantic comedies or action movies or low-brow comedies, you probably won’t be successful writing them. Since most of us probably watch and enjoy a whole range of different kinds of shows or movies, even someone with a pretty fierce dislike of a specific tone or genre can probably still find a pretty big stretch of the buffet to get their fingers into.

Lunch: tangerine, donut

P.S. Adam also asks a Buffy-related question about Xander. Sorry, Adam, I don’t have an answer for that one!

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