If you’ve ever watched a TV series on a regular basis, you’ve probably encountered a strange feeling at one point or another. Somewhere along the line, the characters start acting or sounding just a little different than they did a couple weeks ago. But that makes no sense—it’s the same show, same actors, same everything. This is the tricky thing that makes creating television different from creating stories in any other art form: lots and lots of cooks in the kitchen or, in this case, writers in the room.
Aside from experimental theater forms, television is about as close as you’ll come to storytelling by committee. For writers and actors alike who admire the inventive work television has been doing over the past few years, it’s worth understanding the unusual way stories come to be in the television world.
Being a showrunner is pretty much a dream of any writer who has trained in writing for television. Often known by other fancy titles like “executive producer,” the showrunner is the person who, well, runs the show. This might be an auteur with an established name who created the show from concept, like a Bryan Fuller or a Shonda Rhimes, or they might be someone hired on
If you’ve ever watched a TV series on a regular basis, you’ve probably encountered a strange feeling at one point or another. Somewhere along the line, the characters start acting or sounding just a little different than they did a couple weeks ago. But that makes no sense—it’s the same show, same actors, same everything. This is the tricky thing that makes creating television different from creating stories in any other art form: lots and lots of cooks in the kitchen or, in this case, writers in the room.
Aside from experimental theater forms, television is about as close as you’ll come to storytelling by committee. For writers and actors alike who admire the inventive work television has been doing over the past few years, it’s worth understanding the unusual way stories come to be in the television world.
Being a showrunner is pretty much a dream of any writer who has trained in writing for television. Often known by other fancy titles like “executive producer,” the showrunner is the person who, well, runs the show. This might be an auteur with an established name who created the show from concept, like a Bryan Fuller or a Shonda Rhimes, or they might be someone hired on
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