Starting Your Television Career

Most of the Hollywood studios run their own writing programs aimed at training new writers for their shows. That of Warner Bros is one of most well-established, having started in 1976. Others include Disney's Chesterfield Fellowship and Fox's Diversity Program. Starting Your Television Career is intended as a companion title to aid newcomers to the course but is of great use to other novices.

After an initial introduction, the book is helpfully divided into two sections, one looking at writing sitcoms, the other the one-hour drama - as the program itself is divided. Every year, 30 people are chosen to be interviewed for each program and from this number, 13 are invited to participate in either category. (It costs $30 to submit an application and the workshop fee itself is $495.) Applications come from all over the world even, in one instance, from Afghanistan. Those who complete the program are virtually guaranteed work in the industry as top agents, TV execs and producers seek out participants. The authors Abby Finer and Deborah Pearlman are both TV writers themselves and lecturers on the program.

The book takes the writer from the initial conception of a storyline to rewriting the first draft and is aimed primarily at writing a "spec" script - in other words, writing for an existing show. Traditionally, new writers would have to prove that they could successfully replicate the characters and tone of a show already on the air before being asked to submit their own ideas, though this is now beginning to change.

The book goes into detail into how to analyse a show into its constituent parts. Where, for example, do act breaks fall? How many scenes are there and how long are they? What kind of stories are told? This section alone is worth the cover price.