Writing by committee
TV Committee Chair, Gail Renard, explains the background to the upcoming launch of the Guild’s TV Good Practice Guide.
The Guild is about to launch its Television Good Practice Guide, which the TV Committee has been slaving over for the past year. The issue hasn’t been finding enough material to put in but to prioritise all the problems TV writers now face. Many working practices have slipped, leaving the writer poorer in every way. The Guild is resolving to rectify this.
We know that few of us, except the Doctor, have access to time travel and all of us are sick of hearing, “In the old days…” But we have to examine practices of just a few years ago to see to see how much has changed, and not for the better, in our daily working lives.
Speaking with experienced writers, all agree that writing an episode for a series today means roughly nine or ten times more work than ten years ago; often for worse results.
Doing an episode for a telly series used to involve delivering your script to the producer or, if there was one, the series’ script editor, who would usually be a writer with an impressive track record, if not the actual creator of the series. Believe it or not, these highly experienced professionals would give you one set of notes for each draft. It was rare that a writer would have to go beyond three drafts; the third of which would be tweaking.
Today we have countless layers of management who, in the past, never existed and weren’t needed. The job of script editor is often seen as a way into production as opposed to being a career end in itself. Many production personnel are no longer staff, and are on short term contracts without the experience or continuity that staffers often ensured. Aside from needlessly bumping up the cost of series, suddenly more people have a say in the script than ever before.
It’s not unknown for ten people on a series to have input into a script. On one well-known series, writers have to contend with notes from the four stars, the script editor, producer, director and two executive producers. Actors and directors come to a series late and, aside from tweaks at read-throughs, have never been involved in the writing process before. How and when did they get input into our work?
These disparate bodies often don’t agree, leading to yet more drafts, not to mention compromises; making the Circumlocation Office look like childsplay. Writers are now expected as a matter of course to do seven or more drafts, each going through the same long-winded process. It also means writers are doing much more work for the same money and taking more time to do it, with the experience becoming more difficult and soul-destroying along the way. And by the end of it, the episode isn’t the distillation of all that’s great but writing by committee… and often looks it.
On a purely time and motion study level, up until a few years ago, experienced writers could expect to write five hours of television a year, at a healthier pace; leaving time to develop other work. But getting a single episode into the studio can now take six months, with rewrites needed at short notice at any point along the way. The writer isn’t working for the entire period, but at no time is the script actually off their plate. It makes it difficult, if not impossible, to take on other series with the same demands, and writing incomes are suffering greatly as a result. And all this is after the countless hoops, storylines and treatments that the writer has already gone through just to secure the episode.
None of this would matter if it was making television better. We’re all after the same result, which is to make the best shows possible. But where are the great British series of today? Where are our Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men or Desperate Housewives? It’s rarely that a writer’s personal voice can make it through the present committee system.
The Guild can’t work miracles, but we can try. As a result of our lobbying, the BBC has introduced its own Code of Conduct for long-running series. We are now launching our own industry-wide Television Good Practice Guide, which we’re suggesting becomes required reading for companies and production personnel… and writers. We’re all in it together. Now let’s make some incredible television.
back to top