(jazzy piano music)
- Where to start.
I know, right?
Where to start?
Do you need to move to Los Angeles?
Probably.
Probably, I don't wanna break your heart,
but you should probably live here
if you want to have a career as a LA TV writer.
Are their productions, other places?
There are, but in order to really get started,
Los Angeles is where television making happens.
Now, I do wanna say before we even get into the,
you know, where to start,
is that it's a very expensive city.
(cash register dings)
So if you are gonna move to Los Angeles,
I do you want you to prepare
as much as possible before you get here.
It is expensive!
So, think about how much rent is gonna be,
start doing your research online
into what parts of the city have places
that might be nice that you could rent,
look on Craigslist and see.
So, you gotta find a place,
you have to find shelter when you first move here.
You've gotta be prepared to pay that rent,
you need to have some sort of job in place.
I worked at Pottery Barn, Banana Republic,
Houston's, a yogurt shop, for a lawyer.
There were so many jobs I had
before I got my first industry job.
So, before you move, I would save as much money as you can.
Somebody said this on Twitter, and I agree:
You have to plan for parking tickets.
I can't even tell you how much money I've spent
in parking tickets.
Maybe you're the most conscientious person in the world
and it's not gonna be a problem for you,
but you should plan for all of that.
So before you even come here, make a plan.
Make a plan so that when you get here,
you are set up to succeed.
So, where to start?
Why do you wanna be a writer?
What are the things about writing that speak to you?
What is that the medium that you've chosen?
And then, why have you chosen TV writing
instead of writing books or screenplays or poems?
I think it's really important to sit with you wanna write
and why you wanna write TV specifically.
Know those answers for yourself,
so that you can get really, really clear
about the type of work that you wanna do
and where you think your voice best lends itself.
Then you gotta do your homework.
You've gotta really become a student of television.
In my day, 'cause I'm old, (pops)
I went to the Museum of TV and Radio,
which is now the Paley Center, which is in Beverley Hills.
And I would go there in between my jobs
and I would spend hours looking at pilots
and episodes of shows that I loved when I was growing up,
and I would just study them and break them down.
So, it was a really great way for me
to figure out the why of TV,
the how they went about doing it,
breaking down the pages,
seeing when the commercial breaks were.
I would spend hours and hours and hours in there.
Now you have things like YouTube.
So you can see, probably,
most of the pilots of the TV shows that you love
on YouTube and break them down yourself.
So, I highly recommend that you start doing that homework.
I think there's also a ton of pilot scripts
that are available online if you google them,
so that you can download them and read them
and start to see how they break down the actual script.
If possible, get a script for a show, print it out,
and then watch the show
while you're going through the script,
so that you can really see
how from page to screen it turned out.
Doing that homework is really, really vital
because you're gonna go into any room
with that information and that knowledge,
and it's gonna be even more impactful for you.
Plus, people refer to other TV shows all the time
when you're doing TV,
so knowing where you came from,
knowing the old I Love Lucy episodes,
knowing the old Maude episodes,
the old All in the Family episodes,
Golden Girls episodes,
all of that stuff is only gonna help you.
There's also a lot of really great books on writing, period.
You know, Bird by Bird is a phenomenal book by Anne Lamott,
I think that's essential reading.
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield,
that's a fast read and it's great.
Also, I think Robert McKee's Story
is always vital and essential.
This is all stuff you can do before you even more here.
But it's stuff that also you can do as you're waiting,
as you're figuring it out, as you're writing and rewriting
and rewriting, if you wanna take a break from the writing
and read something that's going to inspire you.
Then, I would sit and say,
what are your favorite TV shows?
Ask yourself that question,
what do you love to watch?
Then ask yourself, am I also good at writing that?
For example, you know,
I love watching Game of Thrones.
It is not what I write,
but I love watching it.
So, knowing what you love and what you write
are very different things.
I also love sitcoms, I love Will and Grace,
I love Facts of Life, I loved, you know,
right now, Brooklyn 99's my favorite thing on TV.
So, those shows are shows that I could write,
so how do you start to frame what you enjoy
versus what you think that you can write, and accelerating.
The where to start is really how do I do
as much research as I can before I even put pen to paper?
And by pen to paper, I mean,
open up your laptop and start typing, right?
Like, how much can you do before you even start writing?
I think there's a lot of reading and watching
that you should be doing before you ever
actually type INT for interior, right?
So, as much as you can do that
before you start writing, the better.
Get yourself prepared so that by the time you're there,
you're gonna crush it.
Thank you so much for watching.
It's not over here, you guys.
You can still tweet me @everythingloria.
I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter,
I'm still available to you,
so keep asking those questions,
keep doing doing the work.
Make sure to watch all of the other Hollywood 101 videos
on Pero Like's YouTube channel.
This is Gloria Calderon Kellett.
Good luck.
(beeps)