I first started working on professional TV and film sets in 2001. While I had been writing screenplays for a few years, my interest in filmmaking (specifically the camera department) seemed completely separate from the stories I was trying to tell through my laptop. But the more time I spent on set reading these professional screenplays (professional to the tune of a few million dollars per episode) and watching the actors perform, the more I realized this would be as good a screenwriting teacher as all the books and seminars on the subject.

Actors Have To Memorize and Say Your Words

One of my first big jobs was on the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation shot here in Los Angeles, CA (and in the distantly suburban Santa Clarita, doubling for Vegas). At the time, CSI was the #1 show in the world, not just in the U.S. I was fortunate to get a full-time job on Season 4 through some work connections. We shot 23 episodes of 1 hour network television, which when you account for commercials is 44 minutes of air time. Scripts usually landed in the 50-60 page range. And if you’ve seen the show, you’ll recall the bulk of what goes into these stories is CSI work and technical jargon. Covering a full range of sciences, Gil Grissom and his cohorts would solve the mystery whether the solution lay in Biology, Ballistics, or Bacteriology. What many call ‘technobabble’, was a daily challenge for some of the best actors to memorize and overcome. Billy, Marg, and the entire cast were masterful at delivering these lines like the amazing actors they are. But then again, they already had 3 seasons of practice and on-set technical experts to coach them. The same could not be said for a ‘day-playing’ actor we had on set one fateful day. This actor, a well-known regular on The Sopranos, was to play a CSI Lab Assistant for one scene. How much time they had to prepare I couldn’t say. But the one to two pages of technobabble this actor had to pull off seemed near impossible. And watching them struggle was painful given the difficulty of the dialogue. After about 10 ‘takes’ and twenty minutes or so of no progress on delivering the lines, the Director called cut and the 1st AD gave a ‘moving on.’ That ‘moving on’ meant moving on to a different scene and wrapping that actor from the show. The production would have to reshoot the technobabble scene some other day after casting a different actor who could memorize and deliver the written words.

The lesson that both I and the CSI writers witnessed that day was that no matter how technical the ideas, the words have to be manageable. I know the staff writers took this experience to heart because when we re-shot the scene, most of its technobabble was boiled down to a short paragraph for the new ‘day-playing’ actor, while a few lines were shifted over to Marg Helgenberger’s character. The lesson to be learned for all writers is that actors have to memorize and say your words. Take the time to step in their shoes, say the dialogue out loud, hear how the words sound. If it feels impossible or doesn’t sound like how people would talk (removing technobabble from the equation), then it probably will be near impossible to perform on set. And if your goal is to become a professional writer, that small professional courtesy for the actors goes a long way. It also makes it easier for those reading your scripts (and deciding if they want to option/buy them) to get through them as well.

Great Characters Make Great Comedy

The types of screenplays I was writing ‘back in the day’ were feature length comedies. The kind of movies I really enjoyed were broad farcical stuff. Big sight gags and the silliest, shockingly hilarious stuff. Ace Ventura, Naked Gun, Caddyshack and Dumb & Dumber were some of my re-watchable favorites. Which brings me to my next career highlight, the USA Network comedy show Monk. Monk went eight seasons and I was fortunate to be there for three of them (Seasons 6-8). This is where it was very apparent that some of the most enduring comedy comes not just from crazy car chases or exploding bowels, but great characters and the actors who play them (of which Tony Shaloub is one of the finest). Tony’s character Adrian Monk was an exceptional detective driven by personal tragedy (the murder of his wife). But on the flip side, he was a great comedic character filled with phobias and obsessive compulsions. The type of mental blocks that no one would expect out of a talented, functioning detective. Monk’s issues were both ‘a blessing and a curse’ (a common phrase in the show). Often, his character’s long, long list of weaknesses would end up being the strengths needed to help only him see the clue or oddity that solved the crime. Although Monk’s neuroses were painful for the characters around him, (straight ‘men’ like Captain Stottlemeyer or Monk’s assistants Sharona and Natalie), it made for a writing technique that delivered constant comedy. And more importantly, this kind of comedy seemed effortless, episode after episode, when flawed quirky behaviors were baked into the character. (Note: USA Network’s slogan at the time was “Characters Welcome.”)

The lesson to be learned by writers is that not every audience likes farce, but most audiences like character-based storytelling and comedies. For example, When Harry Met Sally, As Good As It Gets, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Finding a character’s weaknesses, those real but standout oddities, leads to more grounded and far-reaching comedy than a funny misunderstanding. I would even go so far to argue that most interesting characters are often defined by their weaknesses as much as their strengths. Adrian Monk is a perfect example of this.

Be Open To Collaboration

Growing up my dad loved a good Western, so that meant I did too. The Magnificent Seven, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and Tombstone were stand-outs we enjoyed together. Eventually my career in camera led me to Justified, a modern Western that takes place in the present day Kentucky hill towns and hollers. (It was filmed, of course, in the ‘hill town’ of Santa Clarita, CA, once again.) Justified ended up filming six seasons, and I was there for Season 2. I got to experience some of the most fantastic acting by Tim Olyphant, Walton Goggins, and Margo Martindale (who would win an Emmy for her performance that season). I also witnessed great writing and some pretty kick ass shoot-outs. Like many television shows with a prominent lead actor who is also a Producer, Justified was as much Tim Olyphant’s show as it was the Creator/Show-runner Graham Yost’s. What that means to the passive observer, is that when it came time to rehearse and block a scene (the precursor to filming that scene), Tim put as much thought into his character’s place in the scene as did the Writers, Show-runner, and Director. From time to time, he felt something in a scene wouldn’t work for his character. This often meant delaying filming until the Writers, Tim and the Director could work out a solution. It could take ten minutes, or a half an hour or more. But once the solutions were agreed upon, I and the rest of the crew could put down our craft service and get back to filming. Years later, I would often see a similar feedback loop when filming the award winning HBO show Veep (Season 5, amazingly NOT filmed in Santa Clarita). Veep won 17 Emmys in it’s 7 season run, lead by the crazy talented Julia Louis-Dreyfus who only won 6 of those Emmys for playing the Veep. Like Tim Olyphant, Julia was a Producer who was always cross-checking the writers on the way a scene was written or how her character was portrayed. And like Justified, Veep would often hit pause on the filming to make a scene ‘work’ rather than shoot something that was less than fantastic. Julia, the Writers, Show-runner and Director would stop everything until a fix was found.

The lesson for writers is that some of the best shows in the business get there through collaboration. These shows’ top writing talent, who take the time to bring a solid script to completion for filming, still need the involvement of skilled Actors, a Director, and another pass by the Writers to bring the scripts to their highest level. These talented people at the top of their game were constantly pushing each other to take the writer’s words to the pinnacle. When you are writing by yourself (or even with a partner), you are often in your own bubble of finding your voice, your style and telling the story you want to tell. But like the filmmaking process that you hope eventually will follow, if you have trusted professionals on your team a screenwriter’s story can be made better by collaboration, much in the same way award-winning shows are.