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Bringing up episodic television shows in the 90s brings up an interesting point. For 90s episodic television, script submissions were open to the public. Each s
by muffinman26 3y ago
Bringing up episodic television shows in the 90s brings up an interesting point. For 90s episodic television, script submissions were open to the public. Each show still had a team of staff writers like they do today, but the staff writers would mostly write the really important episodes (like finales and two-parters). The bulk of the episodes would be freelance scripts, with the staff writers editing for consistency and adding an extra scene or two to hint at continuing plot threads. In today's binge-able format, almost every episode is written by the staff writers. (They might still let someone with connections, like an actor on the show looking to make a career change, submit an episode.)
Sure, 90+% of submitted episode pitches were probably terrible, but that was fine because show runners could choose the best episodes from the slush heap. Now each series only orders roughly as many episode scripts as a season has episodes. If a writer has a 75-80% hit rate, the show can't discard the bad episodes.
- MichaelDickens 3y ago> The bulk of the episodes would be freelance scripts, with the staff writers editing for consistency and adding an extra scene or two to hint at continuing plot threads Can you name a few shows that were written that way? I'd never heard of this but I don't watch much TV from before the 2000's.
- whartung 3y agoI know Star Trek: The Next Generation did this. They also did it with Deep Space 9. Not sure about Voyager. I don't know what other shows might have done this.
- CitrusFruits 3y agoI worked with a copy writer that had written an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." By coincidence she had submitted an a script for an episode that coincided with a major plot point they were working to (a character leaving). I asked her about it, and it was really the only major writing credit she ever got.
- muffinman26 3y agoI know that at least Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Golden Girls accepted freelance scripts. You can sometimes find the submission guidelines for Star Trek: The Next Generation on fan sites. You can also tell if this is the case for a show by looking at the writers. If there are lots of writers who only wrote one or two episodes, the show probably took submissions. All the old books about television script writing I've read are about submitting in this way, but by the time I was actually considering it episodic television was rapidly dying out.