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Originally Posted by SenorKeeed
Can you describe the writing process for this show fsoyars? I'd be very interested in what day-to-day work life for a show like this is like.
Pretty similar to most shows. Start around ten, the first order of business being "what did you do last night" and then ordering lunch. Then, the work mostly depends on what stage of a particular episode we are on and usually we are tackling a few at a time. So, we might spend some time loosely talking about what a future episode might be about, we might be actually breaking it, i.e. working out the specific beats/scenes. We might be writing a beat sheet or an outline together on the screen (there's a large monitor the assistant controls where everything is written). We may have an outline or a script that we've gotten notes on from FX and we're addressing the notes (or not addressing the notes). When an outline is finished and approved by FX, a writer is sent off to write the first draft (they are credited for that episode). Then the room will rewrite their draft usually a couple times. Sometimes we're just polishing a draft, looking for cuts, adding jokes, etc.
The key differences between this show and others I've been on are 1. the room was very small, just Stephen (the creator), myself and my writing partner and then two other female writers, 2. the season was serialized, so we kind of had to map out the entire ten episodes in the beginning so we knew what we were building to (although a lot changed along the way) and 3. we wrote the whole season before going into production. The downside of that last one was that, being a new show, we only had the pilot to go off of as far as seeing the actors actually act. We were writing in the dark a lot as far as what the casts' strengths and weaknesses were. The upside was that we had the ability to go back and change things in early episodes to set up or match things we did in later episodes. We were making changes to the pilot in our last week of work. And also, not being in production meant the hours were much, much better. Amazingly we usually were done by 4 or 5. Best job I've ever had.