To staff or not to staff. A thread.

There's been some talk in my feed today about aspiring TV writers who want to skip over staffing and go straight to selling their own shows. I am not sure who needs to hear this but i thought i would throw out some unsolicited advice: 1/ If u want to have yr own show on TV, u should staff.

1st of all, being on staff of a TV show is literally the training ground for writing TV. Rare is the person who knows how 2 write a good pilot who hasn't been in the room for a few years 2 learn what makes a TV show work. 2/

A thread on getting job offers in television: Under the new changes in CA law, studios can no longer ask for our quotes. Some of them come out of the gate with a decent offer, and women and POC are pleasantly surprised to be offered much more than their last job, which is an indication that they were being massively underpaid. Some studios, however, start out with an incredibly low-ball offer. They are probing to see how much we think we are worth (or not worth). I have found it useful to write down 3 numbers:

I spoke with a dear, close friend yesterday who is the head of a major cable/streaming studio. We have been playing phone tag for a while but we spoke yesterday about the whole issue of whether the agencies will package without writers. I presented both sides of the argument (1) and we talked about it from all angles and gamed it out for about 45 minutes. Here is what she said:
She said she tries not to buy anything unless a writer is attached. She has always heard pitches without writers but at the end of the day she hesitates to buy without a (2)

A thread. Staffing advice when meeting a Showrunner.
You have 30 min. Here’s how you break it down:
- 10 minutes of hellos. Where you are from, what your background is, etc. - 10 minutes to fawn over the series. Tell the Showrunner why you like her goddamn script. Be SPECIFIC. (It’s amazing how many people don’t do this.). Be able to talk about the characters, the character arcs, where you see the show going.