Why "The Room" is like Vegas...

So there was a little tempest in a teapot in writerville last weekend.

The details are readily available elsewhere, so I won't belabor them. The short version is that in comments in a nationally-available magazine, one of the writers from the first season of LOST, a writer who's no longer with the show, made what seemed to be disparaging comments about the LOST writers, comments that were easily interpretable as "these guys have no idea what's going to happen on the show."

Lots of nettie explosions later, there was a response by one of the guy's colleagues, and a current LOST writer. It was a good post...it illuminated a lot of the process of working on LOST, with tantalizing glimpses into the specifics of story breaking of some of the first season's episodes.

And by Monday, said writer had taken it down, saying that the issues raised by the article and his response were better dealt with in private.

Which, in case you're paying attention, is a pretty nifty admission of the thing that makes writers' rooms work: what happens there, stays there.

The writer's room, by definition, has to be a place of trust. When you're working on a show, you're going to probably spend more time in that room with the people in that room than you will with loved ones and family. You are going to say a lot of stupid things, some outrageous things. You're going to disagree and bang your head against the wall and eat pretzels and potato chips and probably drink way more Diet Coke than is healthy.

It's a difficult and sensitive process when you're in the middle of it -- and almost incomprehensible if you're on the outside.

The LOST spat, and another incident that was brewing in H'wood over the last year (a lawsuit where a writer's assistant on Friends sued for sexual harassment over some stuff that was said in the writer's room) pulls back the lid a bit on an area of television writing that, I feel, can't and shouldn't take much scrutiny.

Being inside a writer's room means hearing things, and saying things, that may be off color or not acceptable in other workplaces -- because the most important thing is breaking the story.

Being inside a writer's room means having to be savvy about group dynamics; if you're gregarious, you have to know when to back off. If you're reticent, you have to learn when to shout down. Because it's a tricky group dynamic, often times given the choice between hiring a superb but difficult writer, and a writer who's good but not superb, but better in the room, you will always go with the latter because it's better for the show.

In other words, if you have any hopes of writing on staff for a tv show, who you are as a person is at least as important as how you write.

The writer's room is a place of trust -- I know I've said that before, but it's so important that I'll say it again...and building that trust means giving into some important principles.

The most important is that what happens in the room stays in the room. You do not betray confidences. You don't go running to mom if someone says something that upsets you; you deal with it then and there.

Once an idea is out there, it belongs to the room. Many's the time that someone has said, "hey, did you come up with that line?" later -- sometimes even an Exec Producer with whom you could curry favor by saying yes, and I've answered "I really don't remember." If you want to really work well, you credit the room. The nice side of this is that when something screws up, you also blame the room. You don't hang out the episode writer to dry or the person who was story editing that episode, because you know who got what episode is largely logistical.

(You do screw freelancers. Sorry. Heh heh.)

Part of this is again, personal group dynamics. You don't want someone who keeps track and guards every idea that they come up with, or someone who never misses an opportunity to remind you that they came up with something. That sucks. But part of it is also necessity...because things move fast in the room. If you come up with an idea, and that sparks someone else to say one thing that makes you think about it differently, and oh yeah, didn't that other guy say that thing 20 minutes ago that we couldn't make work, but now that I think about it...

Okay, stop. Now...who came up with that idea?

Credit the room.

In order to be able to do that, you have to let go of a bit of your individual ego, and really, truly try to credit and form a group ego. If that gets betrayed in any way, the betrayal can seem personal and catastrophic. That's what the LOST spat was about.

If you want to understand the need for freedom and how people really need to cut loose in the room, see The Aristocrats. It's by no means a great movie, but I think by the end of it, you get a good look into how creative people work, and how important pushing the boundaries and being fearless is a part of that.

That's the inside stuff.

The outside explanation of why what happens in the room needs to stay there is this:

Fans will never get it, and the further they try to get it, the more poison is introduced into the process.

Writers crave approval. They do. It's a lonely job, and it's natural to want approval. But the more I do this, the more I think that professional writers need to insulate themselves from their fan base. It's not just the disasters that ensue when Simpsons or West Wing writers get into dustups with their online fans; it's that the internet's ability to disseminate any little nugget of info renders what would be a small, entre famille feud (Like the LOST spat) into a huge freaking deal that will never go away -- and is picked over obsessively by fanboys who will never understand what they're talking about because they have not and never will be in the room.

When a writer says to another writer about LOST, "they know where they're going," a writer with any experience knows what that means. It means that they have the basics of their mythology sketched out. They know what the major mysteries are and how they will resolve. But the individual details of how A goes to B -- well, the fact that they don't know that yet doesn't mean they don't know where they're going, it's the air that feeds the flame of the creative process.

To say that you have a show where you have every detail of every episode worked out over five years perfectly ahead of time -- well...uh...that's kind of going into Beautiful Mind schizophrenic territory. Of course you don't. Yes, I know that JMS had a five year plan for Babylon 5. But that five year plan was broad strokes, not every freaking detail...that's why he was able to adjust to things like cast departures.

But the problem is that to a fan, they look at TV like they look at a novel. It exists, and if "you're just making it up as you go along," then the moment something happens that they don't like, they ascribe it to desperation or "not having a plan."

In short...there's just no talking to these people.

Years ago, I remember reading how magicians were pissed at Penn & Teller because they revealed how tricks were done. I thought they were being prickly. Penn & Teller were just hilarious.

Well, I still think that, but now I also understand the objection. The focus should always be on the product, on the story. But the fan impulse (the root IS fanatic, after all) is always to know more, more, more details about the how.

But just because they want to know, doesn't mean you tell them. Even if it would make you feel good about yourself. Even if it would be fun. Because at the end of the day, even if you show them how the trick is done, they don't have the context to understand what they've seen.

Now, if there is a cone of silence around the process, that does make it difficult for aspiring writers. I know that. How do you get around that? Well, get yourself in position to actually talk to writers, however you can. And take classes on things like psychology and group dynamics. Learn about personality types. Understanding people is way more important for writers, than hearing the latest skank about what went on in the LOST writing room.

Most of all, stop thinking like a fan.

Train yourself out of it. There are shows that I watch and love, but I try always to approach it from a professional side: how would I have done that, or what are they going for there? NOT...how could they get X and Y together, etc, etc, etc.