Writing Team Quotes

Judd Apatow, together with me and Lena, we're all the showrunners of 'Girls.'

The writers led by Mike Scully are fantastic. And they're creating original stories that not only don't repeat what we've already done, they also don't repeat anything I've seen on television.

We all have great faith in the writing team that puts together 'Heroes.'

The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

I've hung out in the writer's room a few times, but the fact is we've got such a good writing staff, I don't want to get my peanut butter fingerprints on anything.

All the writers for 'The Chi,' they're all phenomenal, so I'm just working on projects with them. They have great scripts.

If I could get someone like John Grisham or someone like that to sit down and write a book with me, I'd love that.

It's not uncommon to have chaotic writers' rooms.

I'm not famous for my back story investigations; I'm lucky that I work with good writers and it's usually in the script.

When you're doing a pilot, you're doing it in this bubble that almost works against the creative impulse. You don't have time to get to know the actors first, and you have three writers, as opposed to a room full of writers.

All the sudden, I was part of the 'No Man's Land' thing, and there was a bundle of core writers for that, but somewhere along the line, I became the go-to guy after that initial arc.

I feel like my experience on 'Community' was that I saw just how important that first year is for a series. That is where you work all the pieces out, and that means honing the characters' voices, setting that tone, finding your angle.

There's nothing more powerful to a showrunner than a truly invested writer.

Together with script writers Syd green and Dick Hills, we worked on the comedy ideas for this series.

With writing, I prefer the solo effort, but when a team is working right, as it did on 'The Grifters,' boy, it's exhilarating.

Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.

In ten episodes, we were able to do our writers' room first. We did that all summer and wrote for 15 weeks and got everything in really good shape.

I've never been in a writer's room.

We have a full writers' room, and with something like 'MyMusic,' we've scripted it out with professional writers. There is some very basic improv from the actors, but everything is very to the letter, so it's easy to edit down to an episode. There are fun little things an actor might throw in there.

Everything I write in my show is a collaboration with a team.

Every so often, it's time to make a change with a showrunner; you evaluate the creative and how the show is run, how the writing staff works.

I love the camaraderie of a writers' room.

Because I work in television, I always knew that I loved working with writers. It's very collaborative. You're always in a room full of writers.

It's fun when you have a whole team of writers that really like writing for someone; you always end up with some really great lines.

Lots of shows are written completely in the writer's room. And I wouldn't say 'The Walking Dead' is that way. There are three levels to it. There's us in the room. The writers going off by themselves. And me working with the writers on a finished script.