How to Get Staffed in a Writers Room Today
Showrunners, agents & a top studio exec reveal new hurdles, samples you need, tips to shine in meetings and more
When Yellowjackets creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson were looking to fill a couple of open slots in the season three writers room for the Showtime on Paramount+ cult favorite, the married showrunners were inundated with literally hundreds of submissions for less than a handful of openings.
“It’s wild to me how many people aren’t working and are being put through the wringer of being a staff writer so many times over” instead of being promoted, Lyle tells me of her experience staffing her writers room. Lyle and Nickerson — who both learned the ropes of showrunning during their time working for The CW on The Originals — sold Yellowjackets in 2018 and filmed the pilot a year later. Aided by producer Drew Comins, the couple hired 12 writers for the season one room. That tally is now considered high, and despite some openings for seasons two and three, the submissions they received for just a handful of open slots exploded after the show took off — and after the entertainment industry’s broad contraction set in. (Lyle and Nickerson wound up largely promoting from within, a route that isn’t always guaranteed for writers who land staff or assistant gigs.)
“It’s a 10-car pileup,” one lit agent tells me of the competition for TV staff writer jobs in an era when fewer shows are being made and there’s more competition than ever before for the small number of opportunities that become available.
In the Peak TV days, where north of 600 live-action scripted originals were being produced in the U.S., studios and showrunners faced a different issue when staffing a writers room: There weren’t enough scribes to go around. “I remember our first season, we were fighting over someone we really wanted to staff because the showrunner on her existing show wanted to keep her,” Lyle recalls. Adds Nickerson: “We got more calls and emails when spots opened up after the profile of the show changed; it was more aggressive.”
Now, hundreds of writers of all experience levels found themselves looking for work at the same time — starting the moment the nearly 150-day Writers Guild strike ended in September 2023. A study by the WGA earlier this month found that there were 1,819 TV writing jobs last season — down 42 percent from the 2022-23 season. Those numbers are far lower than the 2019-20 season — the one marred by the pandemic — when 2,722 writers were employed.
“It was always a game of musical chairs to get a job, but now I consistently hear of anywhere from 400-1,000 submissions for room spots that wind up being filled almost exclusively by writers the showrunners have already worked with/know personally,” one writer told me as part of my recent survey. This same writer, who climbed the ranks in a broadcast room for multiple seasons, hasn’t worked since mid-2022.
In addition to Lyle and Nickerson, I spoke to seasoned showrunner Matt Nix about how drastically the landscape has changed for writers and why, and I also gathered tips from them plus a top staffing exec on how you and your script can make an impression amid a sea of strivers. What you’ll find in my reporting this week:
Exclusive research on the surge in submissions for broadcast shows
How the competition for open roles has gotten stiffer not just in quantity but in quality
How showrunners fill their rooms and the good news for them amid a “breathtaking” downturn for staff writers
Why new series offer more opportunity
The mix of samples a writer needs in their portfolio now
Exactly how many pages you have for your script to “pop” with a reader
How to shine in the meeting once you get one
What your personal experiences bring to the table
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