Transcript: Sell the House

Rob Long on the practical advice writers should follow

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for the Ankler.

An old Hollywood writer once gave me some good advice. When you're working on a television show and you're stuck for a story, he said, there's one trick that works every time.

"Sell the house," was his advice. "But don't actually sell it."

His point was, if you're writing a show about a family, have them contemplate selling their house. Houses, for families, are emotional possessions, and even introducing the idea into a scene will get you a lot of story and dialogue energy.

If the show isn't about a family — if it's about a group of friends or a business — you do the next best thing. You have the co-workers think about selling the business; you have one of the friends think about moving to another city.

Long-running series pull this trick all the time. Audiences never fall for it. They understand the bedrock rule of the television business, and every other business: if it's not broken, don't fix it. If the show's working, in the end you know they're not going to change anything. 

It’s great, practical advice for how to think about the actual work a writer has to do, which is to get characters on and off the stage saying interesting and clever things in a way that keeps the audience engaged, So, sell the house is one way to do that, as is making sure everyone in a scene has a very specific attitude.