Writing the Drama Series: How to Succeed as a Professional Writer in TV, 3rd ed. by Pamela Douglas (review)

"Should I use a text in episodic writing class next semester?" I asked that question last year, and it sparked a book search on the Barnes & Noble Web site that yielded twenty-five-plus titles. Writing the TV Drama Series: How to Succeed as a Professional Writer in TV (3rd ed.), by Pamela Douglas, was one of them. Its title promised the usual target market of wannabe writers, but it was the only one that also sold itself to teachers. An author rarely reedits a book three times in less than ten years, but when I discovered the text was required reading in Pamela's USC School of Cinematic Arts TV writing course, this made perfect sense. Another discovery: she based that course's syllabus on the book. Eureka!

"The definitive work on dramatic TV writing just got more definitive," says Jack Epps Jr., in an example of the many glowing notices on the book's inside cover, which validate its recognition as the "the premier book on the subject world-wide" (4). Perusal of the content yields updated references and interviews in the core material (included in all three editions), a more in-depth investigation of the future of TV drama and its potential delivery systems that will challenge the traditional production model, and a more global perspective of the series business than in previous editions. As expected, the author's presentation is compelling and astute, but because of my bias toward the text's adaptation to the classroom, this review focuses primarily on content malleable for teaching.

"Spotlight on Dramedy" caught my eye because it deals with the current proliferation of single-camera series crossing boundaries between comedy and drama. In the author's new interview with David Isaacs (producer of Mad Men), they discuss how "new writers have to understand what creates character and how it guides you to tell a story. Real drama and real comedy are about some condition that people are afflicted by, or an obstacle in their lives, and you eventually find some way for them to deal with that dilemma" (43). This demystification of dramedy offers teachers a provocative platform from which to workshop its parent genres and crossover properties.

A subgenre that budding writers have traditionally been told to avoid is the procedural—their lack of legal, medical, or police knowledge makes it an improbable match. Flying in the face of that decree, Douglas includes a section titled "Spotlight on Writing Procedurals," in which she gives evidence of the reemergence of character concerns equaling those of plot and the impact on traditionally plot-driven procedural storytelling. She contrasts the broadcast networks' CSI: Miami (pure police/detective procedural) and The Good Wife (legal procedural with an added mix of political satire and family drama) and AMC's The Killing (an even stronger blend of the procedural and the personal). All fall under the procedural banner, but they deliver their "cases" differently. This brilliant demonstration can have a profound influence on how teachers guide procedural pilot development.

A network-based two-year plan for series production is mapped out in "How Shows Get on TV and the TV Season": developing the new show the first year and then running the first season while developing a new show during the second. Pamela Douglas knows that it has been drilled into nonprofessional writers that they cannot get a series on the air if they have never written on a series, so the whole creating/ producing endeavor can become a hopeless proposition to them. With wise-teacher optimism, she gives examples of how to get around the studio system. The highlight is Josh Schwartz, creator of The OC, who became the youngest person in network history to produce his own one-hour series without ever having spent time on the staff of a show (Fox put him together with a writer and a producer to support...