Successful Television Writing by Lee Goldberg

Successful Television Writing by Lee Goldberg

The industry speaks out about SUCESFUL TELEVISION WRITING

Where was this book when I was starting out? A fantastic, fun, informative guide to breaking into?and more importantly, staying in?the TV writing game from the guys who taught me how to play it.
--Terence Winter, Coexecutive Producer, The Sopranos

Goldberg and Rabkin write not only with clarity and wit but also with the authority gleaned from their years of slogging through Hollywood's trenches. Here is a must-read for new writers and established practitioners whose imagination could use a booster shot.
--Professor Richard Walter, Screenwriting Chairman, UCLA Department of Film and TV

Not since William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade has there been a book this revealing, funny, and informative about The Industry. Reading this book is like having a good, long lunch with your two best friends in the TV business.
--Janet Evanovich

With sharp wit and painful honesty, Goldberg and Rabkin offer the truest account yet of working in the TV business. Accept no substitutes
--Jeffrey B. Hodes and Nastaran Dibai, Coexecutive Producers, Third Rock from the Sun

Should be required reading for all aspiring television writers.
--Howard Gordon, Executive Producer, 24 and The X-Files

Lee Child was born in Coventry, England, in 1954, early enough to remember playing on left-over World War II bomb rubble, late enough to be young and impressionable through the Sixties. He went to law school, but took a job in commercial television.

I always loved entertainment, he says. At elementary school, I was always in the school plays. As a teenager, I worked in shoestring theaters and arts centers. I took vacation jobs anywhere there was a stage and an audience. I never intended to practice law. I did the degree because it was an interesting subject.

He joined Granada Television in Manchester, England, thinking the job would last a few months. He ended up staying nearly twenty years. He was there through the great era of British television drama, working on flagship shows like Brideshead Revisited, Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect, and Cracker.

That was a wonderful, wonderful job, he says. But eventually, twenty years is enough for anybody. And television is teamwork--I felt I wanted to get away from that and get closer to the audience, personally.

So he made the decision to become a novelist. I figured the novel is the purest form of entertainment, and certainly the closest I'd ever get to an audience...after all, a writer is literally one-on-one with the reader for hours and hours at a time.

But why would an Englishman write for America?

Two important reasons, he says. First, I've always been in love with the States. And second, one thing I learned over the years in television is you go where the audience is. And where's the biggest, most literate and most sophisticated audience for modern fiction? In the U.S., without a doubt. It's what I call the basketball theory. If I wanted to be a basketball player, I'd always be second-best if I stayed in Europe. I would need to go to the NBA in America to find out if I were any good. It's the same with fiction. You find the most demanding readers and you write for them.

Married to a New Yorker, Child had a head start. He knows America well, from years of visiting. And so far, he's doing fine. His novels Echo Burning, Running Blind, Killing Floor, Die Trying, Tripwire and Without Fail won awards and rave reviews coast to coast, from The New York Times to People. But best of all, the freedom to work wherever he wants means he's now realized a dream he cherished since childhood.

It's one of my earliest memories, he says. Imagine provincial England at the end of the Fifties. I was about four, and I went to the public library with my mother. There was a series of kids' books called My Home In... and the only one our library had was My Home In America. There were twelve pages, each with a big color illustration of a home ... there was a prairie farmhouse, a Californian bungalow, a New England Colonial ... and my favorite, a Manhattan apartment with a little boy sitting by the window, looking down at the city below. Right away, I knew I wanted to be that boy...

Now he is that boy. After years of dreaming, he moved to the U.S. in the summer of 1998. Writing has brought me a lot of rewards. But this is the best of all of them.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780471431688
ISBN 10	0471431680
Title	Successful Television Writing
Author	Lee Goldberg
Series	Wiley Books For Writers
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Turner Publishing Company
Year published	2003-07-01
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable