Books, Arts & Manners: Writing for Television

I have been trying of late to make a modest career as a Hollywood teleplay writer. Now, one might think that having seven novels in print would impress Los Angeles. One would be wrong. Since 1970 my fiction had been represented by a powerful Hollywood agent. Could he please try to get me some TV work? He could not. “Impossible,” this agent would say. “Out here you’re an unknown quantity.” Seven million words published—fiction and non-fiction—and to Hollywood I might as well have been a Finno-Ugric poet. So how, you ask, did this TV career of mine begin? In the best Hollywood tradition. Through connections.

My wife the actress knew Tom Fontana, producer-writer of St. Elsewhere. This is a little like going from lay brother to cardinal without ordination: St. Elsewhere, after all, has been one of the few literate, riskful episodic TV shows. I flew west (New York people pay their own air fare) to attend my first story conference. In L.A., Fontana and his crew gave me four plot lines (Episode 14, 1986), each with a brief scene breakdown. I flew home, spent all of one short week constructing the episode, and flew back for a rewrite conference. I didn’t even have to interweave my story lines: that, they told me, could be done more conveniently at the studio. Compared to writing declarative prose, it was easy. Compared to writing declarative prose, having a catheter in your head is easy.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.

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I have been trying of late to make a modest career as a Hollywood teleplay writer. Now, one might think that having seven novels in print would impress Los Angeles. One would be wrong. Since 1970 my fiction had been represented by a powerful Hollywood agent. Could he please try to get me some TV work? He could not. “Impossible,” this agent would say. “Out here you’re an unknown quantity.” Seven million words published—fiction and non-fiction—and to Hollywood I might as well have been a Finno-Ugric poet. So how, you ask, did this TV career of mine begin? In the best Hollywood tradition. Through connections.

My wife the actress knew Tom Fontana, producer-writer of St. Elsewhere. This is a little like going from lay brother to cardinal without ordination: St. Elsewhere, after all, has been one of the few literate, riskful episodic TV shows. I flew west (New York people pay their own air fare) to attend my first story conference. In L.A., Fontana and his crew gave me four plot lines (Episode 14, 1986), each with a brief scene breakdown. I flew home, spent all of one short week constructing the episode, and flew back for a rewrite conference. I didn’t even have to interweave my story lines: that, they told me, could be done more conveniently at the studio. Compared to writing declarative prose, it was easy. Compared to writing declarative prose, having a catheter in your head is easy.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.