How do credits work on a TV writing staff?
Question from a subscriber
Kendrik Tse asks:
What about "Story by" and "Teleplay by?” Where does that fit in? Also, what happens when there's competition for one particular episode? Say the staff knows the penultimate episode of the season or the season finale is going to be a banger, and everyone wants to write that one because it'll be a really good credit. Who decides then?
Every writers room is different, but for the most part, the showrunner makes these decisions based on whatever criteria they want to enforce.
Usually, the entire writing staff will spend a week or so “breaking” the story on the white board. This is the process by which all the beats are figured out, and it’s the bulk of what I teach in my screenwriting course.
When that’s finished, one writer or writing team will be chosen to work on the beat sheet, outline, and first draft. Along the way, they’ll get plenty of notes from the showrunner, but this writer is the one who actually puts words on paper, so they’re given “written by credit.”
Sometimes one writer will work on the outline and a different writer will work on the first draft. When that happens, the first writer gets “story by” credit and the second writer gets “teleplay by” credit.
“Teleplay by” gets paid more money because more work is involved.
The writing may be divided this way for a number of reasons.