YOUR TV GUIDE TO Defining Your Screenwriting Brand

Tawnya Bhattacharya is currently a writer/producer on Freeform's Famous in Love, and formerly wrote on NBC's The Night Shift, TNT’s Perception, The Client List at Lifetime and on USA’s Fairly Legal, with her writing partner, Ali Laventhol. Repped by ICM Partners and Heroes and Villains Entertainment, the duo are former NBC Writers on the Verge fellows. Bhattacharya was also a FOX Writer’s Intensive fellow. A writing instructor for 10 years, Bhattacharya launched Script Anatomy in 2010, a unique TV writing curriculum designed to give emerging professionals practical development, writing and rewriting tools to help advance their craft. Script Anatomy clients have been staffed, sold shows, and won numerous awards and TV writing fellowships. Follow Script Anatomy on Facebook or Twitter: @ScriptAnatomy

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If you go to a networking event for screenwriters, odds are no single word will be said throughout the evening more times than “brand.” If you’re applying for network or studio writing programs and advance to any interview round, chances are you’ll be asked some version of “what’s your brand” by an executive you’ve never met over the phone. As screenwriting becomes more and more of a wild west, with talent pools from TV and features bleeding together and writers selling both half-hour and hour-long shows and jumping from one genre to another, people are scrambling to perfectly define their “brand” as a writer without limiting themselves. This is a tricky task — especially since you’re still trying to stand out from the pack and, first and foremost, be yourself. So simply saying your brand is “edgy female-driven comedy,” for instance, isn’t really going to cut it.

Branding is, in its oldest sense of the word, a method of quickly and succinctly categorizing something. Putting it where it belongs. Farmers used to brand their cattle so ranchers would know whose was whose. Similarly, writers have to brand themselves clearly and uniquely in order to stand out from a crowd of hundreds, if not thousands, of prospective writers vying for the same gig. Before preparing for any fellowship, general, or agent/manager meetings, it’s a good idea to figure out a way of articulating whatever your brand as a writer is that’s succinct singular, and specific. In Television writing, it’s common knowledge that your background, upbringing, and unique life experiences all help shape your point of view as a storyteller.

Unfortunately, you won’t always have time to give us the unabridged version of how getting beat up on the playground in 4th grade turned you into the auteur of new-age revenge westerns you are today, so it’s important to drill down your point of view, skill sets, and interests as a writer as much as possible. This process must strike a perfect balance between honest (if it’s forced, people can tell — trust us!) and commercially astute. You want to clearly get across what kinds of shows you want to write on without pigeonholing yourself into one specific format or genre. Trends come and go in TV, and you want a brand statement that stands the test of time and shows you at your most versatile.

Script EXTRA: Developing Your Screenwriting Brand

When constructing a brand statement, we like to start with three major components: identify what you love to write, what your strengths are, what makes your point of view unique, and why you write what you write.

WHAT YOU LOVE TO WRITE

Make a list of the first 20 TV shows, movies, or plays that you can think of that you really love and/or had a formative effect on you. Even if the list looks like it has nothing in common, we guarantee you it will. One of our students had a list that could be divided almost cleanly in half into two categories: dark, violent crime dramas and underdog sports/dance movies rated PG-13 or lower. While this might look like total night and day, one major theme that ran prominently throughout both categories was the plight of the outsider or the outcast — also a recurring theme throughout their writing portfolio.

From this list, try and identify three major themes of each TV show or movie. In another column, try and identify three major characteristics about the main character that you really love or relate to. This will start to help you understand the universal themes, worlds, and characters that you are obsessed with, and how to clearly articulate them in a succinct, commercial way.

WHAT YOUR STRENGTH/UNIQUE LENS IS

This is important because it helps make your brand statement memorable. Think about the list you made of shows and movies you love and the themes they have in common. Then, think about your background and the way it informs your world-view. It might seem rudimentary to you, but no two people look at the same issue through the exact same lens.

Do you love dystopian sci-fi shows and come from a foster background? Then you can definitely say that a unique understanding of outsiders and strangers in a strange land is a fundamental cornerstone of your brand. The trick with this is always discussing your work in the most abstract, visceral way possible — i.e., discussing themes and effects of your work, rather than the stories they tell and genres they fit into. This will help keep your brand statement universal and not pigeonhole you.

WHY YOU’RE WRITING IT

This one is important and the key to helping your work stand out. Take a deep-dive into your subconscious, if necessary, and figure out why you love writing what you write. Do you love writing comedy because you want to provide brief moments of respite with escapist art in these tumultuous times? Do you write satire because you love the way it holds a mirror up to its audience when they least expect it? Do you write crime dramas because you want audiences to acknowledge the dark instincts in themselves? Articulating the effect you want your work to have on the audience and why you’re passionate about it will help set you apart.

Beware: this exercise is VERY HARD! Often it’s a great idea to ask your writers group, or close writer friends, to tell you how they’d pitch you as a writer. Sometimes it’s helpful to start with outside perspectives on your work that you trust.

Script EXTRA: The Voice of Doubt is Not Truth

Buzzwords to be mindful of:

Cable — literally everyone is saying they are an “edgy cable” writer right now, because they know that’s what’s sexy and popular and what people want to read. Let the reader determine whether or not your content is cable or broadcast. Many cable samples staff writers on broadcast shows. Don’t limit the kinds of jobs you can go up for right out of the gate — the industry will do that enough for you.

Character-driven — The least cautionary on this list — but still, use this one with caution. It’s another term that’s being overused. Plus it’s kind of redundant; Television as a medium is all about character and most executives know this.

Gritty — Gritty has unfortunately fallen victim to a “this is why we can’t have nice things” situation over the past few years in that so many people have adopted this term it’s watered down the potency of it. Thanks to peak TV programming, there’s also a significant amount of pressure to be “gritty,” especially in the 1-hour drama space. The dictionary definition of “gritty” is “tough and uncompromising.” THE WIRE and THE SOPRANOS fall into that category. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and SIX FEET UNDER, not so much. This doesn’t make either of the latter shows less good, or less of an honest portrayal of human relationships. But a lot of writers mistake honest or unflinching with gritty, and you want to pitch yourself as specifically (but commercially) as possible.

Procedural — even if you are positive that you’d be happy writing on cop shows forever, you don’t know how you’ll feel 10 years down the road — and more importantly, you don’t know what the market trends will look like 10/15 years down the road. While it’s a fairly safe bet that procedural programming will always have a home on broadcast TV, why pigeonhole yourself? Vince Gilligan started out as a writer on The X-Files; imagine how things might be different if he’d just branded himself a sci-fi guy.

Single Cam/Multicam — this is the comedy version of pegging yourself as solely a procedural or sci-fi or soap writer. You’re clipping your own wings in terms of shows you can staff on, and changes are there might be shows in the other format that cover themes you love or could speak to.

Now that you’ve got the building blocks of your brand statement and a road map of some hazards to avoid, you’ll want to make one final list: a list of 3-5 shows you’d love to write on that are an accurate and versatile gauge of this brand. A lot of our lower-level students are asked often at general meetings what their ideal shows would be, and reps will want to know this information when you’re taking those meetings as well. After you’ve figured out what your brand statement is, make this list to back it up.

We asked some of our staff members, alumni, and friends who are actively working in TV how they define their brand and the strategy behind why they pitch themselves that way. Here’s what they said:

Santa’s brand statement is great because it’s both commercially viable and unique. She includes something specific that sets her apart from other one-hour drama writers (themes of immigration) while also clearly grounding her in a broad range of cable, broadcast, and digital dramas currently on the air. Reading this statement, five shows we can think of right away that Santa would be right for are Narcos, American Crime on ABC, the upcoming Serial TV series in development, Law & Order: True Crime (Menendez Brothers), ripped-from-the-headlines crime procedurals like those under the Shondaland and Dick Wolf umbrellas, and any grounded anthology, which are all the rage right now.

Script EXTRA: What's Your Personal Brand?

Brian’s statement works well because of how clearly he pitches his strength as a character writer. Also, “weirdos with big hearts” is a phrase that could be used to describe almost every comedy protagonist, but especially a traditional sitcom lead like Dr. Ken. When we think about “weirdos with big hearts,” a wide range of comedies come to mind, from network sitcoms like Trial and Error or Black-ish to cable hybrids like Fleabag and Search Party.

This is a great brand statement because it brings up Zach’s very marketable past experience in the military, automatically making him a viable candidate for a wide range of shows on network and cable. He’s smart to angle towards those shows but also careful to include how many arenas that the military umbrella touches. Reading this statement, we can think of a wide variety of shows Zach could be submitted for, from House of Cards or Homeland to something like Designated Survivor on the broadcast side. What other shows can you think of?

Again, Giselle is smart to draw on her prior career here; with the wave of medical dramas sweeping broadcast networks right now, she’s positioning herself to be a very hot commodity during network staffing season. She also talks about what kinds of stories and themes she likes to write (David vs. Goliath stories about imperfect characters fighting bureaucracy, inertia, and popular opinion) in a way that’s succinct but still pretty broad. Free will vs. society is a pretty universal theme, but she found a way of phrasing it that also discussed the kinds of characters and relationships she likes to write, which is key.

Nora’s brand statement is a bit funny (growing up on top of 30 first cousins) which is the most important thing for a comedy writer. If they’re hiring you to write comedy, they’re going to want to know you can deliver jokes. She was also smart to open with talking about her huge family, since it’s a recurring theme in her work. Family sitcoms are a bountiful staple in this business, too, so Nora’s smart to keep it simple and leave herself wide open for many opportunities in this fairly wide genre within comedy.

As you see, writers are like snowflakes: no two are the same. Despite how much your own life story might sound boring to you when you pitch it, you do have a unique way of articulating the world around you that nobody else has. The key is how to figure out a way to distill it and phrase it succinctly, so the people you’re meeting with will know right off the bat everything you have to offer a writers room.

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