Breaking into TV Writing

How to Get Your First Job, Build Your Network, and Claw Your Way into the Writers’ Room

By: Anton Schettini

Narrated by: George Newbern

Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

The old screenwriting motto is, “Work on your script, and the jobs will come.” This is false.

A great script is only as good as the effort you put into your career, but there is little information for the aspiring screenwriter about how to break in. Even those who study TV or film in college are taught to simply “get a production assistant job.” But then what? And how do you get that job to begin with? Breaking into TV Writing contains all the crucial information left out of most screenwriting books, like:

• How to get your first job in TV
• What TV writing samples you need
• How to break into the elusive TV writers’ room
• How a writers’ room creates an episode of TV
• Which assistant jobs are worth your time (and which you should avoid at all costs)

Anton Schettini provides a rare insider’s glimpse of the modern-day network and streaming TV writers’ room. Here, you will find practical advice, career path strategies, and first-hand accounts for how to establish your network, grow within it, and acquire the necessary tools to become a TV writer.

The industry would love to tell you to put your head down, work hard, write a lot, and pay your dues; Schettini will show you why that hackneyed mantra is misleading, and how you can put yourself in the best position to break through the barriers and see your work on the TV screen.

©2024 Anton Schettini (P)2024 Dreamscape Media

Critic reviews

Of the thousands of aspiring writers I’ve encountered in over forty years of teaching, Anton Schettini is among that happy few who actually managed to become one. Now he’s written a book that will help others who want to do the same. (Robert Thompson, Director, Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, Syracuse University)