Shonda Rhimes on How to Succeed in a Writers’ Room

Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Shonda Rhimes grew up telling stories. Initially, she hoped to become a novelist, but eventually, she turned her focus to film and television writing. Shonda majored in English and film studies at Dartmouth College and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

She wrote Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, an HBO television movie and her first professional credit, and penned two feature films after that. Following a career in film, Shonda returned to television and created Grey’s Anatomy, where she oversaw the production of nearly 300 episodes as showrunner. Shonda subsequently created the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off series, Private Practice, and cultural phenomenon Scandal.

A writers’ room is a workspace where TV writers brainstorm each element of a TV series, including episode breakdowns, the series arc, the season arc, character development, and various substories within each episode or each season. A writers’ room determines and refines the direction of the season. It’s also where all the creative minds—the showrunner, producers, and writers—brainstorm how they can help create an excellent show.

As a highly collaborative work environment, it’s important to be creative, supportive, and work well with your team if you join a writers’ room.

While making mistakes is part of the creative process, there are some that you want to avoid because, as Shonda says, they “can really be detrimental” to your career. Here’s what to avoid in a writer’s room:

• Being unprepared: You should come ready to discuss episodes, even if your episode is not up for discussion. “You have a responsibility every evening to go home and [come in] having read the writers’ room notes for the day before, to have some ideas about what you want to talk about the next day,” Shonda says. “You don’t just walk into the room, throw yourself down in a chair and go, ‘What are we doing?’ You’re supposed to come in with some thoughts and ideas and do some work ahead of time. That’s important.”
• Not having an opinion: It can be intimidating to express your views, especially if you are new to a writers’ room. But you’re expected to share your perspective. “People come in afraid to express their opinion,” she says. “Not only are you supposed to be not afraid to express your opinion, you have to be willing to fight for your opinion. To me, a writers’ room where everybody is in agreement all the time is not a writers’ room. That’s just me listening to the sound of my own voice.”
• Not talking: If you don’t speak up, you risk not making an impression. “Being a writer who doesn’t talk in a writers room is very dangerous—mainly because after a while, people forget you’re there,” Shonda says. “Or worse, they start to think you’re stupid. Or worse, they start to think you don’t have anything to say. And once that happens, it’s kind of over for you.”
• Talking too much: You also don’t want to be the person who always talks, making it difficult for others in the writing staff to participate. “Nobody else gets a chance to have an idea because [one person is] so busy telling everybody all of their amazing thoughts and ideas,” she says.

From creating specific pitches to uplifting your fellow writers, here are Shonda’s tips for how to succeed in a writers’ room:

• Make characters the focus of your pitches. While Shonda doesn’t expect fleshed-out pitches, she does want to know more about the characters’ motivations. “I cannot abide a pitch that comes into my room that is simply about plot,” she says. “A man wants to blow up a building and so he does this, and so Olivia does this, and so somebody else does this? What does that have to do with anything? You have to tell me that a man’s wife was kidnapped, and he’s devastated. And that devastation has led him to this [emotional] breakdown … I need it to come from character.”
• Study all episode drafts. Seeing how a script changes from draft to draft can teach you a lot. One writer who worked with Shonda looked at every version of the draft and the cut for each episode to gain a better understanding of the show. “They wanted to figure out what the difference was—why things got changed, what changed … and what ended up in a final cut and why,” Shonda says. “And that person, I have to say, learned to write the show better than anybody else, faster than anybody else. That’s a really smart way to go when you come into a show that is already running.”
• Support your team. A writers’ room depends on collaboration, which is why Shonda recommends being there for other writers instead of viewing them as competition. “[One] thing that a writer really needs, once again, is to sit in a room and hear other people’s ideas and not just shoot them down, but build on them,” she says. “Or if you don’t like what someone said, be able to find another solution to their problems. The people who just shoot down other people’s ideas are the people who get fired the fastest in almost anybody’s writers’ room.”

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