Steven Levitan knows how to make television that sticks with you. The Chicago-raised writer-producer has been crafting comedy gold for over three decades, starting with his early days writing for Wings to co-creating the Emmy-winning Modern Family. He’s written hundreds of episodes of TV—the dream for many of us.
It’s clear he’s figured out a few things that work. In a recent and far-ranging interview, Levitan offered tons of insight on his process, including how he writes so much and so quickly.
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Levitan learned this lesson early, back when he was a TV news reporter fresh out of college, he said. He would show up on a scene, have to think on the fly, and prep a segment he would have to do live, all while under an intense time crunch.
So later, when he showed up in a TV writers’ room, “fast” meant something different.
“Oh my god, we’re going to need the script so fast,” he remembered his colleagues saying. When they told him they needed it in a week, Levitan’s response was, “Well, that’s an eternity to me right now.”
His news background had trained him to work under impossible deadlines, and it gave him an edge that would serve him throughout his career.
Part of his issue, he said, is also that he has some anxiety about a task hanging over him, so he doesn’t procrastinate. He wants to get an assignment done and off his plate.
Working in a room, he’s obviously going to have a mix of personalities, and he appreciates the need to accommodate slower writers, too. But he also sees the value in rolling with momentum if you find it while working.
Later in the interview, he talks about breaking the story for a typical Modern Family episode and how difficult it could be, equating it to endless math equations. So it makes sense that if he gets some speed, he sticks with it.
“My attitude is you can go back and fix, and you can go back and look at it. Other people are much more, ‘Slow down. Let’s really think this through. Let’s be deliberate about this.’ And I think that there are advantages to both.”
There’s no right answer to how long it should take to write a script. But there are plenty of writing exercises and drills to help you get creatively loose so you do find that momentum he mentions here.
Let us know which bit of his advice you find the most helpful!
