As a writers' assistant in the writers' room, I heard this time and time again: "I could never do your job." This was said by staff writers on up to showrunners.
And the feeling for most writers' assistants and script coordinators is, "You're damn right you can't."
Now, are the writers saying this to ease their guilt at having a better, higher-paying job than the assistant they're speaking to...?
Yes, BUT... it's still true for the most part. And that's because the writers' assistant job is one of the hardest in the entire writers' room, second only to the showrunner.
And it requires completely different skills to be a writers' assistant from the skills required to be a showrunner.
The Skills Required To Be A Writers' Assistant
Typing, typing, typing... the writers' assistant is typing all day long. But it's not just regurgitating words back onto the computer.
There's an insane amount of active listening you have to do in order to perform this job well.
See, as the writers are talking, the writers' assistant is expected to take it all down, and make sense of it.
But what if the thing the writer pitched didn't really make sense to begin with?
A lot of writers are very good pitchers. That doesn't necessarily mean that translates to sensical story points and jokes.
And while you're typing all this out, you're filtering the words you're hearing and trying to make sense of the notes, and seeing where that fits into the larger story they're talking about. And at the end of the day, you need your document of notes to be readable by the whole staff.
It's a downright impossible job. And that's just one part of it.
If you're a script coordinator, you also need to be intimately familiar with Final Draft, the screenwriting software used in TV.
There are lots of production features that normal screenwriter doesn't really pay attention to. But you have to know how to do it.
And you also need to know how to "un-fuck" whatever weird thing the writer has done to their script.
So many times when a writer turns in a draft, they've done something remarkable to it, and not in a good way. They've done some weird formatting thing that becomes evident when you're trying to make the script look normal again, banging your head against the wall because they have no idea what they did.
Other times you'll get a script coming back that will make you think, "have you even seen a script before?" Those are frustrating times, which brings me to my next point.
You have to be chill. Writers get to be volatile and dramatic. But you're expected to be a quiet workhorse and appreciative of being there.
This is the opposite temperament of many of the showrunners I've encountered in the business.
Skills Required To Be A Showrunner
This is not an easy job either, by any means. (Many of the staff writing jobs can be pretty cushy, but this one is not.)
But the skill sets are totally different. For one, if you're a showrunner, sometimes you don't even have to type. Some showrunners will just dictate to the writers' assistant or script coordinator everything they want put in the script.
There are managerial skills and story skills and people skills involved in trying to navigate a behemoth of a TV production through to air.
And those are difficult. But very different from the minutia and carpal tunnel-inducing skills required to be a writers' assistant.
For more about being a writers' assistant, check out my article here.
For more about being a showrunner, check out my article here.
For more about breaking into TV writing, check out my book here.
