May 15, 06:09 PM

Writing Process

Bobby: It takes as many as 5 or 6 weeks to feed a script from the first idea. We may toss around an idea for a long time before we can find a beginning, a middle and an end. There were even some ideas we talked about today that we first mentioned during the first season that we still haven't figured out. So sometimes just creating the broadest strokes can take a really long time. Once we know where it ends, then it typically can take about a full week to flesh it out and know what all the scenes are. That takes a couple revisions, which we write on a dry erase board. You kind of have an idea of what's funny in each scene, but it's boiled down to a simple description and a writer takes it from there...those are called board notes. So the writer takes it, makes it into an outline that's about 16 pages, which takes about 4 days or so. Then they give their notes on that, which leads into doing the script, which is 30 pages and takes a little over a week. They then bring in the writer's draft, and it takes the room about 3 days to edit that...on average about 50-70% gets changed in those 3- 3 1/2 days. Then the actors do a table read and we spend another 2 days re-writing it again. Then after we record it, we still have to rearrange some scenes because there will need to be voice over tweaks or we just want to punch some stuff up...so yeah. Also, almost every single joke we do, we end up pitching an average of like 10 alternate versions of the joke through the script's life...sometimes as many as 20 versions! In a particular episode...let's say there are 3 jokes a minute...so we usually have 700-1000 jokes getting pitched for any given episode.

COMMENTS

Love the show!! I live in Glynn County, GA. Just south of us is "Camden" county. Is this "Camden" an inspiration for the show Earl?

Nadine,
I'm a mother of 2, a 20 and 23 also from Chicago, and we think you are awesome. We watch your show and love your charactor. Any projects for the break that you can discuss,

Hello Nadine

I would like to submit a script to your agent for your review.

Please forward me your agent's contact info

Thanks

Jeff

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