Jenna Fischer (Pam) Updates Her MySpace Blog

I probably don’t post about the character MySpace blogs as much as I should. I’ve just never been big into MySpace I guess. But thankfully a lot of LITO readers point me to the posts that are real winners. The post today is one of those.

Today, Jenna answered a whole list of questions from her readers. But, my favorite part of the post was the insight on how the episodes are written:

In case you were wondering how writers on a TV show work, I’ll try to break it down for you. (I really have no idea, but this is what Ive observed.) The group of writers, we have about 10, sit around a table and pitch story ideas. An assistant takes notes. They spend days just yelling out ideas like “Michael has to pick a new health care plan”, “Pam gets drunk”, “Jim cant talk for the day”.

Next, they go through the notes and write their favorite ideas on index cards. They tack these onto the walls. So, the walls are literally covered with index cards.

Then, they try to break a story. They pick a card and talk all about how it could be an episode. They try to give it a beginning, middle and an end. If they can’t break it, they put it back for later. If they do break it, they move it to a new place on the wall for Episodes.

Once they have enough Episodes, they break down each story even more and make a beat-by-beat outline. Finally, each writer gets an episode assignment. The writers go off on their own for 1-2 weeks and, using the outline, write their episode. That’s where they are now. Writing episodes! There are 10 people who know exactly what happens at the beginning of Season 3. Sadly, I’m not one of them.

You can read all the queston and answers on Jenna’s MySpace Blog here

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