This is according to Dan Harmon (or more precisely my recollection of what Dan Harmon said about it on his short lived podcast Whiting Wongs.) At the beginning of the season the showrunner has a general timeline for the episodes. Writers will take on the job of “breaking out” (writing the basic skeleton of the episode and the progression of the A and B stories) a few episodes each before the whole room adds their input. Typically the writer(s) who broke out an episode are the credited writers for that episode, WGA rules state that only two writers can be credited for the episode for awards eligibility. Sometimes the showrunner is one of the credited writers but because they are also a producer and therefore eligible for other awards that’s not always the case.
Also, the credited writer is typically on-set to make in-the-moment adjustments when needed.
Basically, they generally assigned a single person (or pair if Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky were doing it) to an episode idea and they got the writing credit for the entire episode.
I guess they also have the last word on the script. Like if you have a team of 10 writers, you can end with 2^10 - 1 different scripts, and someone have to say which of them is the one being filmed.
Is this the lead writer position for episodes? I thought pretty much all TV writing was done by a team/writers’ room.
This is according to Dan Harmon (or more precisely my recollection of what Dan Harmon said about it on his short lived podcast Whiting Wongs.) At the beginning of the season the showrunner has a general timeline for the episodes. Writers will take on the job of “breaking out” (writing the basic skeleton of the episode and the progression of the A and B stories) a few episodes each before the whole room adds their input. Typically the writer(s) who broke out an episode are the credited writers for that episode, WGA rules state that only two writers can be credited for the episode for awards eligibility. Sometimes the showrunner is one of the credited writers but because they are also a producer and therefore eligible for other awards that’s not always the case.
Also, the credited writer is typically on-set to make in-the-moment adjustments when needed.
Basically, they generally assigned a single person (or pair if Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky were doing it) to an episode idea and they got the writing credit for the entire episode.
I guess they also have the last word on the script. Like if you have a team of 10 writers, you can end with 2^10 - 1 different scripts, and someone have to say which of them is the one being filmed.