Writers from the TV series “Girls” share lessons they’ve learned

From Vulture:

As the story goes, the Frasier writers room was deafeningly quiet: If and when you spoke, you’d better have been damned sure you had a good joke to share. One couldn’t find a better counterpoint than the unruly writers room for Girls. In between shoots on the HBO series’ sixth and final season, the people who put words in Hannah and friends’ mouths gathered to reflect on going deeper than punch lines.

A lot of great insights, but let me excerpt some with a common theme:

Max Brockman
I was 23 when I started [on Girls], and I wasn’t a writer on the show. I was an assistant. This seems obvious to me now, but I was so young that I don’t think I quite understood it then: The notion that the funniest idea is always the one that is the truest to the characters you’ve created.

Bruce Eric Kaplan
My favorite scenes have been ones where the characters were aching to express themselves: the Hannah-Marnie fight from the first season, the Jessa-Katherine scene from the same episode. The thing I am aware of constantly learning and relearning is getting out of the way of the characters.

The notion that the funniest idea is always the one that is the truest to the characters you’ve created… The thing I am aware of constantly learning and relearning is getting out of the way of the characters.

When you write comedy, as I’ve pretty much done for three decades, jokes are great. Bits are great. Set pieces, setups and payoffs, callbacks, all great.

But nothing is as valuable as writing from character. Read the scenes the other writers — Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow included — discuss from the series “Girls” and they are all grounded in characters.

Characters in awkward situations. Characters in conflict. Characters conveying revelations. But always characters.

It’s the wonderful characters in “Girls” which have sustained the series’ humanity and humor for six years.

A good lesson for writers.

For the rest of the article, go here.