It’s a strange time out there, folks. The writer’s strike is already the second-longest strike in WGA history, we keep getting news about celebrities deciding to scab, and then undeciding to scab, and sometimes the AMPTP wants to come to the table but usually they’re just horsin’ around. (Of course, practically the moment I wrote this paragraph news of a tentative agreement broke.)
Anyway, here it is, our first interview of the 2023 writer’s strike (and maybe the last, if the news is any indication). It only took me twenty-one weeks to get my act together.
It’s the second strike of Matthew Federman’s career, which has been long and productive. Matt came up as a script department assistant on The West Wing, along with Stephen Scaia, who would become Matt’s writing partner on shows like Jericho, Human Target, and Limitless, and eventually they would create and executive produce Blood and Treasure.
I highly encourage everyone to check out Matt’s collection of posts “On Breaking Story,” over on his personal blog. There’s a lot that anyone, at any stage of their writing career, can learn there.
We talked about Matt’s writing tools, breaking story strategies, what a showrunner looks for in emerging writers, a little bit about video games, and only a teensy bit about the strike.
Please enjoy my interview with Matthew Federman.
This interview was conducted via email in mid-September 2023, during the WGA strike. It has been lightly edited for clarity and organization.
NL: I’d like to start somewhere I don’t usually, but these are unusual times. Is there anything you’re watching right now to stay motivated? What’s keeping you “inspired” during the strike?
MF: If I don’t write for too long I start to get squirrely, and for the first half of the strike I was too tired from picketing and probably a bit depressed so I wasn’t getting anything done.
Finally, if only for my mental health, I buckled down, focused on an idea I haven’t been able to break for a couple of years, and set the goal for myself of breaking and at least starting to write that idea before the strike was over. Having a goal helped, and I finally broke it and am now writing in my downtime.
I’ve been watching a bunch of movies for inspiration during that process. When I’m watching stuff purely for enjoyment, I like comedy as it’s less likely to feel like work, so I can just be a viewer. Generally, the stuff that hooks me is great characters meeting an interesting premise. I tend to gravitate towards genre stuff, but I’m pretty open to anything if it’s compelling enough to keep me off my phone while I’m watching it.
NL: While I don’t want to spend too much time on your early, breaking-in days, I am curious if there’s a specific piece of writing of yours that you feel like opened doors. Whether it was a spec script, an early episode you wrote—or something else—which got some attention.
MF: When I broke in with my writing partner at the time, we had two pieces of material that got us all of our jobs for awhile. One was a West Wing spec (we were assistants on the show in season 4 and it was that idea that started us writing together). The other was a big ensemble action/adventure spec pilot. Between the two we had a good spread of the kinds of stuff we wanted to write.
NL: What do you think made those pieces special?
MF: For the West Wing spec, people were impressed with our ability to nail the character voices and tone of the show, which we were definitely helped in by working on it and absorbing it on a daily basis. For the action/adventure, people responded to the world building, characters, and twists. Both pieces were things that were not necessarily the “smart” thing to write at the time, based on what was on the air. But it’s what we were passionate about and thought we could do well.
“Both pieces were things that were not necessarily the ‘smart’ thing to write at the time, based on what was on the air. But it’s what we were passionate about and thought we could do well.”
NL: The spec TV episode really seems like a dying art. Is that something you would encourage emerging writers to practice? As a showrunner, would you ever ask to see a spec episode (of another show) the writer had written as a sample? Or is the idea that “everyone should be writing pilots” too de rigueur now?
MF: Ah, the spec question that would light Writer Twitter on fire once a month. My take on “To Spec Or Not To Spec” is that it is two separate questions. One, if you want to write for TV should writing specs be a part of your development as a writer? Absolutely. There is no other highly competitive industry where you would be expected to do the thing for the first time while trying to do it professionally. To me that’s akin to never taking batting practice and seeing your first pitch at your premiere in the major leagues.
Writing your own spec will teach you so much about the craft with the weight taken off of you to create a fully fledged world with new characters all being introduced within an hour, one of the hardest things to do well.
Most young writers would be benefitted from writing [a spec script], and you have a better chance of hitting it out of the park because the show already works, so a big part of the heavy lifting is done.”
I have not asked to see a spec but if someone had one that was a good tonal fit for a show I was hiring for, I’d absolutely read it. But most people don’t write them so it becomes a moot issue. Unfortunately, this whole topic ends up becoming about young writers saying “I don’t want to waste my time on specs if no one will read them,” and that always makes me twitch. Most young writers would be benefitted from writing them, and you have a better chance of hitting it out of the park because the show already works, so a big part of the heavy lifting is done. If I was starting out now I’d have a mix of originals and specs to give my reps as many different arrows in the quiver as possible to get me work.
NL: Love the suggestion to have both specs and originals in your “quiver” as reps start taking out an emerging writer. What other qualities do you look for when meeting a writer you might consider for staffing?
MF: You’re looking at the writing and the person, as both a fit for the show and for yourself. In the writing I’m looking for someone who is compelling on the page. If I can/have to get to the end of the script that’s huge.
For the person, I like someone who is passionate but also pleasant to be around (as you’ll be spending many hours a day in a room with them). I want someone with a strong point of view who is also flexible and collaborative.
You get the feeling that a lot of people are afraid of not getting the job because they show too strong of a point of view, but in my experience, showing too little is a much greater danger, because you don’t stand out.
NL: And to follow up, what qualities do you think make a stellar staff writer once they’re in the room?
MF: The writers who become the stars on the staff are the ones who are able to balance their own voice with the show, and expand the show with their contribution. It’s a delicate balance because it’s the showrunner’s vision being expressed and you don’t want to try and overtake that, but the writers I love are the ones who brought something to the show that I can absolutely point to.
They are also problem solvers rather than problem makers. They take weight off of you as a showrunner, both in the room where they are always helping to push stories down the field and on the page where they don’t need to be heavily rewritten. They are highly adaptable in learning the voice of the show to the point that you eventually can’t remember who wrote what in a script because their scripts sound like you.
“You get the feeling that a lot of people are afraid of not getting the job because they show too strong of a point of view, but in my experience, showing too little is a much greater danger, because you don’t stand out. “
NL: Can you talk about mentorship in the industry? Have there been those who took you under their wing, and what do you look for in those you might consider mentees?
MF: I have been involved in some mentorship programs, especially over the pandemic when I had free time. Then my free time evaporated as the problems of the pandemic became all consuming, so I wasn’t always as involved as I would have liked to have been.
I don’t ever call myself a mentor, probably because I have a high level of anxiety of letting someone down or advising them poorly and causing harm. I really just want to be helpful however I can be. If that means reading a script and giving notes I will do that as time allows. If it means making introductions I’m always happy to do that if I can. Nobody makes it in this industry entirely on their own, we all need help.
I came to L.A. not knowing anyone, so I especially have a soft spot for people that didn’t go to the right schools or whatever. The more potential I see is the more helpful I’m driven to be. Some people are so talented and just never got the lucky breaks, and I see it as an affront by the Universe that they aren’t working.
I’ve been able to give a few people their first writing job and then watched their careers take off, and I get a lot of satisfaction from that. Like a wrong has been righted.
Aside from personality and writing there’s a third important factor that you don’t hear about a lot, which I call “savviness,” but I’m sure goes by many names. Some people just “get it” even when they have little experience. They get how to talk to someone to not waste their time. What and when to ask for help. There’s never a sense that they will embarrass you if you pass their name along. If I’m gonna help someone I need to sense that they have enough of that quality that they won’t completely waste my time where I could be helping someone else.
“Some people are so talented and just never got the lucky breaks, and I see it as an affront by the Universe that they aren’t working.”
NL: You have a great series of posts on your blog all about breaking story. When you’re breaking a story, what are the elements you try to get hold of first? If you’re on a time crunch, what’s the single most important thing to nail down?
MF: I can’t say I have a hard and fast process, but it usually starts with a concept hitting my brain that I’m excited by. It often comes with a title, a sense of the tone, and a touch of the theme (all of which will be refined later).
Then I dig in and think about what character(s) would best express whatever it is that I want to say. How is this person the right person to bring us into this world and to allow for the kinds of conversations and actions I want to see? That kind of thing.
Once I have those elements along with whatever gut reaction is necessary for it to feel like a story I need to tell, then I get into the actual story breaking. If I don’t have all those elements, I let the idea sit on a back burner until it’s ready to revisit. The single most important thing for me (whether on a time crunch or not) is the theme, which, as I think of it, is really indistinguishable from the character, because they are a manifestation of the theme.
I think of the theme like the center of gravity that everything revolves around. It defines the character, their actions, the plot, etc. If I don’t have that, the story just feels like a bunch of disconnected pieces and breaking it feels impossible. But once I’ve nailed down that center of gravity I know it’s right, because it immediately starts defining the character(s) and plot.
Every time I have ever gotten stuck I have gotten out of it by stepping back and asking myself, “What am I trying to say with this?” Getting back to that center of gravity keeps me from getting lost in the weeds.
NL: It’s interesting that a title is one of the things you list as coming early in the story-breaking process. Is the title an important encapsulation of theme for you, or is it serving some other purpose as you start working? (I’m thinking about the title “Blood & Treasure,” which certainly does tonal work: there will be action, there will be adventure.)
MF: Frequently the title comes with the idea, and I always like that because it feels more real somehow. I also think a bad title can really hurt your prospects, so it’s one less thing to worry about. That said, “Blood & Treasure” was not a title we had for a while. We had sold a lot of pilots but not gotten anything made, and sometimes I think we had been too artful with them.
Then you’d see the shows that got made and the titles were right down the middle. Just told you what the show was immediately. So I said we should try something more like that and pitched “Blood & Treasure” as a version of it, and everyone was like, “Sure, let’s just go with that.”
Maybe the show gets made anyway with a different title but the fact that it was the one we finally got on the air certainly didn’t dissuade me from thinking that 1) titles are important, and 2) should be pretty straightforward if possible.
I think of the theme like the center of gravity that everything revolves around. It defines the character, their actions, the plot, etc.
NL: Maybe my favorite of your breaking story aphorisms is number 3, “Good story creates more story.” Can you elaborate on how that works in practice?
MF: Whether breaking story alone or in a group, when the story isn’t working everything comes to a stand still. It feels like a slog to get anything on the board. Then a great idea comes along and suddenly everything is humming, ideas falling into places like tumblers in a lock and you watch the whole thing open up.
Good story proves itself good because it immediately sparks more ideas, things that excite everyone. You’re always looking for that flow, and when it happens it feels like magic. And when it’s not happening, it’s time to reassess your story choices up till now because something is wrong.
NL: The way you talk about story coming out of a flow, sparking more ideas, sounds like a good tabletop roleplaying game session to me. You have one video game credit on IMDBPro and mentioned in a recent blog post that you play them—how does your enjoyment of games impact your storytelling? Is that a genre you’re tempted to work in more?
MF: I was very into video games growing up, then stopped playing for a long time before getting back in as an adult. The game I worked on was ironically in the period where I wasn’t playing, so I had some catching up to do. It was a good experience, including my first trip to Skywalker Ranch which alone made it worthwhile. The game itself was a bit of a mess, they only hired writers because they were way into development and it wasn’t working.
Knowing everything I know now, I’d love to work on a new game and come in at the beginning (or very early in the process) to be as helpful as possible and not just trying to triage. There have definitely been moments in games that have inspired me, just as there are in movies and TV shows. Many triple A video games are basically playable movies now. They have come such a long way in terms of narrative.
One thing it consistently drives home for me is the sense of the story happening to the viewer, not just as an observer. Some writers can get a bit…writerly…or novelistic with internal struggles of characters that are hard to manifest outwardly for a viewer. Sometimes thinking of the viewer as a player in terms of how the narrative impacts them personally rather than just as an observer can help break that instinct.
NL: How does the process of breaking story change when you’re on your own vs. in a room? What do you have to watch out for in either situation?
MF: Well, a room is much easier. You’ve got a bunch of smart people helping push the boulder up the hill so you can churn through ideas faster, as well as follow the room’s energy for when something is working (or not). The only issue with a lot of voices is sometimes maintaining a clarity of vision, but I don’t find that to be a huge problem and the benefits far outweigh it.
When I’m on my own I do a lot more watching things for inspiration, reading books related to the subject, etc. I need to fill in the gaps of having a group to help me in a room, so feeding as much as I can into my brain from other sources helps me to see different options that I might not be able to see on my own.
NL: What are some of your favorite “tools” when it comes to writing? Do you card stories? Write outlines or treatments? Use some kind of productivity tracker? (Even interested in minutiae here: are you a Scrivener guy, Final Draft all day, etc.?)
MF: My “process,” such as it is, is a bit of a mess, and I wouldn’t suggest anyone use it as a model, but it’s just what has worked for me lately.
I started using Scrivener about three years ago and it helped fill in the beginning part of the process when I just have a lot of loose ideas, and I never had any great way to deal with them. Now when I have a new idea I open up a Scrivener document, have a sub file for plot ideas, one for character ideas, and a place to put any inspiration or research so it’s all in one spot.
Now the reality is, I end up having some ideas for scenes which spill into character ideas and vice versa, and stuff ends up all over the place. As it evolves and solidifies, I then create a new page and start putting things together there, leaving behind the debris of all those early thoughts.
I then break out the board. It’s a white board on one side and cork on the other. I *gasp* use both. *hold for the reader to put the pieces of their skull back together* The white board is for free-flowing thoughts/scenes/questions I have, etc. Cork board formalizes the plot and character beats as the story break progresses.
When I get to the point that I feel like it’s broken, I’ll do a pretty sloppy outline/beat sheet. I do that in Final Draft, and when I feel ready to start the script I just write into that outline and expand what’s there. Then as new ideas and changes come off of what’s being written I put them into the outline to be dealt with when I get to those scenes.
Eventually I’ll look back at those early thoughts in Scrivener to see if I missed anything important and to laugh at how off so much of it is from the final product.
NL: Love finding another Scrivener fan!
You recently moved from working in a writing team to working on your own. What hurdles have you happened upon in that transition? Are there things you’ve had to relearn, or now feel like you need to get better at?
MF: When you write with a partner for eighteen years, going solo means rediscovering your process, your voice, everything. It’s both scary and exciting. I knew what we both brought to things, and so I try to recreate that process by just shifting my mindset to cover the different things that would normally have come up before.
I also gave myself a lot of freedom up front to just stretch my muscles and try stuff I never would have tried before. I cleared out the buffers of some ideas I’d had for awhile that we had never been able to break. After that, it feels like I have really settled into my own process and voice now.
Also, my wife is a writer. She’s a children’s book author and illustrator and has great instincts for story, so I still have someone to bounce things off of which is helpful. And my seven year old also gets involved, for better and worse.
NL: For Blood & Treasure, there were a few interviews where, in response to a question, you talked about how you hoped the audience will respond to a certain element of the show. You even did it just now, talking about the audience as a “player” instead of a viewer.
How do you go about articulating what you’d like the audience to feel? How do you conceive of “the audience”?
MF: There’s a version of writing to an audience that can become pandering, where the writer isn’t trying to express anything but is just feeding the audience what they think the audience wants. I don’t want to do that, but I do try to put myself in the place of the viewer to get a sense of an outsider perspective so we aren’t losing them—either in terms of the plot or the emotion—along the way.
For instance, [Blood & Treasure] had a big mystery component with a lot of moving parts. There is a big reveal in the finale of season one and audiences are so smart today that we really wanted to land it and have them be surprised rather than ahead of it as they so often are. So we were constantly turning the chess board around, so to speak, to see what they knew by a certain point, what they probably THINK is happening, and then how to twist it so the twist is surprising but also, in retrospect, completely set up.
“I frequently say we should ‘shoot the argument.’ In other words, have these legitimate differing viewpoints be taken by the characters and let the story act to resolve the conflict.”
Also, in a room of ten-or-so smart writers you’ll get a lot of different perspectives on how a moment should play out, and the room often forms into camps pushing one way or another. I tend to see that as good rather than bad, because it means there is inherent conflict in how the characters would see things and act. So rather than have to introduce some outside, inorganic conflict, I frequently say we should “shoot the argument.” In other words, have these legitimate differing viewpoints be taken by the characters and let the story act to resolve the conflict.
Because the room is the first audience for the show, if we have those different points of view, then we’re more likely to reflect what the audience is thinking and feeling in those moments and so the show connects with them more.
NL: Like a “monster of the week” show, Blood & Treasure was a bit “treasure of the season.” What were some of the treasures you’d have liked to pursue in hypothetical future seasons?
MF: We had a whole folder of stuff that we’d collected over years, but the locations could be a driving force as much as treasure. We wanted each season to have a distinct visual palate.
First season was Middle East. Second season we went to Asia for a very different look, and that meant finding a story and treasure that felt like it could represent the region and its history. Third season we had talked about South America, but didn’t get too far into defining what that would mean.
Our exec, Amanda Palley, joked that season seven would be space. Alas, we never got there, because an alien artifact would have really opened up the show.
NL: And lastly, the strike has received tons of coverage already, but what do you wish folks would ask more about, which they aren’t asking already?
MF: First off, I’ve been extremely impressed with the WGA leadership (and then SAG) in how they have prosecuted this fight for fairness and the survival of the industry. We really are at a junction point where the choice is: fight for this thing we love and our ability to make a career doing it, or let it collapse, because the status quo is untenable.
But if you step back from the industry-specific issues at play, you’ll see similar fights going on in almost every industry across the country and the world. Everybody who works for a living says the same things now: their industry is ruled by a handful of very powerful companies with CEOs making hundreds of times what they make while workers are barely scraping by.
So I guess what I want people to ask is, “how is their fight the same as my fight and what should I be doing about that?” It’s been a summer of strikes with labor seemingly ascendant, which is good. But we have a ways to go before we rebalance things so the gap between the people at the top and the bottom is not so absurdly huge. That is also a status quo that isn’t tenable.
NL: Thanks so much for taking the time to answer all these questions. I really appreciate it.
And now for the “lightning round.” Feel free to answer as curtly or in as much detail as you like.
Favorite cocktail, mocktail, or other beverage?
MF: Arnold Palmer (half iced tea, half lemonade for the uninitiated).
NL: Alien or Aliens? (And why?)
MF: Aliens. Both are brilliant, but Action is one of my favorite genres and Horror one of my least favorite (no offense to anyone, I just can’t get images out of my head once they are in there).
NL: If someone told you that you had to memorize an entire novel word for word, what book would you pick?
MF: I’m not great with memorization so I’d google “shortest novel ever written” and do that one.
NL: Most underrated or sadly forgotten TV show?
MF: It’s not underrated in my circles but I think at large it is: Homicide: Life on the Street. It’s the precursor to The Wire, you can see it running where The Wire will eventually soar. As far as I know it’s only available on DVD at the moment, which means it will be in the “sadly forgotten” category before too long.
NL: Tell us about one thing we haven’t yet talked about that lives rent-free in your brain.
MF: The thing that is in my brain literally for free right now is an audio book for research, from the library app Libby. A lot of people don’t know about Libby but I’ve been pitching it to writers because listening to audio books for research has become a big part of my process. And it’s free! Get on it, people!
“We really are at a junction point where the choice is: fight for this thing we love and our ability to make a career doing it, or let it collapse, because the status quo is untenable.”
Noah Lloyd 