George R.R. Martin Explains Why Mini Rooms Are an ‘Abomination’ in Support of WGA Strike

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin supports the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike — insert lazy joke about The Winds of Winter never releasing here — but in a blog post, he actually went so far as to describe “mini rooms” as an “abomination” for developing writers. If you don’t know what a mini room is, that’s perfect, because he spends a good chunk of the post explaining what that is too. George R.R. Martin outlined how, after 14 years in writing prose, an executive producer invited him in 1985 to write a freelance script for an episode of a reboot of The Twilight Zone . Since the script was well received, Martin was brought on for six weeks in Los Angeles as a “Staff Writer, at the Guild minimum salary, scripts against,” the lowest rung in the writing business, but he learned a tremendous amount about TV production because he got to sit in on casting sessions and table reads, work with the directors, and even watch a dude accidentally get his nose cut off during a sword fight stunt gone wrong (yikes). As Martin noted, “There is no film school in the world that could have taught me as much about television production as I learned on Twilight Zone during that season and a half.” He was promoted from staff writer to story editor, and though The Twilight Zone was ultimately canceled, he moved on to Beauty and the Beast (the TV series), where he continued rising through the ranks, eventually becoming co-executive producer. He is adamant that none of this career progression would have ever been possible without his experience working in the trenches on The Twilight Zone as a staff writer, regardless of his prose success. In the current writing landscape, the existence of mini rooms sidesteps any necessity to involve bottom-rung writers in production, meaning they never develop the production knowledge to receive promotions and advance their careers — and hence George Martin calling them an abomination . The exact definition of […]

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