A while back, I was pitching an article on some horror movie or another at GR and it was shot down, not because it wasn't something that we cover on the regular, but because new SEO stats had indicated that news about screenwriters in specific was not that clickable on the site and therefore other angles (directors, actors, pretty much anything else) were more desirable than writerly news. I was a little crestfallen, not because I was particularly intent on the prospective piece, but because as a writer it made me feel like the stories, the worlds in which popular movies and shows and whole franchises, are the least important parts of the finished project, when in fact they are perhaps the most important.
As Hollywood and the entertainment world are about to get a taste of a world with no writers (also maybe no actors or directors who are standing with the writers) it's probably worth a discussion of their importance. You can't fix bad writing, or egads! NO writing, with cool special effects and A-List actors. Writers create the world you move the pieces around within. This goes for novels, obviously, but screenwriting just as much. You can have the best sets, the best costumes, the most amazing CGI and if there is no script or structure, no skeleton holding it all up, I doubt you will have anything anyone would even want to watch.
I think the great thing about cable and streamers is that they are willing to take a risk on well-written shows that don't just provide a vehicle for a big-name actor or someone ripped from Marvel or DC. I've been wallowing in the amazingness that is Yellowjackets, which is an anomaly in that besides some obvious comparisons to Lord of the Flies and the Alive story, is its own creation that delivers every week.It has a very Lost-like feel, whose writers were also at the top of the game (well, until they weren't.) Unlike things like HOD and The Last of Us, my other favorites recently, there's no existing text or game to spin off of. No established franchise to work with. You create something out of nothing. Characters and lives, plot points and worlds, out of air and words.
Of course, I was reading a discussion of the way writers rooms work at popular streamers and it really does seem the writers now have more opportunities to create for really good quality shows and films, but are paid less than ever while also being worked more. Thus, the strike, addressing the disparity between the huge amounts of money the networks are making vs. what the writers get paid or even get credit for in some contexts. I feel it's high time general audiences, and Hollywood, acknowledged that without the words and stories, all you have is air.
