Writing

Breslin’s Rule: Don’t trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover.

JIMMY BRESLIN

Nerdist Writers Panel

Challenge yourself to put your character somewhere besides a generic desk in a generic office.

Pop things that are very big in the culture whether they’re political scandals or recording artists, those are things that are points of reference for people, so I think at some point you’re going to have to at least make reference to some of them.

If possible we never show the year; like, if there’s a banner for some event we never show "Harvest Festival 201" or something. Because we feel like visually that would be bad; we want people ideally to be watching these shows long into the future and you don’t want to date yourself.

There’s a phrase that we use on our show that Greg Daniels taught me on The Office, which is “slicing the baloney as thin as possible." It means if you have a good arc for a character, if you cut off too much at one time, you’re going to burn through it too quickly.

I asked him why TV comedies changed. "One of the main reasons," he said, "is the tyranny of live studio audiences, which I think have ruined television comedy.

Meyer submitted samples culled from the writing he had done in college, and Letterman was bowled over. "Everything in his submission, down to the last little detail, was so beautifully honed," Letterman told me. "I haven't run across anybody quite like that since."