A Storyteller's Journey: Lee Goldberg

Profession: Writer/Producer/Novelist/Author

Credits: Stranger Adventures, Psych, Monk, Missing, The Best TV Shows That Never Were, Nero Wolfe, The Nightmare Room, Diagnosis Murder, Martial Law, Deadly Games, Sliders, Stick with Me, Kid, Flipper, The Cosby Mysteries, Cobra, SeaQuest DSV, Likely Suspects, She-Wolf of London, Hunter, Baywatch, Murphy's Law, The Highwayman, Spenser: For Hire

Books: Beyond The Beyond, My Gun Has Bullets, The Dreamweavers: Fantasy Film-Makers of the 1980s, Science Fiction Film-Making in the 1980s, Television Series Revivals: Sequels & Remakes of Canceled Series, Unsold Television Pilots 1955-1988, .357 Vigilante #1 (as Ian Ludlow), .357 Vigilante #2: Make Them Pay (as Ian Ludlow), .357 Vigilante #3: White Wash (as Ian Ludlow), .357 Vigilante #4: Killstorm (as Ian Ludlow), Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse, Diagnosis Murder: The Silent Partner, Diagnosis Murder: The Death Merchant, Diagnosis Murder: The Shooting Script, Diagnosis Murder: The Waking Nightmare, Diagnosis Murder: The Past Tense, Diagnosis Murder: The Dead Letter, Diagnosis Murder: The Double Life, Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii, The Man with the Iron-On Badge, The Walk, Successful Television Writing, Mr. Monk and The Blue Flu

Bio: Until recently, I used to keep every TV Guide that came into my house. I had a collection going back to the mid-70s, which I just donated to the LA County Library. That tells you what kind of TV geek I am. I love what I do...but I just as easily could have ended up morbidly obese, living in my mother's basement, recording countless hours of TV shows, and wondering what it would be like to have sex with a woman instead of a poster of Heather Locklear.

1) What were you doing before you "made it"?

I was a freelance journalist, putting myself through school by writing for publications like American Film, Starlog, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times Syndicate, The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle, among many, many others. I also had a girlfriend who as an editor at Playgirl, who got me a gig writing sexually explicit letters to the editor for $25-a-letter, but let's just keep that between you and me.

2) What was your "big break" and how did you get it?

It was that Letters-To-The-Editor thing at Playgirl ...and I wrote a cheesy novel. Here's how it happened.

I had a journalism advisor at UCLA who wrote spy novels. We became friends and talked a lot about mysteries, thrillers, plotting, etc. One day his publisher came to him and asked him if he'd write a "men's action adventure series," sort of the male equivalent of the Harlequin romance. He said he wasn't desperate enough, hungry enough, or stupid enough to do it...but he knew someone who was: Me. So I wrote an outline and some sample chapters and they bought it. The book was called .357 Vigilante (I wrote it as "Ian Ludlow" so I'd be on the shelf next to Robert Ludlum) and had plenty of Letter-to-the-Editor-of-Playgirl quality sex in it.

The West Coast Review of Books called my literary debut "as stunning as the report of a .357 Magnum, a dynamic premiere effort," singling the book out as "The Best New Paperback Series" of the year. I ended up writing four books in the series. Naturally, the publisher promptly went bankrupt and I never saw a dime in royalties.

But New World Pictures bought the movie rights to .357 Vigilante and hired me to write the screenplay. I didn't know anything about writing scripts...luckily, I had a good friend who did, William Rabkin. We worked together on the UCLA Daily Bruin. So the two of us teamed up. The movie never got made, but we had so much fun, that we are still a writing team today...twenty years later.

Bill and I broke in to TV by writing a spec episode of Spenser: For Hire which, against all odds, they bought and shot... and then hired us to write three more episodes. We've been writing for TV ever since.

3) How does your career today stand up to your previous expectations?

I am one of the lucky few who is doing exactly what he dreamed of doing when he was a kid. I dreamed of writing & producing TV shows and writing mystery novels... and I am doing both.

4) What do you find most rewarding about your profession?

I love the writing, of course. I like knowing that most of what I write will actually get produced (unlike, say, toiling in features). And I like seeing how other people shape what I have written. Because writing for TV is a group effort...and what you envision when you create a story and what eventually ends up on screen are never the same. Most of the time, that's not a bad thing. The creative contributions that the director, the actors, the editors, the composers, the wardrobe people, the stunt people, etc. bring to what you've written are often surprising, exciting and inspiring.

The best part of being a TV writer... besides the money... is the time you spend with other writers. I love sitting in a room with some of the cleverest, most creative people you will ever meet, and talking story for hours. It's exhausting...but in a good way.

5) What are the pitfalls of your profession and how do you deal with them?

The job insecurity. The fact is, unless you reach a certain star level in the business, it never gets easier to find work. You are always pitching, always looking for the next gig, always auditioning, always competing for a limited number of available positions and assignments. It's exhausting...but in a bad way.

There is also an enormous amount of ego and dick-measuring in TV. I'm sure I'm guilty of it, too...sadly, it's part of the TV culture. But I'm lucky that I have some perspective. I am fortunate to also be very active and reasonably successful in publishing, specifically in the mystery-writing genre, and there is surprisingly little professional competitiveness and ego.

The majority of superstar authors of the mystery novels -- the wealthiest and most acclaimed in the field -- are amazingly nice, approachable, and helpful to their fellow writers and to "fans." They will treat an unknown, first-time author or someone mired in the mid-list with the same respect and courtesy as they do a fellow "superstar." I've seen it time after time and it always impresses me. I don't think the same can be said of writer/producers in the TV business.

6) What is your personal philosophy, method, or style toward your profession?

I decided long ago that I was going to be a writer first and a TV writer second. There's no question that I make most of my living in television...but I believe it's important to me professionally, financially, psychologically and creatively not to concentrate on just one field of writing (It probably helps that I started my career as a freelance journalist, then became a novelist, then a non-fiction author, and finally, a TV writer/producer). So I write books, both fiction and non-fiction, I teach TV writing, and occasionally I write articles and short stories... most of the time while I'm simultaneously writing & producing TV shows (though the TV work always takes priority over everything else, except, of course, my family).

While the income from books, teaching, and articles doesn't come close to matching what I make in TV, those gigs keep some cash coming in when TV (inevitably) lets me down, keep me "alive" in other fields, and, more importantly, keep my spirits up. As a result, who I am as a writer isn't entirely wrapped up in whether or not I have a TV job or a book on the shelves. I often have both, or one or the other -- but if I have neither, I have a class to teach or an article to write.

The other thing I try to be is a nice guy. Writing isn't my life...it's what I do. There are more important things than a TV show. And I know that's also true for the writers and other professionals who work for me and with me. I respect their time and I try not to waste it as a result of my own disorganization, ego or insecurity.

7) What advice would you give to someone trying to "break in" to your profession?

I get asked this question a lot. Everybody's story of breaking in is unique. Most of those stories, however, share one common element. You have to put yourself in the right place to get your lucky break. And it's easier than you think.

The first thing you have to do is learn your craft. Take classes, preferably taught by people who have had some success as TV writers. There's no point taking a class from someone who isn't an experienced TV writer themselves.

You'd think that would be common sense, but you'd be astonished how many TV courses are taught by people who don't know the first thing about writing for television or who, through a fluke, sold a story to Manimal twenty years ago and think that qualifies them to take your hundred bucks. Even more surprising is how many desperate people shell out money to take courses from instructors who should be taking TV writing courses themselves.

There's another reason to take a TV writing course besides learning the basics of the craft. If you're the least bit likeable, you'll make a few friends among the other classmates. This is good, because you'll have other people you can show your work to. This is also good because somebody in the class may sell his or her first script before you do... and suddenly you'll have a friend in the business.

Many of my writer/producer friends today are writers I knew back when I was in college, when we were all dreaming of breaking into TV some day.

A writer we hired on staff on the first season of Missing was in a Santa Monica screenwriters group... and was the first member of her class to get a paying writing gig. Now her friends in the class suddenly had a friend on a network TV show who could share her knowledge, give them practical advice and even recommend them to her new agent and the writer/producers she was working with.

Another route is to try and get a job as a writer/producer's assistant on an hour-long drama. Now only will you get a meager salary, but you will see how a show works from the inside. You'll read lots of scripts and revisions and, simply by observation, get a graduate course in TV writing. More important, you'll establish relationships with the writers on the show and the freelancers who come through the door. Many of today's top TV producers were writer/producer assistants once. All of the assistants we've had have gone on to become working TV writers themselves... and not because we gave them a script assignment or recommended them for one. We didn't do either.

But the one thing you simply have to do is write a spec episodic teleplay. You can find out more about that in an article I wrote that's posted here on the site...or you can read the book Bill & I wrote called Successful Television Writing.

About "A Storyteller's Journey" Series

There are many trails you can choose when you're determined to scale a mountain, but as long as you keep climbing, they will all reach the top.

"A Storyteller's Journey" maps the paths others have taken before you. Writers and filmmakers tell you in their own words what they were doing before their ascent, the obstacles they faced along the way, and what they discovered at the summit of their ambitions.

I hope their insights and experiences will educate, motivate, and inspire you with your own goals. Whether you follow their footsteps or forge your own way, just remember that no rules for success will work if you don't.