11/23/2018 Liz Meriwether and Letting Things Go – Anthony Jondreau – Medium

Anthony Jondreau Nov 20 · 2 min read

Liz Meriwether and Letting Things Go

Liz Meriwether’s adaptability helped her show New Girl run for seven seasons

“I don’t think comedy scripts should be precious.”

Flexibility has been the common denominator in Liz Meriwether’s comedy writing career. From writing for theatre to writing the movie No Strings Attached to creating the hit show New Girl, Liz has found success making people laugh in a variety of mediums.

Liz dropped by Writers Blok to share some wisdom from her TV writing career. She told us how letting things go has helped her get ahead.

Liz got her start writing for theatre, which came with a live audience providing instant feedback and an immediate validation or repudiation of her work. It’s hard to hold on to bad writing when it’s clearly not working. That experience taught her how to get a sense of — and adapt to — an audience, even when she didn’t have one while writing for TV.

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“What’s funny is constantly shifting.”

Comedy has a way of going stale much more quickly than other genres, and when you’re working on a pilot for six months or a movie for three years (as Liz has done) some jokes will need to be thrown out. Stick with the ones you believe in, but don’t be afraid to let the other ones go. They probably won’t be funny by the time anyone hears them.

Ultimately, your job is to make a good show, not to present a perfect version of your script. Sometimes, that means letting a good actor take what you’ve given them and make it better. Liz believes her career was aided by a young Emma Stone being cast in one of her showcases. Other times, it could mean acknowledging that something just isn’t working anymore, even if it did when you rst put it on paper.

A lot happens between a rst draft and the nal product. Your ability to succeed is as much dictated by what you write as it is your willingness to let it go.

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Writers Blok is a co-writing space in Los Angeles. We specialize in structure, support, and community for writers.

Upcoming events include Q&As with Randall Winston, producer of shows like Scrubs and Cougar Town, Stephen Neary, story artist for Rio, and Matthew Polly, author of three books about martial arts.

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